What Is This?

This demo provides simple utilities to connect to a workstation default camera device and display it in a window like below:

Build

colcon build --packages-select image_tools

Run

In image_tools ROS 2 package, two executables are provided, namely cam2image and showimage with different functions.

1 - cam2image

Running this executable connects to your workstation’s default camera device’s video stream and publishes the images on ‘/image’ and ‘/flipimage’ topics using a ROS 2 publisher.

# Open new terminal
ros2 run image_tools cam2image

Note that cam2image provides many useful command-line options. Run ros2 run image_tools cam2image --help to see the list of options available.

Eg. If a camera device is not available, run ros2 run image_tools cam2image --ros-args -p burger_mode:=true.

2 - showimage

Running this executable creates a ROS 2 node, showimage, which subscribes to the sensor_msg/msg/Image topic, /image and displays the images in a window.

# Open new terminal
# Run showimage ROS 2 node to display the cam2image sensor_msg/msg/Image messages.
ros2 run image_tools showimage

Changelog for package image_tools

0.37.0 (2025-04-25)

0.36.0 (2025-04-25)

• Uniform CMAKE min VERSION (#714)
• Lint image_tools/CMakeLists.txt (#712)
• Set envars to run tests with rmw_zenoh_cpp with multicast discovery (#711)
• Contributors: Alejandro Hernández Cordero, mosfet80, yadunund

0.35.1 (2024-11-20)

0.35.0 (2024-10-03)

0.34.2 (2024-07-29)

0.34.1 (2024-06-17)

0.34.0 (2024-04-26)

0.33.2 (2024-03-28)

• A few uncrustify fixes for 0.78. (#667)
• Update maintainer list in package.xml files (#665)
• Contributors: Chris Lalancette, Michael Jeronimo

0.33.1 (2024-02-07)

0.33.0 (2024-01-24)

• Migrate std::bind calls to lambda expressions (#659)
• Contributors: Felipe Gomes de Melo

0.32.1 (2023-12-26)

0.32.0 (2023-11-06)

0.31.1 (2023-09-07)

0.31.0 (2023-08-21)

0.30.1 (2023-07-11)

0.30.0 (2023-06-12)

0.29.0 (2023-06-07)

0.28.1 (2023-05-11)

0.28.0 (2023-04-27)

0.27.0 (2023-04-13)

0.26.0 (2023-04-11)

0.25.0 (2023-03-01)

0.24.1 (2023-02-24)

0.24.0 (2023-02-14)

• Added README.md for image_tools - [Clean] (#596)
• Update the demos to C++17. (#594)
• [rolling] Update maintainers - 2022-11-07 (#589)
• Contributors: Audrow Nash, Chris Lalancette, Gary Bey

0.23.0 (2022-11-02)

0.22.0 (2022-09-13)

0.21.0 (2022-04-29)

0.20.1 (2022-04-08)

0.20.0 (2022-03-01)

• Install includes to include/${PROJECT_NAME} (#548)
• Contributors: Shane Loretz

0.19.0 (2022-01-14)

• Fix include order and relative paths for cpplint (#551)
• Reduce the number of OpenCV libraries image_tools links against. (#549)
• Adds copy constructor and assignment operator to ROSCvMatContainer (#546)
• Contributors: Chris Lalancette, Gonzo, Jacob Perron

0.18.0 (2021-12-17)

• Fixes for uncrustify 0.72 (#545)
• Update maintainers to Audrow Nash and Michael Jeronimo (#543)
• Additional fixes for documentation in demos. (#538)
• Contributors: Audrow Nash, Chris Lalancette

0.17.0 (2021-10-18)

• Fixing deprecated subscriber callback warnings (#532)
• Contributors: Abrar Rahman Protyasha

0.16.0 (2021-08-11)

• ambigulity: unknown type name 'nullptr_t' (#528)
• Add type masquerading demos (#482)
• Contributors: Audrow Nash, William Woodall, xwnb

0.15.0 (2021-05-14)

• Add support for visualizing yuv422 (#499)
• Contributors: joshua-qnx

0.14.2 (2021-04-26)

0.14.1 (2021-04-19)

0.14.0 (2021-04-06)

0.13.0 (2021-03-25)

0.12.1 (2021-03-18)

0.12.0 (2021-01-25)

0.11.0 (2020-12-10)

• Initialize time stamp for published image messages (#475)
• Update the package.xml files with the latest Open Robotics maintainers (#466)
• Added more parameters for camera topic examples (#465)
• Contributors: Jacob Perron, Michael Jeronimo

0.10.1 (2020-09-21)

0.10.0 (2020-06-17)

0.9.3 (2020-06-01)

0.9.2 (2020-05-26)

0.9.1 (2020-05-12)

0.9.0 (2020-04-30)

• Replace deprecated launch_ros usage (#437)
• Fix frame_id (#433)
• Update launch_ros action usage (#431)
• code style only: wrap after open parenthesis if not in one line (#429)
• Contributors: Dirk Thomas, Gonzo, Jacob Perron

0.8.4 (2019-11-19)

0.8.3 (2019-11-11)

• image_tools should start with reliable policy (#411)
• Contributors: Shane Loretz

0.8.2 (2019-11-08)

0.8.1 (2019-10-23)

• Fix burguer mode parameter typo in help text (#406)
• Replace ready_fn with ReadyToTest action (#404)
• [image_tools] Use ROS parameters instead of regular CLI arguments (#398)
• Contributors: Brian Marchi, Jacob Perron, Peter Baughman

0.8.0 (2019-09-26)

• Adding visibility macros to demos (#381)
• Demos using composition (#375)
• Contributors: Siddharth Kucheria

0.7.6 (2019-05-30)

0.7.5 (2019-05-29)

• Remove debugging prints from showimage. (#358)
• Contributors: Chris Lalancette

0.7.4 (2019-05-20)

0.7.3 (2019-05-10)

0.7.2 (2019-05-08)

• changes to avoid deprecated API's (#332)
• Corrected publish calls with shared_ptr signature (#327)
• Migrate launch tests to new launch_testing features & API (#318)
• Contributors: Michel Hidalgo, William Woodall, ivanpauno

0.7.1 (2019-04-26)

• Removed support for OpenCV 2. (#322)
• Contributors: Jacob Perron

0.7.0 (2019-04-14)

• Added launch along with launch_testing as test dependencies. (#313)
• Contributors: Michel Hidalgo

0.6.2 (2019-01-15)

• Updated to support OpenCV 2, 3 and 4 (#307)
• Updated for OpenCV v4.0 compatibility (#306)
• Updated to show freq parameter on help only when necessary (#296)
• Contributors: Gonzo, Jacob Perron

0.6.1 (2018-12-13)

0.6.0 (2018-12-07)

• Updated to prevent frame going out of scope when converting RGB -> BGR (#288)
• Added semicolons to all RCLCPP and RCUTILS macros. (#278)
• Updated to keep only the last sample in the image tools by default. (#238)
• Contributors: Chris Lalancette, sgvandijk

0.5.1 (2018-06-28)

0.5.0 (2018-06-27)

• Fixed linting errors in burger.cpp (#260)
  • Signed-off-by: Chris Lalancette <<clalancette@openrobotics.org>>
• Fixed a bug that occurred when the resolution was less than the bugger. (#258)
• Updated launch files to account for the "old launch" getting renamespaced as launch -> launch.legacy. (#239)
• Contributors: Chris Lalancette, Dirk Thomas, William Woodall