On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 4:53 PM, Patrick Mihelich
<mihelich@willowgarage.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 2:26 PM, Bill Morris <morris@ee.ccny.cuny.edu> wrote:
>>
>> > > I would like to see a system for storing camera calibrations based on
>> > The camera_info_manager URL supports any naming scheme desired.
>
> In the unstable version of the OpenNI (Kinect) drivers, I've tried out a
> system for storing calibrations based on serial number. You can pass in a
> URL containing "%s", and the driver replaces that with the camera name. The
> camera name is of the form "[rgb|depth]_[serial#]". For example, if you give
> the driver a URL "/tmp/calibration_%s.yaml" it might expand to
> "/tmp/calibration_depth_B00362708888047B.yaml". This makes working with
> multiple Kinects a lot easier.
>
> That's trivial to implement in a driver, but it would be nice to push the
> name substitution down into CameraInfoManager just to ensure a consistent
> API across camera drivers. In other words, have this just work:
>
> info_manager.setCameraName("depth_B00362708888047B");
> info_manager.loadCameraInfo("/tmp/calibration_%s.yaml");
>
> I'm not attached to "%s", maybe something like "$NAME" would be clearer.

It is a good idea to add this feature in a camera_info_manager, which
is common to many drivers.

$NAME is more flexible if we decide to add other substitution
variables. Maybe ${NAME} to make parsing simpler and substitution more
flexible.

>> I would like to propose that cameras that can not store calibrations in
>> memory store the calibrations in $ROS_HOME/calibration/driver-id.cal
>
> +1 on $ROS_HOME over /tmp. /tmp works, as long as you don't reboot :).
> Otherwise you have to know and remember to change the URL, which can lead to
> otherwise unnecessary launch file editing. Let's streamline that away.

OK with me.

-- 
 joq