How do I get the Robotiq force-torque sensor to work with ROS Kinetic?

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Our lab is using Kinetic on Ubuntu 16.04 and we can't connect to our FT300 sensor with ROS. Using just the instructions in the FT300 manual (under the Development Package section), I was able to get sensor readings to show up in the terminal, so I do at least know my computer can make the connection. But rosrun robotiq_force_torque_sensor rq_sensor, which should do the same thing, just gives me lines and lines of "Waiting for sensor connection..." indefinitely. I've tried the following in various combinations:

• Using both the jade-devel and kinetic-devel branches of the Robotiq repository
• Specifying the exact \dev\ttyUSB* device that the sensor shows up as
• Modifying my files using TheDash's pull request that allows FT300 support

Unfortunately I lack the technical knowledge to know what the source of this problem is. As far as I can tell, the only fix is to downgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 and Indigo, since another lab has been able to get their FT300 working that way. Has anyone else run into this problem and managed to solve it somehow? Otherwise, can anyone give me a rough idea of how much headway has been made towards making this possible?

Thanks for reading.