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I had a similar problem, and I'd like to add something to dvbot's extremely helpful response. I couldn't communicate to the my turtlebot netbook, and my Turtlebot Dashboard was all gray. Under Diagnostic, I had the error: TurtleBot Node: Failed to open port /dev/ttyUSB0. Please make sure the Create cable is plugged into the computer.

When trying to implement dvbot's recommendation, I realized my turtlebot netbook didn't have the file /etc/udev/rules.d/52-turtlebot.rules, and I did not have permission to create it. I went here, and found good instructions from tredegar (halfway down the page) in how to overcome the problem. For your convenience, I am recopying some of tredegar's recommendation. To become root issue the command:

sudo -i

Then to create the file you can use the command

gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/52-turtlebot.rules

or use your favorite editor. Once you populate the content with dvbot's code, restart udev:

/etc/init.d/udev  restart

I'm still very new to this, but I do know this worked for me: once I restarted udev, my Turtlebot Dashboard went from gray to greens and reds. Both my workstation and turtlebot netbook are running Ubuntu 11.10 and ros electric. Hope this is useful.