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jNabServer Version 2 Available

A new version of jNabServer has been published December 9th, 2008. To download it, please go to jNabServer Google Code project. The new version features, in addition to streamlined code and API, numerous new features:

• Every event is catchable separately by plugins
• The same event can be catched by a chain of plugins
• It is possible to start several servers on the same machine
• plugins are delivered and handled through jar files
• logging feature can be set for each server instance, and is optional
• an optional persistency service including bunny configurations and choreographies
• an optional TCP-based configuration server can be used for server administration (see what bunnies are known, attached/remove plugins, ...)

The old version remains available, but you are recommended to use the new one.

Introduction

JNabServer is an open-source server software which handles communication with Nabaztag/tags, Wi-Fi enabled robotic rabbits that can be used as physical user-agents in human-computer interaction ( Nabaztag in Wikipedia).

JNabServer is written in j2se 6.0 (Java Standard edition) so it is platform independent. Main idea is that people can develop their applications and ideas more freely on jNabServer platform. By releasing this code as an Open-Source Project we want to give this extendible platform to be used in various projects including our own research.

Nabaztag is developed by Violet The Smart Object Company. Violet provides services for Nabaztags on their servers. JNabServer is designed for you to be able to replace this service with your own service. jNabServer itself does not provide service it only enables communication and gives you the possibility to do what ever you want to do with Nabaztag/tags.

Nabaztag/tag device can handle various forms of interaction, from voice to touch (button press), and from RFID 'sniffing' to ear movements. It can response by moving its ears, by displaying or changing the color of its four LED lights. It can also play sounds which can be music, synthesized speech or other voices.

About

Research

JNabServer is a part of a project by SPI -Research Group from University of Tampere. It is the base on our research on how Nabaztag could be used as an multimodal user-agent and studying its strengths and weaknesses as one. This project is a part of Speech-based & Pervasive Interaction Group research.

License

This project is released under the LGPL license. Read the license from here.

Contact

You can contact us about the development of jNabServer using the form below or emailing directly to nabaztag@cs.uta.fi.

Name:
Email:
Message:

Download

Version 2

Version 2 is available in jNabServer Google Code project

Old Versions of the Server:

jNabServer 1.0 (Java application)

jNabServer 1.01 (Java application)

Updates by Jaakko Hakulinen @ University of Tampere.
Web server now sends files to a Nabaztag slower than possible. This is because currently Nabaztags occasionally have problems with playing audio files when the files are received too fast. In these cases, the Nabaztag reads the file again until it can succesfully play it. In local server settings this problem can, depending on the used network, become a real issue. Slowing down file data sending in the server end scales down the problem significantly. The current version slows down the file sending 25ms/512bytes. The changes are in classes fi.uta.cs.nabaztag.utils.StreamCopier, which now has a method for copying data at full rate or at a limited rate, and in class fi.uta.cs.nabaztag.server.response.LocalFileResponse, which uses the slowed down stream copying method.

After downloading the jNabServer we recommmend you to read the guide

Client:

NabaztagClient (Example client application for jNabServer)

Both server and client packages contains source, binaries and javadoc.

Documentation

The documentation contains a guide for starting to use jNabServer and a more specific documentation about how jNabServer works.

It also contains some information about how to make a client for the jNabServer.

Server

Client

Guide to interact with your Nabaztag using jNabServer

1. Connecting your Nabaztag to the wireless network
2. Get bootcode for your Nabaztag
3. Starting jNabServer
4. It doesn't connect?
5. It doesn't run?

1. Connecting your Nabaztag to the wireless network

• Put your Nabaztag to the setup -mode by switching it on while pressing the button on top of its head.
• Connect to your Nabaztags wireless network and go to the IP "192.168.0.1" (Nabaztags localhost) with your browser. You should get to the Nabaztags Setup -page.
• Change the "Violet Platform: " -address in the very end of that Setup -page into your current IP-address and add "/vl" after it (see below).

2. Get bootcode for your Nabaztag

Update (30.10.2008, 9.12.2008): It seems that the bootcode delivery mechanism was changed in the latest service update by Violet. Therefore, the following procedure results in an error. Version 2 distribtion in Google Code includes a bootcode.

• Download jNabServer from here
• Start command line -> go to folder where you extracted jNabServer -> go to folder "bin"
• Type command "java getBootCode <your nabaztag serial>". File named bootcode.bin should appear in to folder.

3. Starting jNabServer

• Start the application from command line with command "java -jar jNabServer.jar <ping server IP-address> <broadcast server IP-address>"
• Application creates microserver to <ping server IP-address> server on port 80 (the second commandline argument <broadcast server IP-address> can be the same as the ping server or another jNabServer, broadcast server is the server where local files are requested from).

4. It doesn't connect?

• Check your IP (for example in most cases if your current IP address is 192.168.0.2, you run jNabServer as follows: "java -jar jNabServer.jar 192.168.0.2 192.168.0.2")
• Check if your firewall is blocking the traffic from Nabaztag.
• Check that you are connected to the same network as Nabaztag.

5. It doesn't run?

• If you get the text "Can't bind to port 80.. " after starting the application, either some other application is using that port (for example Skype or Apache) or a previous jNabServer -process is still on (In windows you can kill it by pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL and ending from the processes list all "java.exe" processes using port 80 and if you are using Linux/Unix you should know how to ;)).

Example Client

How to make a jNabServer -client:

If you would like to make your own jNabServer -client application it is essential to take a look at the documentation about jNabServer's XML API.

JNabServer expects a formatted XML message and returns one as response. Right now you can send packets to the Nabaztag from the client via jNabServer. You can also tell the server to set certain Nabaztags plugin to another one. Also the server can be asked to give a list of Nabaztags connected to it.

Example clients architecture:

This example client is programmed in Java, but it is possible to program your own client software using almost any programming language. The only prequisite for a program to work as a jNabServer client is to be able to connect to the server and communicate with it using XML formatted messages.

Important classes:

Client(fi.uta.cs.nabaztagclient.client), this class' role is to connect to the specific server and to parse and build the messages sent to the jNabServer. This class holds the connection to the server and handles sending the requests to the server and receiving the responses from those requests.

NabClientFrame(fi.uta.cs.nabaztagclient.gui), this class contains the frame for the graphical user interface for the NabaztagClient. It displays the data from server and ables the user to communicate with the server.

Example code:

Download the example client code here