ECHO ONE Driver

Initial Setup

Installation of Device Driver

The repository Toposens Library contains the toposens sensor library.

toposens-library is included as a git submodule under the toposens-echo-driver repository. During catkin build the library is built automatically.

PCAN-USB FD Setup

In order for the target PC to be able to send and receive CAN frames the PCAN-USB FD adapter kernel modules must be installed and it is also recommended that can-utils is installed as this offers a suite of useful tools for troubleshooting on the CAN bus. To install the kernel modules run the following commands:

sudo modprobe peak_usb
sudo modprobe peak_pci

To install can-utils run the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install can-utils

Manual CAN Interface Setup

To set up the CAN interface on a once-off basis you can connect the PCAN-USB FD adapter to the target PC and run the following command:

sudo ip link set can0 up type can bitrate 1000000

Automatic CAN Setup using /etc/network/interfaces

It is recommended that the network is configured so that the interface is set up automatically each time the target PC is turned on. To do this, append the following code snippet to the end of the /etc/network/interfaces file:

allow-hotplug can0
iface can0 can static
    bitrate 1000000
    up ip link set $IFACE txqueuelen 100

Automatic CAN Setup using systemd

Alternatively, you can use systemd to enable automatic configuration of the CAN interface. This is relevant for e.g. Ubuntu 20.04, as using /etc/network/interfaces is deprecated and does not work out of the box. Navigate to /etc/systemd/network/ and create a file 80-can.network with the following content:

[Match]
Name=can*

[CAN]
BitRate=1000000

Then run the following commands to enable the automatic configuration via systemd:

sudo systemctl enable systemd-networkd
sudo systemctl start systemd-networkd

Note that in all of the above cases for setting up the CAN interface (except with using systemd), the name of the interface has been set to can0. If a different name is chosen then wherever can0 appears here, it must be replaced with the chosen interface name. To verify that the interface has been set up, you can run the command ip link show which will display the network interfaces on the target PC. If the set up of the interface is successful the output should then appear similar to:

At reboot the ECHO ONE sensor will send a ready message and a log message indicating the cause of the reset (eg. power on, software rest, etc.) You can introspect these messages by running the command candump can0.

The first column of the output is the interface name, followed by the frame ID number, the number of data bytes in the frame and then the data bytes in Hexadecimal.

If this is not the case then it is first recommended to disconnect the PCAN-USB FD adapter, restart the power supply and reconnect the PCAN-USB FD adapter (Note that when the power supply is restarted it is usually necessary to reconnect the PCAN-USB FD adapter).

Usage

The plain ECHO ONE driver node can be started with:

roscore
rosrun toposens_echo_driver toposens_echo_driver_node

For running the node with toposens_pointcloud, RViz, rqt_reconfigure etc. use the following launch file:

roslaunch toposens_bringup echo_one.launch

By default toposens_echo_driver uses CAN communication interface.

For running the node with UART interface, an argument com_interface can be passed:

roslaunch toposens_bringup echo_one.launch com_interface:=UART

The emitted topics can then be monitored e.g. with:

rostopic echo /ts_scans

Requesting an ADC Dump

For requesting an ADC Dump the ROS Node offers a service "request_adc_dump".

A small node is provided to obtain the ADC Dump conveniently. Please start it -while the main Echo Driver node is already running- via:

$ rosrun toposens_echo_driver request_adc_dump <sensor_id> <file_path>

# Example:
$ rosrun toposens_echo_driver request_adc_dump 1851 /home/user/dumps/dump.bin

If successful, the dump will be available under given file path. In case of any potential problems please refer to the logging output of the main Echo Driver node.

Changelog for package toposens_echo_driver

2.3.2 (2022-01-27)

• fix formatting error in toposens-library
• Contributors: Baris Yazici

2.3.1 (2021-10-26)

• Minor clean-up and bug fixes
• Contributors: Baris Yazici, Dennis Maier

2.3.0 (2021-09-23)

• Introduce toposens_echo_driver package
• Update maintainers
• Minor bug fixes
• Contributors: Baris Yazici, Dennis Maier