raspicam_node

ROS node for the Raspberry Pi Camera Module. This version is adapted for the PiROSBot. Thanks to UbiquityRobotics, SV-ROS and fpasteau!

Build Intructions

This node is primarily supported on ROS Kinetic, and Ubuntu 16.04, and that is what these instuctions presume.

Go to your catkin_ws cd ~/catkin_ws/src.

Download the source for this node by running

git clone https://github.com/jerabek/raspicam_node.git

There are some dependencies that are not recognized by ros, so you need to create the file /etc/ros/rosdep/sources.list.d/pirosbot.list and add this to it.

yaml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jerabek/raspicam_node/indigo/raspberry-pi.yaml

Then run rosdep update.

Install the ros dependencies,

cd ~/catkin_ws
rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro=kinetic -y

Compile the code with catkin_make.

Running the Node

Once you have the node built, you can run it using a launch file.

Run roslaunch raspicam_node camerav2_640x480.launch

Use rqt_image_view to view the published image.

Troubleshooting

1. Make sure that your user is in the video group by running groups|grep video.

2. If you get an error saying: Failed to create camera component, make sure that the camera cable is properly seated on both ends, and that the cable is not missing any pins. If this doesn't work update your firmware with rpi-update.

Node Information

Topics:

• /raspicam_node/compressed: Publishes sensor_msgs/CompressedImage with jpeg from the camera module.

• /raspicam_node/camera_info: Publishes sensor_msgs/CameraInfo camera info for each frame.

Services:

• /set_camera_info: Used to update calibration info for the camera.

Parameters:

• camera_frame_id (tf frame): The frame identifier to associate the camera.

• camera_info_url: The URL of the camera calibration .yaml file.

• camera_name (string): The name of the camera, should match with name in camera_info file.

• framerate (fps): Framerate to capture at. Maximum 90fps

• height (pixels): Height to capture images at.

• width (pixels): Width to capture images at.

• quality (0-100): Quality of the captured images.

Calibration

The raspicam_node package contains a calibration file for the raspberry PI camera versions 1 and 2. The procedure for calibrating a camera is only necessary if you change the lens or image size used.

A tutorial Monocular Camera Calibration tutorial shows how to calibrate a single camera.

The 8x6 checkerboard and the 7x6 checkerboard are rather large and require specialized printers to print out at full scale. They can be printed on more common printer sizes with auto scaling turned on. Be sure to carefully measure the square size in millimeters and convert to meters by dividing by 1000.

A camera calibration can be run with the following commands:

$ rosrun image_transport republish compressed in:=/raspicam_node/image raw out:=/raspicam_node/image
$ rosrun camera_calibration cameracalibrator.py --size 8x6 --square 0.74 image:=/raspicam_node/image camera:=/raspicam_node

By default the camera calibrations are saved in the camera_info directory of this package.