Starting the Vuforia Spatial Edge Server on Mac

Install Node

Follow the instructions on Node’s website to install node and npm: https://nodejs.org/en/. If installation succeeded, you’ll be able to open Terminal and run node --version:

Terminal with the command node --version run, it outputs v13.5.0 without errors

Get the Edge Server

Install GitHub Desktop (Optional)

Follow the instructions on GitHub’s website to install the GitHub desktop app. Open it up and sign in to get started.

Download Edge Server

With GitHub Desktop

In GitHub Desktop select Clone Repository (under the “Add” menu if the button isn’t immediately visible). Once there, paste the edge server’s repository url, https://github.com/ptcrealitylab/vuforia-spatial-edge-server/ and click Clone.

GitHub desktop with Clone menu open and edge server url filled in

With a Browser

Download the current source code from this link and unzip it. In the following example I’ve unzipped it then moved it into my Documents directory:

Finder window with edge server zip downloaded and unzipped

Download Core Add-on

With GitHub Desktop

Open GitHub Desktop and use the same Clone Repository dialog to clone https://github.com/ptcrealitylab/vuforia-spatial-core-addon/ to the addons subdirectory of vuforia-spatial-edge-server. Note that in the “Choose Folder” dialog you will have to create a new folder named “addons.”

Clone dialog highlighting choose folder button Choose folder dialog with spatial edge server selected Choose folder dialog with addons subfolder created Clone dialog with correct folder chosen

With a Browser

Download the current source code from this link. Unzip it and move it into a new folder named “addons” inside your vuforia-spatial-edge-server directory.

Finder window with core add-ons zip downloaded and unzipped Finder window with new folder selected in edge server folder

Once you’re done with all the unzipping and directory management, your full layout should look like this: Finder window with full directory layout

Install Dependencies

Track down the Edge Server directory from the previous step in Terminal. If you put the edge server in your Documents directory and kept the default name vuforia-spatial-edge-server, you can get to it with the command cd ~/Documents/vuforia-spatial-edge-server.

Once you’re in the correct directory, you can confirm this with the command ls which should output something close to the following:

Terminal output with cd to the edge server directory followed by ls

Now that you’ve confirmed that you’re in the right location you can run the command npm install.

Terminal containing npm install in the edge server directory

We also need to install the dependencies for the core add-on. In the edge server directory, run cd addons/vuforia-spatial-core-addon to get into the core add-on’s main directory. Here you can run npm install again to install the core add-on’s specific dependencies.

Terminal containing cd into addons directory then npm install

Start the Edge Server

Now, return to the edge server’s directory by running cd ../../. You can confirm you’re in the correct directory by running ls again. Now you’re here,

you can run npm start to start the server.

Terminal showing returning to the edge server directory and running node