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
  • phidgets_ik

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

Note: The following steps are only required when installing the package from source. When installing a binary debian package of phidgets_api >= 0.7.8, the udev rules are set up automatically.

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

roscd phidgets_api
sudo cp debian/udev /etc/udev/rules.d/99-phidgets.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload-rules

Afterwards, disconnect the USB cable and plug it in again (or run sudo udevadm trigger).

For documentation regarding nodes, topics, etc:

http://ros.org/wiki/phidgets_drivers