yarp-device-vicon-bridge

Maintainers

This repository is maintained by:

	@Nicogene

Description

The yarp-vicon-bridge is a YARP device working as interface between a Vicon setup and YARP.

Using this device, it is possible to retrieve the Vicon markers information in the form of transformation matrices, i.e. a 3D vector for translation and a quaternion for the rotation.

Dependencies

• Get YARP from the official GitHub repository
• Get ViconDataStreamSDK from the official Vicon website

Installation

Linux

• Setup the ~/.bash_aliases

  export ViconSDK_DIR=location/of/the/ViconSDK/libraries
  export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:${ViconSDK_DIR}

• Configure and make

  $ git clone https://github.com/robotology/yarp-device-vicon-bridge.git
  $ cd yarp-device-vicon-bridge
  $ mkdir build && cd build
  $ cd build 
  $ ccmake ..
  $ make install

• Check if the device has been installed correctly

  yarpdev --list | grep vicon

Windows

• Setup the environment variables

    setx ViconSDK_DIR "location/of/the/ViconSDK/libraries"
    setx PATH=%PATH%;ViconSDK_DIR

  💡 You can also set the environment variables using a GUI called Rapid Environment Editor

• Clone this repository

  git clone https://github.com/robotology/yarp-device-vicon-bridge.git

• Configure and build the project using the CMake GUI (:warning: set x64 for generator)

• Build the project either using Visual Studio or the command line:

  cmake --build . --config Release --target install

How to run the yarp-vicon-bridge

Using the Vicon setup

• Run a yarpserver in a terminal
• Open a second terminal and start a transformServer device:

  yarpdev --device transformServer --ROS::enable_ros_publisher 0 --ROS::enable_ros_subscriber 0

• Open a third terminal and start a yarp-vicon-bridge device:

  yarpdev --device vicon --hostname "192.168.10.2"

  ⚠️ the default hostname is 192.168.10.2 (see Vicon Network Cards Settings) but some network test might be needed to find out the port where the Vicon output is actually streamed.

Using the Vicon setup and R1

• Make sure that roscore is running on r1-base
• Make sure that yarpserver --ros is running on r1-base
• Open a terminal and type:

  $ rostopic echo \tf

• Open another terminal and start a transformServer device:

  $ yarpdev --from tfServer.ini

where tfServer.ini is:

device  transformServer
transforms_lifetime 0.500
[ROS]
enable_ros_publisher 1
enable_ros_subscriber 0

• Open another terminal and start a yarp-device-vicon-bridge device:

  $ yarpdev --device vicon --hostname "192.168.10.2"

  ⚠️ the default hostname is 192.168.10.2 (see Vicon Network Cards Settings) but some network test might be needed to find out the port where the Vicon output is actually streamed.