On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 3:40 PM, Jack O'Quin wrote: > On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 2:02 PM, Bill Morris > wrote: > > On Sun, 2010-12-19 at 12:46 -0600, Jack O'Quin wrote: > >> I think it would help for the ROS community to support an official > >> usb_camera package, like we did for camera1394. The potential user > >> base is large. > >> > >> There seem to be several good drivers available in various > >> repositories. Paradoxically, that can make it harder for users to > >> decide which to use. A combined, fully documented and reviewed > >> implementation would make that easier and save time for most camera > >> users. > >> > >> If Eric, Ken, or someone else knowledgeable about these devices would > >> be willing to do the technical work, I can help move it through the > >> release review process. Maybe we could get it done in time for > >> inclusion in Diamondback. Although this is late in the release cycle, > >> no other core ROS components depend on it. > >> > >> Even if not completely ready for the initial Diamondback distribution, > >> it might make sense to release such a package later as an enhancement. > > > > I have about 10 different USB cameras to test, and I'm willing to help > > with writing code for this effort. > > That would be wonderful! Thanks. > > Perhaps some of the other package authors would also be willing to > help. It should save us all work in the long run. > I'd definitely be interested in helping out. > > > The only question is do we start from scratch or do we use an existing > > driver? > > When we started a similar effort for 1394 cameras, I tried all the > drivers I knew about, and people made additional suggestions on the > list. The first step was to decide which code base to start with, and > then incorporate good ideas from the others. > I like this plan. My biggest question right now is what exactly is the difference between the UVC based drivers (uvc_cam, uvc_camera) and the Bosch usb_cam driver (or is there any) at the driver level? Also, there are a few other drivers listed in http://www.iheartrobotics.com/2010/05/testing-ros-usb-camera-drivers.html that might be good to check on. > > Although I have not quite gotten there yet with camera1394, I believe > everyone would prefer a BSD license to the GPL. However, if the best > or only immediately available solution is GPL, that would still be > better than none. > I would also prefer BSD, though that gets trickier with the UVC stuff. The reason uvc_cam is GPL is that it is using code from (or at least extremely heavily inspired by) the excellent guvcview tool, which is GPL. - Eric > > Ultimately, choice of code base should be up to the maintainer. > -- > joq > _______________________________________________ > ros-users mailing list > ros-users@code.ros.org > https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users >