Add

This is the robot skill library. It lists every robot skill you can add to your project: the ones already installed on this computer and the ones in the Synthiam Robot Skill Store. It opens on the robot skills you added most recently. Search it, pick a category, filter by publisher, read about a skill, and add it to your project with one click. ARCx downloads a skill the first time you add it.

Use this screen whenever your robot needs something new: a camera, speech recognition, a servo controller, navigation and so on.

Where to find it: Top bar → Robot Skills → Add. The Robot Skills menu also has a Recently Added list. See Recently Added.

Contents

1. Quick start
2. Search and Explore
3. Your library
4. Tabs: Recent, All and categories
5. Filters
6. Results and sorting
7. Robot skill cards
8. The details window
9. Adding a robot skill
10. Updating a robot skill
11. Recently Added
12. Troubleshooting

Quick start

1. Open Robot Skills → Add.
2. The Recent tab shows the robot skills you added lately. To find something else, type what you need in the search box, such as camera, or pick a category from the tabs under the banner.
3. Click a skill's icon or name to read about it.
4. Press Add (installed skills) or Install & add (skills not on this computer yet).
5. ARCx adds the skill to your project and opens the workspace, where the new skill appears.

Search and Explore

The search box at the top searches by feature, skill name or hardware. Results update as you type.

• A skill is shown only if every word you typed appears somewhere in it. The words can be in any order and in different places: the name, the categories, the short description, the publisher or the manual.
• With Best match sorting, skills with your words in the name come first, then skills with them in a category, then in the description, publisher and manual.
• Press the clear button in the box to remove the search.

The Explore shortcuts under the search box run a search for a common need. A shortcut is only shown if the library has skills that match it.

Your library

The card on the right of the banner gives a summary of the library.

Tabs: Recent, All and categories

The row of tabs under the banner chooses where to look. The number on each tab is how many skills it holds, taking the Show and Publisher filters into account but not the search. A category those filters leave empty is dimmed. On a narrow screen, such as a phone, the tabs are one row that scrolls sideways.

Picking a tab clears the search. Searching from the Recent tab searches every robot skill. Searching after you pick a category searches within that category.

Filters

The panel on the left narrows the list and stays in view as you scroll through the results. On a narrow screen it sits above the results.

The active filters are listed as chips above the results. Click a chip's × to remove that filter, or Clear all to remove them all.

The filters are part of the page's web address. The browser's back button takes you back to the previous filter, and you can bookmark or share a filtered list.

Results and sorting

The heading shows the tab and how many skills match, for example 12 of 340 skills matching “camera”. On the Recent tab it reads Recently added, with how many of your recent skills are shown.

Sort by, in the panel on the left, has three choices:

Robot skill cards

Each skill is shown as a card. Installed skills are highlighted.

The details window

Adding a robot skill

When you press Add or Install & add:

1. If the skill is not on this computer, ARCx downloads it. A window shows Downloading with the skill's name and a progress bar. Downloading needs you to be signed in to your Synthiam account (Options → Account).
2. ARCx adds the skill to your project with its default settings. It is placed on the workspace you were last using. If the project already has a skill with that name, the new one gets a different window title.
3. The workspace opens with the new skill on it. Open its configuration to set it up.

While this happens the button reads Installing… or Adding…, and you can't press it again. The skill is also put at the top of the Recently Added list.

Adding a skill changes the open project. Save the project with File → Save to keep it.

Updating a robot skill

When a card shows Update available, press Update to download the store version over the installed one. The button reads Updating… while it works.

An update can fail if the skill's files are in use, which happens when the skill is in the open project or was used earlier in this session. ARCx then says Ensure the robot skill is not in use before updating. You can close ARCx and reload with an empty project to ensure the robot skill is not in use.

ARCx also updates installed robot skills by itself when it starts, if you are signed in.

Recently Added

The Robot Skills menu in the top bar lists the robot skills you added most recently, newest first, under Recently Added. It shows up to 10 of them; the Recent tab of this page lists every one ARCx remembers, which is set by Recent robot skills in Options → Preferences → Interface. The heading is hidden until you have added a skill.

Clicking a skill in this list adds it to your project straight away, without opening the library, and then opens the workspace. It is downloaded first if it is not on this computer. If the add fails, ARCx shows Unable to add robot skill with the reason, then opens the workspace anyway.

Troubleshooting