I recently located a memory leak in the usb_cam package and gave a patch to
the authors.  It doesn't look like it has been released yet.  You might try
applying this patch to usb_cam and see if helps with problem #3

Index: src/libusb_cam/usb_cam.cpp
===================================================================
--- src/libusb_cam/usb_cam.cpp    (revision 108)
+++ src/libusb_cam/usb_cam.cpp    (working copy)
@@ -334,6 +334,7 @@

   video_sws = sws_getContext( xsize, ysize, avcodec_context->pix_fmt,
xsize, ysize, PIX_FMT_RGB24, SWS_BILINEAR, NULL, NULL, NULL);
   sws_scale(video_sws, avframe_camera->data, avframe_camera->linesize, 0,
ysize, avframe_rgb->data, avframe_rgb->linesize );
+  sws_freeContext(video_sws);
 //  img_convert((AVPicture *) avframe_rgb, PIX_FMT_RGB24, (AVPicture *)
avframe_camera, avcodec_context->pix_fmt, xsize, ysize);

   int size = avpicture_layout((AVPicture *) avframe_rgb, PIX_FMT_RGB24,
xsize, ysize, (uint8_t *)RGB, avframe_rgb_size);

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 10:54 AM, Josh Faust <jfaust@willowgarage.com> wrote:

> rviz's Camera display is meant for a camera running on a robot that's set
> up properly (with TF, calibrated cameras, etc.).  It lets you see the 3D
> data with the camera image overlaid.  If you just want to view an image,
> image_view is the correct option.
>
> As for #3, does rviz's memory usage start going up during that time?  If it
> was killed, either it (or something else) was consuming a lot of memory, or
> someone else killed it.
>
> Josh
>
> On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 4:27 AM, Benoit Larochelle <
> Benoit.Larochelle@dfki.de> wrote:
>
>>  Hello,
>>
>> I'm trying to set-up RVIZ so that I can view the feed from my USB camera.
>> I am using the usb_cam package to produce the feed, but RVIZ seems to have a
>> few problems reading it. I set-up the Fixed Frame to /head_camera, and
>> Image Topic to /usb_cam/image_raw.
>>
>> 1) I get a global warning: No tf data. Actual error: Fixed Frame
>> [/head_camera does not exist]. I don't know exactly what transforms and
>> frames are, I just want to see my camera image (in RVIZ).
>>
>> 2) In the Camera section, I get a Status Error, under CameraInfo:
>> CameraInfo/P resulted in an invalid position calculation (nans or infs)
>>
>> 3) After 15 minutes or so, RVIZ crashes with the error message:
>> /opt/ros/boxturtle/ros/bin/rosrun: line 35: 304 Killed $exepath "$@" (before
>> lunch, I started RVIZ and image_view and when I came back RVIZ had crashed
>> and image_view was still going)
>>
>> 4) The image is much darker than with the package image_view
>>
>> Benoit
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> ros-users mailing list
>> ros-users@code.ros.org
>> https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users
>>
>>
>
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>