Preparation

In the following, it is assumed that the openWNS source code is situated in the directory myOpenWNS.

Make sure that the following points are met within your openWNS installation:

• Running ./playground.py from myOpenWNS should give no error or warning message, but the standard help output.

• The installation of both the debug as well as the opt version of openWNS, from the source code to the myOpenWNS/sandbox directory, works without problems. Installation is started with the commands

  $ ./playground.py install
  $ ./playground.py install  --flavour=opt
  

• All system and unit tests should run without errors. Tests are started with the command

  $ ./playground.py runtests
  

• The command to create simulation campaigns, preparecampaign, is available when running ./playground.py.

• The database to store simulation results is installed according to Installing the PostgreSQL database.

If all these steps succeed, you can create a new simulation campaign which is used for all the following experiments. A simulation campaign consists of

1. A sub-directory sandbox that contains all necessary libraries and the openwns executable. After creation of the campaign, the directory will be changed to read-only mode in order to avoid changes to its content.
2. One or more directories to store the simulation configuration(s) and the results in. When the simulation campaign is initially created, this directory is named simulations.
3. Optinally, a set of tables in the simulation database to store * The parameters used to create the simulations and * The results of each simulation By combining the simulation parameters with the results, it becomes possible to data-mine the effects of different parameters to the measurements. We will use in the experiments this methodology, supported by the help of the openWNS Wrowser, which allows aggregation, slicing and dicing of simulation results together with the plotting of presentation-quality graphs.

To create the simulation campaign, use the preparecampaign-command in the following way:

$ ./playground.py preparecampaign ../myFirstCampaign
Preparing simulation campaign. Please wait...

Note

The preparecampaign command will only be available if you have properly installed Wrowser and its plugins for playground.py. Please refer to Installing the Wrowser.

This will create the directory ../myFirstCampaign, including the neccessary sub-directories. After some moments, the script requests the following user input:

1. Please enter the name of the directory the simulations shall be stored in:

   For each experiment, we suggest to use a different simulation directory (or “sub-campaign”). In this way, all experiments use the same version of the openWNS, but have different configuration files. Hence, the first experiment should get the name experiment1.

2. Please enter a name for the campaign:

   This name will be used to identify and select the campaign in the openWNS Wrowser.

3. Please enter a short description of the campaign:

   This description will also be shown in the openWNS Wrowser.

Then, the installation procedure will start. For the other experiments, it is suggested to create sub-campaigns. To do this, call the preparecampaign command again with a directory of an existing campaign:

$ ./playground.py preparecampaign ../myFirstCampaign

the script will ask (after the database-question):

Found simulation campaign in directory /home/wns/myFirstCampaign.
Shall I try to (U)pdate the sandbox or do you want to (C)reate a new sub campaign?
    Type 'e' to exit (u/c/e) [e]:

Use c to create the sub-campaign and select a useful name for the directory.