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First, verify that your topics (particularly /tf) are connected as they should be. The easiest way to do that is with rqt_graph.

If the topics are all connected properly, next check out your tf tree using tf view_frames. Make sure you have a TF from base_link to laser. If you aren't publishing that TF, you'll need to publish it with a tf static_transform_publisher or with a robot_state_publisher state_publisher and a URDF description of your robot.

Finally, if your ROS graph and TF tree are complete, then your problem is probably timing. If the system clock on the laptop isn't synced with the system clock on the RPi, then lookupTransform may fail. You can manually sync the clocks, but a better solution is to use chrony.

Further info here: http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/NetworkSetup