Hi Armin,

I'm guessing that a baud rate mismatch might be the problem. Currently
hokuyo_node makes no attempt to connect to the laser at the correct baud
rate, as that isn't relevant in the USB case. 

Looking at the player driver as Brian has suggested may help there. Let
me know what you figure out, this would probably be a pretty easy
addition to the hokuyo_node.

Have you tried using picocom or some other serial terminal to try
sending commands to the laser directly? For example VV (followed by
return) should get the laser version.

Cheers,
Blaise

On Thu, 2010-06-10 at 17:37 +0200, Armin Hornung wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Does anyone have some experience with a Hokuyo URG-04LX connected to its 
> serial port, and not USB? Our Hokuyo is connected via serial to a FTDI 
> on an embedded (Geode) board, and I cannot get the hokuyo_node in ROS 
> running with it. Should it work with a serial-connected URG? A simple 
> call to "./getFirmwareVersion /dev/ttyUSB0" in hokuyo_node/bin (or 
> anything else accessing the laser in ROS) results in:
> 
> [ WARN] 1276190616.641972000: getFirmwareVersion failed: timeout reached 
> (in hokuyo::laser::laserReadline) You may find further details at 
> http://www.ros.org/wiki/hokuyo_node/Troubleshooting
> 
> I assume that this happens right on initialization in 
> hokuyo::Laser::open() when laserFlush is called (which sends the first 
> command to the device). Right above there is a comment "Settings for 
> USB?". Are there specific settings for the serial port missing? I 
> couldn't find anything setting a baudrate, for example.
> 
> When I connect the Hokuyo to a PC with USB, all works fine. Firmware 
> version is 3.3 and the device is initially in SCIP1.1, but switches 
> successfully to SCIP2.0.
> 
> Cheers,
> Armin
> 
>