How to establish the VPN connection?

This documentation explains the basic steps about how to connect your host machine to the SMB via VPN connection. We use ZeroTier to connect to the robots via 4G. This is necessary if we operate the robots outside the range of the built-in wifi routers. The following instructions will contain the configurations for SMB264.

Installation

On the user PC, install zero tier client:

# In the host pc
curl -s https://install.zerotier.com | sudo bash

Usage

List all networks

Execute

sudo zerotier-cli listnetworks

to get the list of the networks, to which you are connected. Make sure that you are connected only to the network which corresponds to SMB on which you are working. Sample output for SMB264:

200 listnetworks <nwid> <name> <mac> <status> <type> <dev> <ZT assigned ips>
200 listnetworks aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa SMB264 00:00:00:00:00:ad OK PUBLIC zthnhbsdox 00.000.00.00/00

Join the network

To work on the robot you need to join the desired network using a network ID. The network ID address will be provided to you by the assistants. To join the network with the ID aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, run:

sudo zerotier-cli join aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Use listnetworks command from above to check if you have successfully connected to the desired network.

Connect to the SMB

To enter the SMB just ssh into it as described in the Connecting to the SMB section. Please, make sure that you are not connected to the local SMB network.

Leave the network

Since all robots use the same IP range, the user must make sure that only one zerotier interface is active at a time for the forwarding to work properly. Use:

sudo zerotier-cli leave aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

to disconnect from a SMB network when you are not using it.

Known Issues

If the robot is not connected to the internet but your computer is in the zerotier network you cannot ssh into the robot computer even if you are connected to the local wifi. This is because it tries to route the traffic to 10.0.0.0/24 through the zerotier network to which the robot computer is not connected. As a workaround, either leave the zerotier network or delete the route on your computer locally.