eve's profile - activity

I'm trying to familiarize myself with ROS by doing simple DIY projects with the hardware I have. The goal is try to get a mobile base to navigate a direct/straight path from point A to point B where Point A&B are marked GPS coordinates (waypoints?). The sensors I have are GPS/AHRS sensors. I looked into the tutorials for ROS navigation for a while before realizing that the stack needs sensor streams from LaserScans or PointClouds.

I dont have any range sensors, and at this point I'm not too worried about obstacle avoidance. I have the GPS/AHRS sensor working independently in ROS and I'm trying to merge this all together with my motor controller. Is there anyway I can use the navigation package without a laser/range sensor? Is there an alternative package that I use to do navigate a direct path from point A to point B? Or, can I somehow use the navigation package with a simple usbcam instead?

I sure did! I tried to debug it in my eclipse IDE but I couldnt run the node. I get the error Invalid node name [~]. I have managed to access both channels thanks to ahendrix though! :)

Thanks for help ahendrix, I really appreciate it! :)

I hadn't tried the rosrun method (I get the error: Invalid node name [~]). but I saved it to my roslaunch files adding this extra line: <rosparam param="channels">['left', 'right']</rosparam> However, if someone did want to pass channels paramters through roslaunch, I believe the syntax would be _channels:="['left', 'right'}"

I had something similar first, but I still could control the controller. Instead of passing channel arguments through rosrun, I edited the roslaunch files but only channel 1 (left motor) would respond to commands and not not channel 2. Turns out, I also had to replace the microbasic hex files from my windows pc Roboteq+ Software as the script configures the motor controller and channel 2 was not configured.

Thanks for the response maya, thats exactly what I'm planning to do. I'm using this reference http://answers.ros.org/question/9197/for-new-package-downloading/ to git clone to my ~/catkin_ws/src/. Ofcourse I'll have to edit it for hydro. Good to know I'm heading the right way :)

I'm using the Roboteq SDC2130 Motor Controller and using the ros-hydro-roboteq-driver package and supporting packages (i.e. msgs and diagnostics) to control my motor controller. The package only supports one channel and I'm trying to have ROS support two channels (SDC2130 is a dual channel controller). Before I create a new catkin package of ros-hydro-roboteq-driver and edit the package (I don't want to edit this in /opt/ros/hydro), I was wondering if I'm missing an obvious way to access both channels. (?)

Currently I'm planning to output something like:

rostopic pub -1 (roboteq_cmd_topic) (topic_type) -- (output for Motor 1) (output for Motor 2)

To do this, I'll have to change <topic type=""> from float32 to float32[] (MultiArray), but it seems like I'll have to edit the driver code too. I'd hate to have missed an obvious solution to this, if someone is aware of the solution, please steer me in the right direction. Also if there is a better alternative to the editing the code, I'd really appreciate your advise. I'm new to ROS (2 weeks) and trying to expose myself to it with hardware that I have.

I'm using a Roboteq SDC2130 Motor Controller for a project and I've downloaded the ros-hydro-roboteq-driver, ros-hydro-roboteq-msgs and ros-hydro-roboteq-diagnostics packages.

source: github(dot)com/g/roboteq

I've been able to run the controller with the preinstalled MicroBasic source code but I can't figure out where I should save the a new/edited MicroBasic hex script. The README.md file in github suggests that I save it in /roboteq_driver/mbs.. but I can't find this directory in my roboteq_driver rospack. Where should I save my hex files?

I was also trying to clone this externally (not in '/opt/ros/hydro/share' but in '~/roboteq') and try to rosmake the package from scratch, but I'm a bit confused on how to go about it with the mbs directory? Any suggestions?

I'm quite new to ROS and I'd appreciate it if some could guide me in right way...