[ros-users] Digital Camera 1394 in ROS?

[Patrick Beeson]

It builds off of your Player SR3K driver.  There's a swissranger in 
Player now that supports the 4K and the new Mesa library API for 3k/4k 
devices.  My ROS one basically has the same guts as the Player one. 
This is a bit different from your ROS sr3k driver, but works quite well. 
  It could stand to be updated to use image_transport and needs a some 
tf info, but we could open source it (considering it's largely based off 
your Player code anyway).

Radu Bogdan Rusu wrote:
> Patrick, is your SR4k driver different than the one that I wrote some time ago ? 
> (http://www.ros.org/browse/details.php?name=swissranger) If so, I would like to merge/deprecate that, provided that you 
> will release yours as open source.
> 
> 
> Patrick Beeson wrote:
>> FYI,
>>
>> I have my own ROS node that combines cameradc1394 with the Player 1394 
>> driver.  It works very reliably and depends on nothing but sensor_msgs 
>> (I have to say that I do not like having to download the kitchen sink 
>> just to get a simple hardware driver working, which is why I have my own 
>> versions of Swissranger 4K driver, 1394 camera, etc.).
>>
>> Jack has been using it, along with a visualization tool I forked from 
>> somewhere.  I think I'll work with Jack to get this added to his ROS 
>> repository, or start my own (I'm assuming a reliable Swissranger 4000 
>> driver would be of desire to someone out there).  But, I should go ahead 
>> and make it start using the image_transport package.  So, it'll probably 
>> be a few weeks before this shows up in the ROS package browse.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Jack O'Quin wrote:
>>> On Wed, Mar 10, 2010 at 9:29 AM, Rosen Diankov <rosen.diankov at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> I'm sorry you've been having so many problems with cameradc1394,
>>>> perhaps we can come up with a solution that will work well for you.
>>> Thanks, Rosen.
>>>
>>> I do not mean to come across as harshly critical of cameradc1394. I
>>> appreciate the work that has gone into it, and want to make it more
>>> accessible to users. We are trying to get undergraduates working
>>> productively with ROS vision components. Many of them are unfamiliar
>>> with both ROS and Linux. They will have a lot more trouble getting
>>> this working than I did.
>>>
>>>> - You say it seems to work but not easy to install? Typing 'rosmake
>>>> cameradc1394'  should make and install everything for you, so are you
>>>> having trouble compiling things?
>>> I did get it to work. It just took me a couple of hours. See below...
>>>
>>>> - i think the libdc1394v2 package is for systems that do not have
>>>> libdc1394 version 2 installed, otherwise the library itself should be
>>>> stable.
>>> On a recent boxturtle ROS install, the rosmake will fail because
>>> cameradc1394 depends on libdc1394v2, which is no longer being
>>> distributed. So, users either have to edit your manifest.xml to remove
>>> that dependency (which is still needed on Ubuntu Hardy), or they have
>>> to find and install the SVN repository for the
>>> camera_drivers_experimental package (doable, but not trivial).
>>>
>>>> - cameradc1394 links the the ROS image libraries in order to
>>>> serialize/convert the message correctly, display the image, and
>>>> undistort it (radial distortion). You can disable the display
>>>> dynamically, so the the only other place where opencv would be used is
>>>> for undistortion and sending messages. Fortunately, both of these are
>>>> not that heavy on computation, so your system should handle it.
>>> I am not particularly worried about computational overhead. It's more
>>> a question of system design and consistency.
>>>
>>> The other ROS camera drivers do not depend on opencv2. There are
>>> higher-level packages, such as image_view for that sort of function.
>>> I'd prefer a simple DC1394 driver that behaves like the other ROS
>>> camera packages. That way people can work consistently with all those
>>> devices.
>>>
>>>> - i'm pretty sure the svn checkout command on sourceforge points to
>>>> the correct code:
>>>> svn co https://cmu-ros-pkg.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/cmu-ros-pkg cmu-ros-pkg
>>>>
>>>> The 'trunk' folder might be making things a little confusing for you,
>>>> therefore i recommend:
>>>>
>>>> svn co https://cmu-ros-pkg.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/cmu-ros-pkg/trunk
>>>> cmu-ros-pkg
>>> As you say, that is the correct URL for checkout. This error is
>>> currently not important, because you have no other branches (so far).
>>> But, you would not want users accidentally checking out *all* the
>>> branches instead of just the mainline version. When there is a stable
>>> version, they should check out branches/latest, instead, I suppose.
>>>
>>>> - There is a link on the ros.org camera_drivers webpage
>>>> (http://www.ros.org/wiki/camera_drivers) into the correct wiki
>>>> location where the cameradc1394 webpage is stored. I'm not sure why
>>>> you feel it is hard to locate.....
>>> It would be easier to find under http://ros.org/wiki/cameradc1394
>>> (which does not exist). It was hard to find because the SourceForge
>>> page for cmu-ros-pkg does not point to it. I did eventually find a
>>> pointer to it at the bottom of http://ros.org/wiki/libdc1394v2 (which
>>> does exist).
>>>
>>>> - the README in the top source directory was old and contained nothing
>>>> useful, i just deleted it
>>> Good idea, thanks.
>>>
>>>> - I think you are the first person that has expressed dissatisfaction
>>>> with the way cameradc1394 is structured (no code reviews, etc), I've
>>>> tried to stick with the camera API willowgarage publishes as much as
>>>> possible. In the past year, it has been hard to keep up with it due to
>>>> many changes, but we're actively maintaining cameradc1394. For
>>>> example, I just noticed that the API requires a "set_camera_info" and
>>>> "request_image" services, which we will add as soon as we have time.
>>> I fully understand the difficulty of tracking rapidly changing
>>> interfaces in a complex system. That is why I favor better integration
>>> into the ROS development process.  I believe a design review would
>>> have identified the inconsistencies between cameradc1394 and the other
>>> ROS camera drivers.
>>>
>>> A good review might have caught the set_camera_info change, as well. I
>>> have so far been unable to display 1394 camera images with rviz. That
>>> may be the reason.
>>>
>>>> If it makes a big difference for your team that the cameradc1394
>>>> resided on WillowGarage's servers rather than sourceforge's, then I'm
>>>> sure WillowGarage would be happy to host it.
>>> I expect they would. I don't see the repo location as a problem right
>>> now (as long as the checkout URL is correct and up to date).
>>>
>>> I believe including good documentation into the ros.org wiki would
>>> make the package much more accessible to beginning users. I am willing
>>> to assist, if you feel that would be helpful. I don't know much about
>>> digital cameras, but I do know how to edit the wiki. :-)
>>>
>>> Regards,
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