Indigo Release

[rctoris]

Just a friendly ping for an Indigo release, it's blocking some packages we're migrating over. 🍰

[jbohren]

I've tested everything except the ps3joy. Unfortunately, I couldn't find mine, so I ordered a new one. I'll have it next week.

[jbohren]

I'm having a hard time getting ps3joy working (won't even pair) on my new-ish thinkpad (x230t) with a brand new ps3 sixaxis, even on 12.04. I haven't tried 14.04 yet because I wanted to make sure my laptop could handle it.

I did, however, get it to work easily with qtsixa (ppa here).

I know ps3joy has some issues with certain bluetooth interfaces. @rctoris can you get ps3joy to work currently?

[chadrockey]

I'm also having lots of difficulty with ps3joy.... See this ROS Answers:

http://answers.ros.org/question/102676/ps3joy-slow-output/

+0 to just advising use of qtsix and hoping support continues.

[jbohren]

+0 to just advising use of qtsix and hoping support continues.

It seems like qtsixa is more mature, but just as supported as the python-based driver that Blaise wrote almost 5 years ago now. (aka not supported at all)

qtsixa definitely does things the right way. It creates a daemon that can be set to run at startup and doesn't require killing the rest of the bluetooth stack.

I'm thinking ps3joy support is a lot better off depending on qtsixa.

@wjwwood What's the appropriate way to have a ROS package depend on a debian package in a ppa?

[wjwwood]

rosdep cannot handle ppa's, so @tfoote has to pull them into the ROS package repository manually.

[tfoote]

We can choose to import the packages from the PPA. In general we prefer to minimize the number of packages we do and prefer to pick ones which are targeted for upstream but are not backported to our set of supported platforms. Especially since this turns into a large hassle for future releases when we don't have control of where we import from. ala ros/rosdistro#2421

Do we know if qtsixa is targeted for acceptance into debian/ubuntu repos?

[jbohren]

Do we know if qtsixa is targeted for acceptance into debian/ubuntu repos?

Well... @falkTX would probably know.

[falkTX]

No plans to make qtsixa into debian.

But there's a PPA for Ubuntu builds:
https://launchpad.net/~falk-t-j/+archive/qtsixa/

[jbohren]

Thanks for the info @falkTX.

@tfoote So if we want to switch over to this driver (recommended), then we'd have to mirror the debian packages on the ROS servers.

[jbohren]

@tfoote Can we mirror qtsixa on the ROS servers?

[tfoote]

qtsixa added in referenced commit

[mikepurvis]

Any chance #63 and #64 can go in for Indigo too?

[PeterPablo]

Just a heads up: ps3joy works on a Raspberry Pi with Raspbian, whereas qtsixa is not running (for me). You only need to make sure the necessary packages "joystick" and "libusb-dev" are installed.

[mikeferguson]

Just a note, I've tested ps3joy and sixad on our Indigo/Trusty robots. ps3joy runs, but of course shows weird low rates (this is a 3.13 kernel). sixad works very well, and so that is what we're using. I'm still using ps3joy's sixpair to pair the joysticks as I do it over SSH.

[mikepurvis]

sixad comes with a sixpair binary too, I think, but we use a different one because we're using the Move Navigation Controller— hence my interest in #63.

[rctoris]

Any way to get an initial release at least for USB joysticks that are working?

[xqms]

+1 for an initial release for USB joysticks

[jihoonl]

+1 for an initial release too.

[mikeferguson]

@jbohren What is the story here? It seems that most of this stuff will work, if people have issues with ps3joy they have the option of switching to sixad. This stack desperately needs a release into indigo -- I'll gladly assist if you just need someone to go through the drudgery of preparing the actual release steps.

[chadrockey]

@mikeferguson Have you been using sixad?

It seems to roughly supply the same output as ps3joy. I've seen a few issues with connection dropouts and what gets published last, but I suspect those are configurable.

+1 to releasing the stack, ps3joy needs joy to work anyway and is just a python script, so it may not run for some users, but we can resolve that later.

[mikeferguson]

Yes, I've switched to sixad, very happy with it. Even so, it's not 100% solution everywhere, and so it makes sense to continue releasing ps3joy and allow users and robot developers to choose which they want to use. At this point, putting a warning about ps3joy on the wiki, noting how to switch to sixad if desired, will "fix" the ps3joy issue for now, but the joy package really needs to get into debs.

[mikeferguson]

In consultation with @jbohren I have released to indigo with ros/rosdistro#4889. @mikepurvis I did not merge any of those pull requests for now, as I'll leave that determination up to the package maintainer.

[mirzashah]

@mikeferguson @chadrockey Were you guys able to get ps3 controllers to pair over bluetooth with 14.04? sixpair worked fine when connected over usb ...but the bt pairing was a no go on the next step. I tried 3 different controllers and 5 different bt modules across 3 different computers. All of this was working fine in precise/hydro. I also tried upgrading from 3.13 to the 3.14 kernel as well. ..that didn't help. I'll try sixad next ...but at least from my perspective something has broken ps3joy from precise/hydro -> trusty/indigo. Luckily I have some xbox360 controllers to fall back on.

Additional note: sixad works great, just tested it -- will use that for now but it would be nice to know if ps3joy is broken on 14.04 lts

[mikeferguson]

@mirzashah I have not tried pairing over bluetooth -- I've always paired over USB.

[eggerdo]

I can confirm that bt pairing using ps3joy on 14.04 doesn't work even though a successful connection was established over usb.

[mirzashah]

@mikeferguson I might be using the wrong terminology...there's the initial pairing which must be done via usb...but once the MAC is registered via sixpair, you should be able to "pair" (or perhaps the term is "link"?) wirelessly by just running the driver (either rosrun ps3joy ps3joy.py or sixad --start) and hitting the PS button (which I always figured was called the pairing button). Again I've switched to sixad so the point is moot at least for myself, but others maybe interested in this

[mikeferguson]

@mirzashah I think we were mixing terminology. I have used sixpair+bluetooth successfully with a PS3 controller on 14.04 (3.13 kernel, intel wifi+bluetooth miniPCI-e card). I have used ps3joy+bluetooth, but found that it was very spotty (lots of lag, very low message rate). With both solutions, I think I had to disable the bluetooth daemon as well (certainly for ps3joy).