Run & Deploy (basic)

This page offers you instructions on how to run and deploy an instance of ATON framework on your own machine. Here are two video-tutorials in 3 easy steps, for Linux (or MacOS) and Windows:

Or you can follow the basic steps below required for all these scenarios on the machine/system you intend to deploy an instance of the framework – regardless of which machine or operating system you choose.

Step #1

The only pre-requisite to run your own instance of ATON on your machine is Node.js (LTS is recommended). The installation on Windows, Linux and Mac OS is quite straightforward.

Note: this step indeed applies only for the deployment machine, final users won’t have to install anything, they’ll just use a standard web browser!

Step #2

Download a copy of ATON framework from GitHub or grab the zip package. If you are not so familiar with git, dont worry: just grab the zip and extract somewhere on your machine. In general however, the best solution is to git clone the repository (git clone https://github.com/phoenixbf/aton.git): this allows you to periodically update your instance without messing with your custom configuration.

typical content of the ATON folder

Step #3

Launch update.bat (Windows) or execute update.sh (Linux and Mac OS) from the ATON main folder.

OR

Open your favourite terminal, go to the main ATON folder (cd /your/ATON/folder/) and just type this command (they work on every OS!) – no root or administrator privileges are required:

npm install

What this step does: it will install or update into the local folder all needed node.js modules (an internet connection just for this step is required): this must be performed only the first time, or for maintenance purposes. Wait until all modules have been downloaded (they will be located in node_modules/* folder).

DONE!

That’s it! Now for a super-quick start, from the same folder just launch quickstart.bat (Windows) or quickstart.sh (Linux or Mac OS)

OR

type in your terminal:

npm start

This will run and deploy a basic instance of the main ATON service on your machine.

sample output of the above command

NOTE: if you close this terminal window, ATON main service will stop. A complete and more advanced deployment for production is covered in this tutorial.

To check that everything is ok, you’ll just have to open http://localhost:8080 on your favourite web browser – and click/tap on some sample scenes to interact and play a bit: