Gaia Sandbox

A web-based environment to test and learn about the Gaia Platform for free!

Sandbox development setup

Website development

You'll need to

• Install Flask via Python 3 with Pip in order to launch the website
• Aquire dependencies via npm in order to make changes to the JavaScript code

Installing Flask

Download and install the latest version of Python 3 (which should come with Pip). Next, clone the repository and run the following:

cd {where_you_cloned_the_repo}
pip install -r requirements.txt

This will install Flask if you don't already have it installed. You are now ready to launch the Flask server with ./start_sandbox.sh. All HTML/website sources are contained under the Website directory. If you intend to make changes to the JavaScript code, you'll need to install dependencies.

Installing other dependencies

Install the latest Node.js and npm. Then run the following:

cd {where_you_cloned_the_repo}
npm i

Once all dependencies are installed, you can make changes to the code and recompile them with npm run build (do this in the Website directory).

You may stop here if you just want to develop website UI and don't want to interact with MQTT or the sandbox simulations.

MQTT topic listing and debugging

If you find that you need to listen to MQTT topics or directly publish to topics, please read this section.

All of the MQTT topics used in the sandbox are in the file MQTT Communication Specifications Doc. There you can see the topic structure as well as which topics are published/subscribed to by the sandbox and simulation.

To interact with MQTT directly, please download mqtt-explorer.zip located at the root of this repo, unzip it, and open index.html. This is a simple, pre-authenticated, applet which will let you communicate directly with the MQTT broker. Prefix your MQTT topics with [UUID]/ and replace [UUID] with either your REMOTE_CLIENT_ID for publishing or your appUUID for subscribing. You can view your UUIDs by clicking the "Show REMOTE_CLIENT_ID" or "Show Subscribe UUID" buttons in the top right of the sandbox.

Sandbox visual development

Note: This is only necessary for simulation development

You'll need to

• Install Godot 3.3.2 or later
• Download Godot export templates
• (optionally) Configure external editors

Installing Godot

1. Go to Godot's download page and install the latest 64-bit Standard version. The Mono version (for C# support) is not required.
2. Scroll down a bit further to download the export templates (be sure to match the version of Godot you installed).
3. Add Godot to your system path such that godot can be called from the command line. start_sandbox.sh uses this to compile the godot project before deployment.

Configuring Godot and external editors

1. Launch Godot and select "Import" from the right column. Navigate to {where_you_cloned_the_repo}/SandboxVisual and select the project.godot file to open the project in Godot.
2. In the menu bar, under Editor > Manage Export Templates..., select "Install From File" and select the Godot Export Template you downloaded in a previous step (it's a .tpz file)
3. If you prefer to use a different code editor than the built in one, follow the instructions here.
   • If you use VSCode, the godot-tools addon offers great IntelliSense support in addition to code highlighting and debugging.

Deploying the visual component inside the sandbox

start_sandbox.sh uses the godot CLI to export the Godot game for embedding into the Flask server. To make this work for sure (on Linux), run

. ./start_sandbox.sh

The extra period out front will run the script with your environment variables (such as PATH).

The above command will launch the sandbox without communicating with a coordinator. To enable communication with a coordinator (necessary in production) specify the coordinator name with the -c option.

. ./start_sandbox.sh -c <the coordinator name>

Do not use the name sandbox_coordinator unless running in production.

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Please contact Steve Harris for questions.