Quickstart

These instructions will guide you through getting your Chordata Motion system up and running. Please read each section carefully.

Introduction

Chordata Motion is designed to be modular and customizable. Because of this, it's important to understand some fundamentals about its main components before moving on. Please take a look at the Components Overview before you start setting up your suit.

Installing notochordOS

NotochordOS is our custom operative system for the Raspberrypi that comes with all the software needed for capturing with Chordata Motion. You can get it from our downloads page.

Flashing notochordOS

In order to use notochordOS you need to download the system image and flash it onto the SD card you will use with your Raspberrypi.

If you're not familiar with this process we recommend using Etcher, a beginner friendly flashing utility. Once you've downloaded Etcher just follow these steps:

• Download notochordOS image
• Insert the SD card in your computer’s card reader
• Run Etcher
• Select the downloaded image, select your SD card as destination drive and hit Flash!

Wait until the Flash process is completed (it might take a couple of minutes). Once finished you can insert the SD card in your Raspberrypi and boot up your freshly installed system.

WIFI configuration

Setting up country

NotochordOS comes with everything you need to start capturing with your Chordata Motion system.

The only step required for allowing the Raspberrypi to correctly connect to your WiFi network is setting your country. The easiest way to achieve it is to add a file to the SD card and let the NotochordOS handle the rest of the configuration. Follow this steps:

• Insert the SD card in your computer
• You will see one or two partitions appearing on your system. Choose the smallest one, which is called boot. If doing this on windows you might get a popup warning asking to format the unit, just ignore that
• Add a file to this partition called countrycode.txt and write your TWO LETTER code inside. You can get a full list of countrycodes here.

Manual WIFI country configuration

The same thing can also be achieved manually by connecting the Raspberrypi to a monitor and a keyboard, opening the terminal and executing the command:

sudo raspi-config

Then, using Arrow Keys and Enter, navigate to Localization Options -> Change Wi-fi Country -> [YOUR COUNTRY] -> OK -> Finish.

Hotspot vs external WIFI network

By default the notochord OS will act as a hotspot exposing a WIFI network with SSID: "Chordata-net", and password "chordata".

This network is useful for the initial configuration, but for better performance using an external WIFI network is recomended. The notochord OS will look for available external WIFI networks on startup. If it finds one in range it will connect to it and drop the Hotspot functionality.

By default the notochord OS will look for a network with SSID: "Chordata-ext" with password: "chordata". You can also set custom WIFI networks, see the set a custom external wifi network section below.

Assembling Raspberrypi, Hub++ and Hub++ socket

Before being able to connect and test the KCeptors, we need to assemble the the Raspberrypi together with the Hub++ and the Hub socket.

The components need to be stacked together, from the bottom to the top.
Follow these steps to correctly assemble all the parts together:

1. Attach 4 Female-Female spacers to the Hub socket with 4 screws. The screws go below the socket and the spacers above.

   

2. Attach the Raspberrypi to the 4 Female-Female spacers, securing it with 4 Male-Female spacers.

   

3. Mount the Hub++ above the Raspberrypi. You will need to correctly connect the pin headers of the Raspberrypi to the Hub++. If this isn't done correctly you will notice that the spacers aren't aligned correctly.

   

4. Finally, secure the Raspberrypi to the 4 Male-Female spacers using 4 screws.

   

First connection

Once notochordOS, the Raspberrypi and the Hub++ are correctly setup, we can proceed making the first connection to the Raspberrypi.

Accessing the Remote Console

Chordata's Remote Console is a web application that gives you easy access to all the basic functions of a Chordata Motion system.

To access the remote console for the first time:

1. Power on your Raspberrypi with NotochordOS and wait for it to boot up.
2. Connect the computer to the network "Chordata-net", automatically created by the Raspberrypi. The default password is "chordata".
3. Open your browser and navigate to "http://notochord.local".

Testing KCeptors

From the remote console, you can test that the KCeptors are correctly detected by the software.

1. Connect two KCeptors to different ports of the Hub++, without chaining more than one on the same port.
2. Click the “Scan” button in the remote console.
3. If everything works correctly, you should see an output in the terminal window, informing you that the KCeptors you connected were found.

Set a custom external WIFI network

Once you have access to the remote console you can add external WIFI networks for it to connect to. Navigate to the "maintenance" tab, under the "Connection Manager" section you can update the password for existing WIFI networks or add new ones.