this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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ROS on the Steam Deck (discourse.ros.org)
submitted 1 year ago by mjpc13 to c/ros
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Running ROS on the Steam Deck is indeed possible, unlocking a world of opportunities for robotics enthusiasts and professionals. Currently, I am working on integrating the Steam Deck into a system that records multiple sensory inputs (LiDAR, RGBD, IMU, GNSS) into a rosbag, offering portability and real-time monitoring. This setup allows us to assess data quality on the fly, ensuring reliable and accurate results.

I believe the Steam Deck holds immense potential for application in the field of robotics. What other projects do you think could take advantage of the Steam Deck's capabilities?

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[–] ruffsl 2 points 1 year ago

While I'm still a big proponent of mobile/Android/iOS integration with ROS, as the price point of availabile hardware and prevalence of device ownership with youth makes it a compelling platform to teach robotics with, it's not without it's own limitations.

Although you get all these cool sensors, connectivity, and interfaces bundled into a compact form factor: e.i. cameras, excelometers, gyroscopes, barometers, GPS, microphones, speakers, touch screens, USB ports, battery with integrated charging circuits, arm CPUs, expandable storage, SDKs, etc. They do have a number of limitations such as OS access restrictions from a users perspective, as well as all the quirks and rough edges such as hardware fragmentation and vendored software/firmware restrictions.

For example, missing kernel features for UDP multicast networking for DDS in ROS2:

In that respect, the SteamDeck and other Linux enabled mobile gaming devices look to be a promising alternative to the previous norm of giving students underpowered net book and balancing them precariously on turtle bots. The screen and controls as one unit makes tasks such as tele-operation or telemetry monitoring more practical for field robotic deployments and experiments. Still not something one could strap to a turtlebot or a quad rotor like an old Android phone, but suitable as a mobile base station.

BTW, while there are a few SteamDeck communities already on Lemmy, you may find this community of particular interest, that migrated from r/steamdeck_linux: