Jaguar Motor Controllers + Pandaboard over CAN
Hi,
We want to use Jaguar Motor Controllers (http://www.vexrobotics.com/217-3367.html) in conjunction with ROS on a Pandaboard running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. ROS is installed and running, however it is unclear to us what sort of CAN library we should be using. We've found a few options which I will highlight below. The Pandaboard has a DB9 port, so we were hoping to use that to handle the CAN interface with the jaguars. We already have the appropriate adapter.
can_communication (http://www.ros.org/browse/details.php?distro=fuerte&name=can_communication) Seems pretty generic, however documentation is virtually non-existent from what I can tell.
CANOpen_driver (http://www.ros.org/browse/details.php?distro=fuerte&name=CANOpen_driver) Documentation even more lacking than can_communication! perhaps I should actually be using a cob_* package like cob_generic_can? (http://ros.org/wiki/cob_generic_can)
http://www.neckbeard.ca/r/robotics/comments/18uwuv/does_anyone_have_experience_with_jaguar_motor/ The last comment there mentioned a ROS node he wrote using the source also in that git.
Any direction/assistance regarding this would be greatly appreciated!
EDIT 1:
I'm going with option 3, and modifying his code to account for the 2 additional motors. My issue is that his CAN port is "/dev/jaguar". I believe I need a CAN driver for this (what I believe is) file abstraction to work. So, my question to anyone who has built a CAN before, what drivers did you use? Did you need any hardware? I was thinking I could just use the Pandaboard's DB9 port. Will this not work? Do you know of any that do this file abstraction of the bare metal? I've found the following, http://www.canfestival.org/, which seems to still need a driver, such as the following two:
Am I correct in my understanding here? Do I need one or both of these packages? Do they require hardware such as, PCAN-USB? (which could be option 3 on this list)
Thanks again!