Vicon LAN¶

Operational notes for the Vicon camera network, the physical Windows Nexus host, the D-Link PoE switch, jeff-xi, and the field-router path.

No credentials, tokens, camera serials, or raw private keys belong in this public doc. The private copy lives under /home/zeul/GIT/robot-docs/.secrets/, which is ignored by Git.

Current State¶

Updated 2026-09-14 from the last verified lab state.

The physical Vicon kit is:

• six Vicon Vero v2.2 motion-capture cameras
• one Vicon Lock Lab sync/interface box
• one D-Link DGS-1520-28MP PoE switch
• one physical Windows Vicon host with Nexus installed
• jeff-xi, the Ubuntu operator/capture host
• eph107, the GL.iNet field router and Tailscale path
• a native Windows Isaac Lab environment plus WSL 2 for utilities

The cameras are not normal ONVIF, RTSP, or web cameras. They use Vicon-specific discovery and control. Treating them as generic RGB cameras will not work.

The physical Windows host now has both required subnets on its linked Ethernet adapter: 192.168.8.132/24 for field-router management and 192.168.10.1/24 for the Vicon camera network. Local SSH and router ping to 192.168.8.132 were verified on 2026-08-27. Camera and D-Link reachability must still be rechecked whenever the Vicon kit is recabled or powered up.

The current plan is to use official Vicon Nexus on the physical Windows host. The old standalone reverse-engineering notes and VM experiments are historical fallback material, not the primary path.

Hosts¶

Zeul reaches the physical Windows host through the local field-router path at 192.168.8.132. Manraj can use either that local address or the host's separate Manraj-tailnet identity at 100.84.179.109. The Vicon host is no longer enrolled in Zeul's tailnet. Private key paths and account passwords are documented only in the private secrets file.

Physical Windows Host¶

The physical host is distinct from the older vicon-win11 VM. For current lab work, assume vicon-windows means the physical Vicon/Nexus computer.

Verified on 2026-08-27:

• hostname: OMG-TMU-DAE
• user: Vicon-OEM
• OpenSSH is running
• Tailscale is running
• Sunshine is running
• Nexus 2.16 is installed
• WSL 2.7.12 with Ubuntu 22.04 is installed
• Sunshine listens on the normal Moonlight ports, including TCP 47984, 47989, 47990, and 48010

Current Windows network state:

Reachability from Windows on 2026-06-09:

The 2026-06-09 failures pointed to a cabling, VLAN, or duplicate-host-IP issue, not a Nexus install issue. On 2026-08-27, 192.168.8.132 had been removed from Windows while 192.168.10.1 remained. Restoring .132 as a persistent secondary address fixed router visibility without changing the Vicon camera address or adding another default gateway. Windows Firewall permits ICMP echo only from 192.168.8.0/24, and local SSH remains available on TCP 22.

Windows Isaac Lab and WSL¶

Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab are installed natively on Windows for Manraj. The verified stack includes Isaac Sim 5.1.0.0, Isaac Lab 2.3.2, Python 3.11.16, PyTorch 2.7, and Unitree RL Lab in the env_isaaclab Conda environment. A four-environment, one-iteration G1 velocity-policy smoke test completed on the RTX 4060 and wrote a checkpoint.

See Isaac Lab on the Vicon Windows Host for the setup and local handoff-file paths.

WSL is retained for Linux command-line tools and ROS-side work. It is not the Isaac Sim runtime because its Vulkan path was not usable for Kit/PhysX rendering.

WSL was installed and verified on 2026-08-27 without changing the Windows NVIDIA driver:

The baseline packages are git, curl, build-essential, python3-venv, python3-pip, and openssh-client. The package database passed dpkg --audit after installation.

Enter the default distribution from a Windows shell:

wsl -d Ubuntu-22.04

Run a non-interactive Linux command through Windows SSH:

wsl -d Ubuntu-22.04 -- bash -lc "whoami; nvidia-smi"

Do not install a Linux NVIDIA display driver inside WSL. GPU access is provided by the Windows host driver through /usr/lib/wsl/lib.

Vicon Network Shape¶

Expected control subnet:

Vicon host: 192.168.10.1/24
cameras:    192.168.10.10-.16

Observed protocol behavior:

UDP 8568 -> 8567    Vicon DHCP-like discovery
UDP 8570            camera heartbeat to host
Telnet 23/tcp       opens on cameras after correct Vicon IP assignment
UDP 4000/6000       centroid/greyscale stream family
UDP 7000/8000       video stream family

The host at 192.168.10.1 must be unique. If Windows marks that address Duplicate, Nexus will not be able to own the Vicon host role cleanly.

D-Link Switch¶

Observed switch facts:

• model: D-Link DGS-1520-28MP
• management IP: 10.90.90.90
• HTTP management available when on the correct layer-2 path
• Telnet management available when on the correct layer-2 path
• VLAN state was previously flat VLAN 1 with all relevant ports untagged
• PoE camera ports were previously eth1/0/2-.7
• Lock Lab was previously on eth1/0/24

PoE restore gotcha:

poe power-inline never   disables PoE
no poe power-inline      restored default/auto delivery during testing
poe power-inline auto    did not reliably restore delivery

Recommended Bring-Up¶

1. Cable the Vicon switch, cameras, Lock Lab, jeff-xi, and the physical Windows host onto the intended lab layer-2 network.
2. Confirm jeff-xi can reach the switch at 10.90.90.90.
3. Confirm exactly one machine owns 192.168.10.1/24 on the Vicon layer-2 network.
4. If Windows/Nexus should drive the cameras, remove any competing 192.168.10.1 address from jeff-xi before launching Nexus.
5. Confirm the physical Windows host can reach:

10.90.90.90
192.168.10.10:23
192.168.10.11:23
192.168.10.12:23
192.168.10.13:23
192.168.10.14:23
192.168.10.15:23
192.168.10.16:23

1. Launch Nexus on the physical Windows host.
2. Capture the official startup/control traffic from jeff-xi:

sudo tcpdump -i br-vicon-lab -w /tmp/vicon_official_handshake.pcap -s 0 \
  'net 192.168.10.0/24 or udp port 8567 or udp port 8568 or udp port 8570'

1. If needed, compare the Nexus startup packets against the historical manual Telnet and DHCP-like discovery attempts. Keep Nexus/official software as the primary path.

Private Material¶

Secrets and local-only details are stored inside the main repo working tree but outside Git:

/home/zeul/GIT/robot-docs/.secrets/vicon-lan-secrets.md
/home/zeul/GIT/robot-docs/.secrets/robot-infrastructure-secrets.md
/home/zeul/GIT/robot-docs/.secrets/vicon_fixed_leases.zsh

On zmac, related copies and key files are under:

/Users/zeul/.secrets/
/Users/zeul/.ssh/

Do not copy passwords, API tokens, switch credentials, TMU credentials, camera serial/MAC mappings, or private key blocks into robot-docs.