Bluefox3 ROS driver

Description

A ROS driver for the mvbluefox3 for the rpi4 model-b (4gb). This driver is coupled with the bno055/mpu9150 IMU's drivers from TAU-adl to present a hardware synchronized sensor configuration for visual-intertial slam.

Features so far:

• image and camera info publication as ROS messages
• acquisition configuration
• resolution configuration
• device pixel format
• readout (and ROS msg) pixel format
• trigger enable/disable, source and activation mode*
• manual, constant exposure time configuration*
• autoexposure mode configuration, including minimum and maximum exposure time*

(* = Dynamically reconfigurable parameters. Other parameters are set at launch.) To set parameters dynamically, run rosrun rqt_reconfigure rqt_reconfigure

Prequisites

The mvIMPACT_Acquire library corresponding to your camera is required to be installed and in present path (must be findable by CMake, installation instructions: https://www.matrix-vision.com/manuals/mvBlueFOX3/mvBC_page_quickstart.html#mvBC_subsubsection_quickstart_linux_requirements_installing). C++ standard >= c++11 is required for compilation. Tested with ROS Melodic, but should work with older/newer versions as well.

pigpio http://abyz.me.uk/rpi/pigpio/index.html

Parameters

Mandatory

~camera_serial (string)

• The camera serial as extracted from list-cameras. This is a mandatory parameter, to be set as 'serial:=XXXX' on launch.

~camera_name (string)

• The camera name. This is a mandatory parameter, and set to default of 'bluefox3_XXXXX' (serial) on launch.

~frame_id (string)

• The node frame_id. This is a mandatory parameter, and set to default of camera name on launch.

~calib_url (string)

• YAML calibration file URL. Currently not used.

Optional

~acquisition_mode (string, default: Continuous)

• sets acquisiotion mode to 'Continuous' - video capture.
• other possible values are 'SingleFrame' - still capture, and 'MultipleFrame' - burst capture (unused).

~exposure_time (string, default: 10000)

• sets manual exposure time if AEC mode is off.
• reasonable values are from 5000 - 60000.

~exposure_auto (string, default: Continuous)

• sets AEC mode to 'Continuous' - the exposure is calculated online, frame-to-frame.
• other possible values are 'Once' - calculate on initialization, and 'Off' - manual exposure time.

~exposure_auto_upper_limit (double, default: 25000.0)

• sets maximal exposure time if AEC mode is on.
• reasonable values are from 15000 - 60000.

~exposure_auto_lower_limit (double, default: 10000.0)

• sets minimal exposure time if AEC mode is on.
• reasonable values are from 5000 - 15000.

~exposure_auto (string, default: Continuous)

• sets AEC mode to 'Continuous - the exposure is calculated online, frame-to-frame.
• other possible values are 'Once' - calculate on initialization, and 'Off' - manual exposure time.

Triggering Parameters ~trigger_enable (string, default: On)

• Camera trigger functionality enabled.
• Other possible values are 'Off' - camera trigger funcionality disabled.

~trigger_select (string, default: FrameStart)

• Camera trigger functionality starts frame acquisition.
• For other possible values see wxPropView.

~trigger_source (string, default: Software)

• Camera trigger functionality starts on Software call.
• For other possible values see wxPropView.

~trigger_activation (string, default: AnyEdge)

• If camera trigger functionality's source is an I/O line, set it to trigger on rising and falling edge.
• For other possible values see wxPropView.

Acknowledgements

Originally forked from https://github.com/ctu-mrs/bluefox3_ros The code was inspired by the KumarRobotics driver for bluefox2: https://github.com/KumarRobotics/bluefox2.