sentis_tof_m100_ros_pkg

This ROS package uses an old api for the Bluetechnix Sentis ToF m100 sensor.

There is a new package (https://github.com/voxel-dot-at/bta_tof_driver) that uses the new BltToFApi developed by Bluetechnix for interacting with their sensors.

We recommend to use the new bta_tof_driver package.

ROS package for Bluetechnix Sentis ToF M100 camera.

Summary

This package explains how to configure your system and ROS to use the Sentis ToF M100 camera. It includes an example allowing you to visualize point clouds using the rviz viewer included in ROS. It shows you how to use the camera together with ROS and how you can modify different parameters of the Sentis ToF M100.

First step: Get Ros

The sentis_tof_m100_ros_pkg works with ROS versions groovy and hydro. You can use catkin workspaces or the previous rosbuild to configure, compile and get ready ROS.

The following ROS tutorial links describe how to get ros_hydro and catkin workspace.

In Ubuntu: Follow the ROS installation tutorial:

http://wiki.ros.org/hydro/Installation/Ubuntu.

Use catkin workspaces:

http://wiki.ros.org/catkin

http://wiki.ros.org/catkin_or_rosbuild

http://wiki.ros.org/catkin/Tutorials/create_a_workspace

To configure a catkin workspace in your ROS installation, follow this;

ROS tutorial: http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials/InstallingandConfiguringROSEnvironment

Known Problems

Be sure your libboost library version is >= 1.49. Previous versions as 1.46 generate error while compiling sentis_tof_m100_ros_pkg.

1. Installing the sentis_m100 API

With your M100 camera you will get the developer API for Linux systems in both versions, amd64 and i386. If you are using Ubuntu or a Debian-derived distribution simply install the deb package corresponding to your system.

You can also manually install the libraries and headers of the API. Please read the API instructions to get help for installing them.

2. Compiling the package

2.1 Install dependencies

Make sure you have the following ROS dependencies already installed:

 apt-get install ros-hydro-pcl-ros ros-hydro-pcl-conversions ros-hydro-perception-pcl 

2.2 Install the package

Clone from repository: https://github.com/voxel-dot-at/sentis_tof_m100_pkg.git to the src/ folder in your catkin workspace. Now compile it with:

cd catkin_ws
source devel/setup.bash ## initialize search path to include local workspace
cd src/
git clone https://github.com/voxel-dot-at/sentis_tof_m100_ros_pkg.git
cd ..
catkin_make

3. Usage

We have included a .launch file to help you to get the camera working in a very simple way. We coded this ROS package to use the ROS parameter server. We will explain you in the following lines how you can write your own configuration for the Sentis ToF Camera. You can also run the package node standalone and set the camera configuration by line commands.

* Watch our demo video:

http://youtu.be/3xegxf5VFWc

3.1 Use roslaunch

To easily start using the sentis_tof_m100 ROS package you can use the roslaunch config_file we have included. It will launch the ROS core, start the camera node loading the parameter configuration, start the run-time reconfiguration gui and the ROS viewer rviz already configured to show the depth information readed by the ToF camera.

In order to execute it you have just to type the following:

roslaunch sentis_tof_m100 start.launch

3.1.1 Write you own configuration to the parameter server

As we pointed out before, you can load the camera configuration to the parameter server. The file “launch/start.launch” includes, inside the tag “node”, the tag “rosparam” in which you can indicate a file containing the server parameters. We have include the configuration file “/launch/sentis_tof_m100_1.yaml” that defines default configuration values for the camera. You may modify this file or add yours to load your own configuration.

To get more information about the Sentis_ToF_M100 camera parameter, please refer to the section 4.

3.2 running the package without roslaunch

You can start up the camera without the help of roslaunch with the following steps.

3.2.1 Start the ROS core

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