Phidgets drivers for ROS

Overview

Drivers for the Phidgets devices. This Catkin metapackage includes:

• phidgets_api: a package which downloads and builds the Phidgets C API from phidgets.com (as an external project). It also implements a C++ wrapper for the C API, providing a base Phidget class and various inherited classes for different phidget devices.

• ROS nodes exposing the functionality of specific phidgets devices using:

  • phidgets_imu
  • phidgets_high_speed_encoder

Installing

From source

Make sure you have a working catkin workspace, as described at: http://www.ros.org/wiki/catkin/Tutorials/create_a_workspace

Also make sure you have git installed:

sudo apt-get install git-core

Change directory to the source folder of your catkin workspace. If, for instance, your workspace is ~/catkin_ws, make sure there is a src/ folder within it, then execute:

cd ~/catkin_ws/src

Download the metapackage from the github repository (<ros_distro> may be groovy, hydro, indigo...):

git clone -b <ros_distro> https://github.com/ros-drivers/phidgets_drivers.git

Install dependencies using rosdep:

rosdep install phidgets_drivers

Alternatively, if rosdep does not work, install the following packages:

sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0 libusb-1.0-0-dev

Compile your catkin workspace:

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make

Udev rules setup:

Make sure your catkin workspace has been successfully compiled. To set up the udev rules for the Phidgets USB devices, run the following commands:

cd ~/catkin_ws
sh src/phidgets_drivers/phidgets_api/share/setup-udev.sh

You will be prompted to type in your password.

For documentation regarding nodes, topics, etc:

http://ros.org/wiki/phidgets_drivers