rqt_bag_plugins missing plot feature from rxbag_plugins

[adwilson10]

The plot plugin of rxbag_plugins does not appear to be ported yet to rqt_bag_plugins. Does this functionality appear elsewhere in rqt, ie. plotting the entire time series of a bag file topic at once?

[ablasdel]

Yes this was not added since there is a complete rqt_plot plugin that has basically the same function. If you load rqt_plot along side rqt_bag and have rqt_bag publish the message to rqt_plot you will get similar functionality to the old rxbag plot plugin.

Please reopen this ticket if you have any issues using rqt_plot in this manner.

[adwilson10]

I agree that similar functionality is possible using rqt_plot; however, I've found in quite a few situations that it was very convenient, especially for debugging purposes, to be able to view the entire topic plot instantly, without having to set rqt_plot to use simulated time and then either wait for the bag file to play, or run 'rosbag play' with '-i' in the command line.

I realize that in some ways having both plugins may seem redundant; however, I think an rqt_bag plot view in addition to the raw and image views would have a great deal of utility.

[ablasdel]

Would you be interested in putting that plugin together?

You might be able to reuse a bunch of the rqt_plot code actually.

[adwilson10]

I'll take a look at it and see what progress I can make.

[cedricpradalier]

Hi,

For me, the link with rqt_plot is a complete misuse of rqt_bag. The big advantage of rxbag was that one could plot the value of some variable field over the full length of the bag (i.e. a few hours for me) without having to play/wait. Even more interesting, rxbag was doing multi-resolution, sampling first coarsely the entire timeline and then refining.

Personally, I don't see any advantage of rqt_bag/rxbag over rosbag play if the plot feature is not there.
My solution for now: source /opt/ros/fuerte/setup.bash; rxbag.

I'd say missing the plot feature is a regression since I have to resort to an older version of rxbag to have something that works...

Shall I reopen/copy the ticket?

[ablasdel]

If you are willing to put in a pull request creating the rqt_bag plugin for plotting I will gladly review it. Otherwise, Unfortunately at the moment there are no developers available to work on features like this.

Either way, If you can go into detail with pictures of the benefits of having a plotter plugin inside the bag plugin here I am willing to re-open discussion on this topic.

[cedricpradalier]

Hi Aaron,

The simplest demo is simple: take a bag of high frequency topic for a
couple of hours (evtl. days).

Now, open it with rxbag in fuerte. You can plot the full timeline in one
shot, and you'll see the multi resolution plotting.

Now switch to groovy. How do you get the same effect? Playing the bag is
not an option due to its length and the fact that rqt_plot does not know
this length.

Now assume that the recording has been done asking rosbag to split the file
every 50 MB. Useful if you care about your data and recording is costly.
Still rxbag in fuerte manages it very well.

A solution would be either for rqt_plot to be able to load a set of bags,
similarly to rostopic.

Another one would be for rqt_bag to offer the option to build a static plot

of the content as a plugin.

Cedric, mobile, big-thumbed and concise
On Oct 17, 2013 3:28 PM, "Aaron Blasdel" notifications@github.com wrote:

If you are willing to put in a pull request creating the rqt_bag plugin
for plotting I will gladly review it. Otherwise, Unfortunately at the
moment there are no developers available to work on features like this.

Either way, If you can go into detail with pictures of the benefits of
having a plotter plugin inside the bag plugin here I am willing to re-open
discussion on this topic.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/85#issuecomment-26503887
.

[ablasdel]

Ok, I'm convinced that this is a good enhancement request. Would you mind copy/pasting this in a new issue with a nice title to that effect and I will mark it as such so it can get addressed when developer time is available?

[dirk-thomas]

Lets just reopen this ticket. The title is specific enough imo and describes the desired feature.

[ablasdel]

Ok I'm ok with that.

[awesomebytes]

Maybe someone is interested, I've made a (kind of dirty) fork for using rxbag with rxbag_plugins for the plotting and image showing here:
https://github.com/pal-robotics/rx

Its not ideal but it works. (I tried to work a bit on adding this to rqt_bag in some way but I was overwhelmed by the rqt_ stuff :( ).

[adwilson10]

I ended up creating a very simple plugin for my own use which relies on matplotlib, but it may be useful to others as well. I'd be interested in getting feedback from anyone wanting to try it out:
https://github.com/adwilson10/rqt_common_plugins

I haven't written any sort of data limits yet, so it won't work well for very long bag files. All the data points for a given topic are plotted at once. I'm planning on next adding user inputs to limit the times and resolution that the data is plotted at.

[dirk-thomas]

If someone wants to look into this feature I can only highly recommend to reuse the widgets / code already existing in the rqt_plot package.

[trainman419]

I've refactored rqt_plot so that the backend is separate in #232. I'm going to take a look at doing this on the rqt_plot backend, as @dirk-thomas suggests.

[trainman419]

I'm currently working on an rqt_bag plotting plugin based on @adwilson10 's version, using the rqt_plot backend in https://github.com/trainman419/rqt_common_plugins/tree/rqt_bag_plot

@adwilson10 I really like the resolution setting and limits in your version.

[trainman419]

This is fixed now that @ablasdel has merged #239!