[ros-users] Multiple packages with similar functionalities (ueye camera)

[Kelsey Hawkins]

Since it seems like there is growing community around this sensor, I'm
curious if people have been generally pleased with the ueye cameras. What
is the ballpark cost/model people are typically using and would they
recommend?

-Kelsey
On Dec 5, 2013 3:07 PM, "Tully Foote" <tfoote at osrfoundation.org> wrote:

>
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 9:00 AM, Isaac Isao Saito <130s at lateeye.net> wrote:
>
>> # Apologies if multiple posts come in; looks like I'm having trouble
>> in posting to ros-users with my other email account.
>>
>> Following Kevin Hallenbeck's offering, I suggest to borrow his
>> repository to continue further discussion about unifying features that
>> are distributed over multiple ROS packages.
>>
>>
>> https://bitbucket.org/kmhallen/ueye/issue/7/merge-features-from-other-ueye-related-ros
>>
>> Please note, with a risk of sounding contradictory, that I'm not
>> forcing to merge multiple packages with similar features into a single
>> package (if I was doing so, that would be a very good counter example
>> of opensource advocate).
>>
>
> It's actually a good thing to consolidate efforts and work together to
> merge implementations if they are compatible. This allows greater
> productivity through collaboration and deduplicates efforts of maintaining
> multiple copies in parallel.  The beauty of open source is that if you feel
> that you need a different direction you can again fork the development. But
> most of the time for things like this driver it is in everyone's interest
> to have a single good driver than have many mostly functional drivers.  An
> example very close to this that went very well was the effort to
> consolidate the various firewire camera drivers.  After a long discussion
> on the mailing list Jack O'Quin took the lead and offered to consolidate
> the drivers.  The first thread was here:
> http://ros-users.122217.n3.nabble.com/Digital-Camera-1394-in-ROS-td439620.html and
> the results you can find in the camera1394 review pages:
> http://wiki.ros.org/camera1394/Reviews
>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> If there's any good practice/mechanism in ROS or in opensource in
>> general to avoid package-collision like this, I think more than a few
>> of us would get interested in it (surprisingly Googling is sometimes
>> not just enough).
>>
>
> The most important thing to do is to communicate effectively.  Publicly
> releasing and indexing software is the most critical element of this.
> Usually if there is an open source implementation with a compatible license
> people will use it if they find it. If it is not feature complete for their
> use cases they then have the choice to extend the existing capabilities or
> to develop the whole thing again from scratch.  Most will usually extend
> the capability, and if it's easy enough contribute it back.
>
> So the most important thing to do is to make sure to add your packages to
> the documentation index with appropriate keywords. If a package is not
> adaquately documented it is as almost as good as not released. Users won't
> take the time to dig into a package which might do what they want and might
> not. The other important thing to keep in mind is that people will extend
> packages to fit their use cases.  It is important to make it easy to
> contribute back. If it is hard to contribute back the user extending the
> package both has to do the work to extend it as well as the extra work to
> contribute back.  In the long run they need to believe they will save
> time/energy by contributing back to the project.
>
> Tully
>
>
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Isaac
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 12:21 AM, Kevin Hallenbeck <kmhallen at oakland.edu>
>> wrote:
>> > I develop the 'ueye' package, but I haven't touched it in about six
>> months.
>> > It looks like each package has some strengths and weaknesses. I am
>> willing
>> > to work on a unified package for uEye cameras that would include all of
>> the
>> > features from these packages.
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> > Kevin
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 9:54 AM, Isaac Isao Saito
>> > <iisaito at opensource-robotics.tokyo.jp> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> ros-thusiasts,
>> >>
>> >> for a camera called Ueye, I've seen at least 4 wiki pages for separate
>> >> ROS packages that provides interface with the device.
>> >>
>> >> http://wiki.ros.org/iri_ueye_camera
>> >> http://wiki.ros.org/ueye
>> >> http://wiki.ros.org/ueye_cam
>> >> http://wiki.ros.org/ueyecamera
>> >>
>> >> All of these are the result of great work of each developer. But
>> >> wouldn't it be even more useful if we only have one?
>> >>
>> >> # It'd be so for us, since one of the robots that our software
>> >> (rtmros_nextage) supports comes with Ueye.
>> >>
>> >> Thanks,
>> >>
>> >> Isaac
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>> >
>> >
>> >
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