[ros-users] ROS package released for the Serializer microcontroller

[Patrick Goebel]

Hello All,

I have released a ROS package for the Serializer microcontroller made by 
the Robotics Connection.  I have been using and developing this package 
several months along with at least one other ROS user so I hope I have 
most of the egregious bugs fixed.  Please let me know if you run into 
trouble with either the code or the Wiki page:

Wiki: http://www.ros.org/wiki/serializer

SVN: 
http://pi-robot-ros-pkg.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/pi-robot-ros-stack/serializer/

The Serializer has both analog and digital sensor pins, a PWM servo 
controller, and a PID controller that works well with the ROS navigation 
stack.

The underlying driver is written in Python and provides some convenience 
functions for specific sensors such as the Phidgets temperature, voltage 
and current sensors, the Sharp GP2D12 IR sensor, and the Ping sonar 
sensor. It also includes two PID drive commands: Rotate(angle, speed) 
and TravelDistance(distance, speed) for controlling the drive motors.

Most of the Serializer functions have been implemented though a few have 
not been tested since I don't currently have some of the supported 
sensors. The functions that have *not* been tested are:

    * step (used with a bipolar stepper motor)
    * sweep (also used with a bipolar stepper motor)
    * srf04, srf08 and srf10 (used with a Devantech SRF04, SRF08 and
      SRF10 sonar sensors)
    * tpa81 (used with the Devantech TPA81 thermopile sensor)

The driver requires Python 2.6.5 or higher and PySerial 2.3 or higher.  
It has been tested on Ubuntu Linux 10.04.

Documentation for the Python Serializer library can be found at:

http://www.pirobot.org/code/serializer.html

The official Serializer manual can be found at:

http://www.roboticsconnection.com/multimedia/docs/Serializer_3.0_UserGuide.pdf

Sincerely,
Patrick Goebel
The Pi Robot Project <http://www.pirobot.org/>




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