usb_cam

A ROS 2 Driver for V4L USB Cameras

This package is based off of V4L devices specifically instead of just UVC.

For ros1 documentation, see the ROS wiki.

Supported ROS 2 Distros and Platforms

All Officially supported Linux Distros and corresponding ROS 2 releases are supported. Please create an issue if you experience any problems on these platforms.

Windows: TBD/Untested/Unproven MacOS: TBD/Untested/Unproven

For either MacOS or Windows - if you would like to try and get it working please create an issue to document your effort. If it works we can add it to the instructions here!

Quickstart

Assuming you have a supported ROS 2 distro installed, run the following command to install the binary release:

sudo apt-get install ros-<ros2-distro>-usb-cam

As of today this package should be available for binary installation on all active ROS 2 distros.

If for some reason you cannot install the binaries, follow the directions below to compile from source.

Building from Source

Clone/Download the source code into your workspace:

cd /path/to/colcon_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/ros-drivers/usb_cam.git

Or click on the green “Download zip” button on the repo’s github webpage.

Once downloaded and ensuring you have sourced your ROS 2 underlay, go ahead and install the dependencies:

cd /path/to/colcon_ws
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -y

From there you should have all the necessary dependencies installed to compile the usb_cam package:

cd /path/to/colcon_ws
colcon build
source /path/to/colcon_ws/install/setup.bash

Be sure to source the newly built packages after a successful build.

Once sourced, you should be able to run the package in one of three ways, shown in the next section.

Running

The usb_cam_node can be ran with default settings, by setting specific parameters either via the command line or by loading in a parameters file.

We provide a “default” params file in the usb_cam/config/params.yaml directory to get you started. Feel free to modify this file as you wish.

Also provided is a launch file that should launch the usb_cam_node_exe executable along with an additional node that displays an image topic.

The commands to run each of these different ways of starting the node are shown below:

NOTE: you only need to run ONE of the commands below to run the node

# run the executable with default settings (without params file)
ros2 run usb_cam usb_cam_node_exe

# run the executable while passing in parameters via a yaml file
ros2 run usb_cam usb_cam_node_exe --ros-args --params-file /path/to/colcon_ws/src/usb_cam/config/params.yaml

# launch the usb_cam executable that loads parameters from the same `usb_cam/config/params.yaml` file as above
# along with an additional image viewer node
ros2 launch usb_cam camera.launch.py

Launching Multiple usb_cam’s

To launch multiple nodes at once, simply remap the namespace of each one:

ros2 run usb_cam usb_cam_node_exe --ros-args --remap __ns:=/usb_cam_0 --params-file /path/to/usb_cam/config/params_0.yaml
ros2 run usb_cam usb_cam_node_exe --ros-args --remap __ns:=/usb_cam_1 --params-file /path/to/usb_cam/config/params_1.yaml

Supported formats

Device supported formats

To see a connected devices supported formats, run the usb_cam_node and observe the console output.

An example output is:

```log This devices supproted formats:

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Changelog for package usb_cam

0.8.1 (2024-05-01)

• Merge pull request #330 from ros-drivers/fix-rolling-builds Update comment in CI from Jammy to Noble
• Fix linter error in uyvy file
  • Update comment in CI from Jammy to Noble
• Merge pull request #324 from clalancette/clalancette/const-avcodec Switch to a const AVCodec *.
• Switch to a const AVCodec . This is because newer versions of avcodec return a const AVCodec.
• Merge pull request #313 from ros-drivers/v4l2-devices-might-not-be-named-video V4l2 devices might not be named video
• Use /sys/class/video4linux/ to get list of v4l2 devices
• Merge pull request #311 from firesurfer/ros2 Resolve Symlinks
• Update usb_cam_node.cpp Fix formatting
• try to fix formatting issue
• resolve symlinks
• Merge pull request #305 from ros-drivers/fix-docs-deployment
• Remove unnecessary steps from docs CI
• Merge pull request #304 from ros-drivers/fix-docs-ci Fix docs ci
• Trigger docs CI on every push to ros2 branch
• Merge pull request #303 from ros-drivers/add-mkdocs-documentation
• Standup basic mkdocs documentation site
• Contributors: Chris Lalancette, Evan Flynn, Lennart Nachtigall

0.8.0 (2023-12-04)

• Bump for release 0.8.0, update docs
• Merge pull request #300 from ros-drivers/263-check-if-specified-pixel-format-is-supported 263 check if specified pixel format is supported
• Check if specified pixel format is supported by driver and by device
  • Also fix typo in params_2 yaml file
  • fix linter errors too
• Add v4l2_str method to pixel_format_base class
• Add common arguments strut to pixel format classes
  • Use common arguments struct in all format classes
• Merge pull request #292 from ros-drivers/288-fix-uyvy2rgb-size 288 fix uyvy2rgb size
• Merge pull request #270 from boitumeloruf/raw-mjpeg-stream Publish raw mjpeg stream directly via compressed image topic
• Introduced funtions get_..._from_av_format, fixed code style errors
• Merge branch 'ros2' into raw-mjpeg-stream
• fixed minor build issues
• Merge branch 'ros2' into raw-mjpeg-stream
• Merge branch 'ros2' of https://github.com/boitumeloruf/usb_cam into ros2
• Merge pull request #295 from ros-drivers/run-ci-on-ros2-branch-too Run CI on ros2 branch pushes too
• Bump checkout action to latest
• Ensure ROS_VERSION is set for ROS build farms
• Run CI on ros2 branch pushes too
• Merge pull request #294 from ros-drivers/291-auto-generate-ci-matrix Auto generate ci matrix
• Continue on error for ROS 1 build and test job
• Hard-code noetic to actions matrix step until 2025
• Handle rolling case where two docker images are listed
• Switch to tagged version of the active_ros_distros script
• Add basic ROS 1 node, update CMakelists and package.xml
• Update CI to automatically generate distro matrix
• Merge pull request #293 from ros-drivers/add-mjpeg-device-format-param Add mjpeg device format param
• fixed cppcheck and uncrustify errors
• Refactored use of av_device_format
• Updated example YAML files to av_device_format
• Added av_device_format parameter
• Fix bytes per line logic for base image class
• Fix number of channels for uyvy2rgb format
• Merge pull request #286 from ros-drivers/285-handle-unavailable-device 285 handle unavailable device, list available v4l2 devices
• Fix manual triggering of CI pipelines
• Check if given v4l2 device exists before opening it
• fixed cppcheck and uncrustify errors

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