PlottyBot Development Documentation - CodeClubLuxembourg/plottybot-toolkit-web GitHub Wiki

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The PlottyBot project integrates a customized Scratch interface to control an XY plotter (PlottyBot). The setup consists of two main components, scratch-vm and scratch-gui, which enable interactive drawing commands through Scratch, targeting educational and interactive learning environments.

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To run scratch-vm and scratch-gui for development, you need two separate terminal sessions:

• Run scratch-vm in watch mode: cd path/to/scratch-vm npm run watch
  • This command monitors and rebuilds scratch-vm for any code changes, allowing rapid iteration and testing.
• Run scratch-gui in development mode: cd path/to/scratch-gui npm start
  • This launches scratch-gui using webpack-dev-server, making it accessible on a specified port (default: 8601) with live reloading for frontend changes.
  • Access it in a browser via http://<server-ip>:8601/ to test PlottyBot interactions.

For a persistent, production-ready setup, especially if intending to keep scratch-gui available after reboots:

• Build and Serve:
  • Build scratch-gui to create static assets: cd path/to/scratch-gui npm run build
  • Use http-server or a similar static server to serve the build output.
• Automate with pm2:
  • If you want scratch-vm and scratch-gui to start automatically on server reboot, pm2 provides process management and reliability.
  • Start http-server for scratch-gui: pm2 start http-server --name "scratch-gui" -- path/to/scratch-gui/build -p 8601
  • To make the configuration persistent, use: pm2 save
  • This setup ensures that scratch-gui is automatically restarted after reboots, with logs and CPU monitoring available through pm2.

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• To list and check the status of running processes under pm2: pm2 status
• View specific logs for debugging: pm2 logs scratch-gui

• Port Conflicts: The EADDRINUSE error indicates that the specified port is already in use. Identify the conflicting process: sudo lsof -i :8601
• Kill Conflicting Process (if necessary): sudo kill -9 <PID>

• Check the environment, open files, and command details for any running process: ps -p <PID> -o cmd sudo lsof -p <PID>

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Purpose	Command
Start scratch-vm in watch mode	npm run watch (in scratch-vm directory)
Start scratch-gui in dev mode	npm start (in scratch-gui directory)
Build scratch-gui for production	npm run build (in scratch-gui directory)
Serve scratch-gui production build	http-server -p 8601 path/to/scratch-gui/build
Start scratch-gui with pm2	pm2 start http-server --name "scratch-gui" -- path/to/scratch-gui/build -p 8601
List and manage processes with pm2	pm2 status, pm2 logs, pm2 restart, etc.