Computer / Specs
ROS2 Foxy supports Ubuntu 20, Windows 10, and MacOS Mojave operating systems. Note that for the best possible experience with this course, I highly suggest using Ubuntu 20, as some Windows and MacOS features are still under heavy development. My lectures will primarily be recorded in Ubuntu 20, but I will be sure to show usage of the other operating systems if there are any discrepancies.
If you do not have one of these operating system versions, this course will cover how to utilize a virtual machine on your computer to run Ubuntu 20. Virtual Machine's can be really resource intensive if you do not have a computer with a decent amount of RAM, Memory, and Graphics capabilities. The better your computer specs, the better your experience with this course will be, especially if using a virtual machine.
Using Terminal / Developer Commands
This course does not go over Terminal / Developer tool basics, so prior experience with this is preferable for this course. However we will go through using the terminal / developer commands needed to utilize the tools we go over in this course, so you can follow along even if you are unfamiliar. This includes Unix based terminal usage, as well as Windows command prompt usage.
Programming In Python
This course does not explicitly go over Python programming and syntax. This course teaches how to utilize ROS2 within Python. However even if you are not familiar with Python, there will be coding examples and walkthroughs throughout the course for you to learn from.
Note To Windows & Mac Users
Some students have reported running into issues using the simulation, visualization, and security tools on MacOS & Windows, so I highly suggest utilizing Ubuntu 20 if possible. This is due to OS specific issues (and on Windows networking/firewall issues) that pop up from time to time due to OS updates and the fact that ROS2 is still under heavy development for these OS'. You should still be able to complete all of Section 4 (Using ROS2 In Python) without any issues. In the next section there is a video lecture on installing a Ubuntu 20 virtual machine. I highly suggest doing this if you want to follow along with Section 5 & 6.
With that in mind, let's get to ROS2.