Is it possible for me to install either ROS1 or ROS2 and use it with JUST VSCode and Gazebo?
Good Afternoon,
Recently, I've been creating a robot that utilizes Arduino and Motor Controllers to move directions (forwards or backwards) and adjust speeds. This device shall soon be connected to a Microsoft Azure Kinect camera that can do three types of reads: IR, depth, and body tracking.
I plan to import a pre-rendered 3d environment model into ROS for the robot to utilize and map out its directional movements.
Would it be possible to install and run either available ROS languages into my system without the many necessary prerequisites?
Currently, I have installed on my system:
- Windows 11 Home
- Python 3.9.15
- miniconda
- VSCode 2022 (C++, Python, CMaker extensions downloaded in the IDE)
The pre-requisites for ROS1 requires me to install:
- Visual Studio 2019 (with Desktop Development C++ workload and Windows 10 SDK)
- Chocolatey
- And follow a series of commands to continue on with the rest of the installation process
ROS2 asks for me to:
- Install the same pre-requisites as above
- Install OpenSSL (don't think I'll ever need this)
- Install OpenCV (don't think I'll ever need this)
- Dependencies (install cmake again even though I already have it in VSCode extensions)
- And create an entirely new envrionment
Can't I just use VSCode on its own and download extensions of ROS for it along with combining it with Gazebo? Can I just use conda to install all packages to run ROS?
Thank you
Asked by Mr.Cruz on 2023-01-20 17:52:57 UTC
Answers
Windows is not officially supported with ROS1, see target platforms.
I think OpenCV is used to support image transport + serialization and for artificial camera view generation in Gazebo. OpenSSL is just an HTTPS implementation. Make sure you're installing ros-base rather than ros-desktop which comes with various non-essential tools.
In addition, these prerequisites don't seem that bad. Any particular reason you're avoiding those? ROS2 is a neither an operation system nor just a language. It's a set of tools + pub sub system that tries to serve the entire robotics community, which is naturally large and varied so some dependencies are necessary.
Can't I just use VSCode on its own and download extensions of ROS for it along with combining it with Gazebo?
ROS doesn't require you to use one IDE or another and has a separate installation process but you can find various ROS extensions on the VScode marketplace if you look.
Can I just use conda to install all packages to run ROS?
Yes, googling ros2 + conda takes me to the following post on Medium explaining how conda and ros2 work together. Last I checked a lot of packages have been ported to Conda but I suspect more niche packages might not be supported which might be fine in your use case.
Asked by achille on 2023-01-23 19:40:02 UTC
Comments