First example

This tutorial teaches you how to run the first QRB ROS application. It is intended for users who want to quickly run the camera on the board and get ready to use Rviz on an Ubuntu PC on the same LAN to see the real-time output of the camera.

Prerequisites

• Set up your environment. See Environment setup.

• Set up QIRP SDK.

Running camera

Download Code

1. Create a path to store the code on the Host PC.

2. Run the following commands to clone the code repository in this path.

git clone https://github.com/quic-qrb-ros/lib_mem_dmabuf.git
git clone https://github.com/quic-qrb-ros/qrb_ros_transport.git
git clone https://github.com/quic-qrb-ros/qrb_ros_camera.git
git clone https://github.com/quic-qrb-ros/qrb_ros_colorspace_convert.git

Build

Ensure that you have set up the QIRP SDK environment before building the code.

Then, you can use the following commands to build the code in QIRP SDK.

export AMENT_PREFIX_PATH="${OECORE_TARGET_SYSROOT}/usr;${OECORE_NATIVE_SYSROOT}/usr"
export PYTHONPATH=${PYTHONPATH}:${OECORE_TARGET_SYSROOT}/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages

colcon build --merge-install --cmake-args \
  -DPython3_ROOT_DIR=${OECORE_TARGET_SYSROOT}/usr \
  -DPython3_NumPy_INCLUDE_DIR=${OECORE_TARGET_SYSROOT}/usr/lib/python3.10/site-packages/numpy/core/include \
  -DSYSROOT_LIBDIR=${OECORE_TARGET_SYSROOT}/usr/lib \
  -DSYSROOT_INCDIR=${OECORE_TARGET_SYSROOT}/usr/include \
  -DPYTHON_SOABI=cpython-310-aarch64-linux-gnu -DCMAKE_STAGING_PREFIX=$(pwd)/install \
  -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$(pwd)/install/share \
  -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF

Push and install

Run these commands to push and install the output SDK on the device.

cd install
tar czvf qrb_ros_example.tar.gz lib share
scp qrb_ros_example.tar.gz root@[ip-addr]:/opt/
ssh root@[ip-addr]
(ssh) tar -zxf /opt/qrb_ros_example.tar.gz -C /opt/qcom/qirp-sdk/usr/

Run

Firstly, we need to create launch.py file that looks like:

import launch
import os
from ament_index_python.packages import get_package_share_directory
from launch_ros.actions import ComposableNodeContainer
from launch_ros.actions import Node
from launch_ros.descriptions import ComposableNode

def generate_launch_description():
    camera_info_config_file_path = os.path.join(
        get_package_share_directory('qrb_ros_camera'),
        'config', 'camera_info_imx577.yaml'
    )
    camera_info_path = camera_info_config_file_path
    print(camera_info_path)
    """Generate launch description with multiple components."""
    container = ComposableNodeContainer(
        name='my_container',
        namespace='',
        package='rclcpp_components',
        executable='component_container',
        composable_node_descriptions=[
            ComposableNode(
                package='qrb_ros_camera',
                plugin='qrb_ros::camera::CameraNode',
                name='camera_node',
                remappings=[('/image', '/image_raw')],
                parameters=[{
                    'camera_info_path': camera_info_path,
                    'fps': 30,
                    'width': 1920,
                    'height': 1080,
                    'cameraId': 0,
                    'publish_latency_type': 1,
                }]
            ),
            ComposableNode(
                package='qrb_ros_colorspace_convert',
                plugin='qrb_ros::colorspace_convert::ColorspaceConvertNode',
                parameters=[{
                    'conversion_type': "nv12_to_rgb8",
                    'latency_fps_test': False,
                }],
                extra_arguments=[{'use_intra_process_comms': True, 'log_level': 'INFO'}],
            )
        ],
        output='screen',
    )

    return launch.LaunchDescription([container,
        Node(
            package='image_transport',
            executable='republish',
            output='screen',
            name='republish_node',
            arguments=[
                'raw',  # Input
                'compressed',  # Output
            ],
            remappings=[
                ('in', '/image'),
                ('out/compressed', '/image_compressed'),
            ]
        ),
    ])

Secondly, we need to push this file to device.

scp launch.py root@[ip-addr]:/opt/

Thirdly, we will use these cmd to run it on the device.

ssh root@[ip-addr]
(ssh) export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/dev/socket/weston/
(ssh) export WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-1
(ssh) export HOME=/opt
(ssh) source /opt/qcom/qirp-sdk/qirp-setup.sh
(ssh) export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=1
(ssh) source /usr/bin/ros_setup.bash
(ssh) ros2 launch /opt/launch.py

Get the realtime image in Ubuntu PC

Prerequisites

• Set up an Ubuntu PC to be on the same LAN as the device.

• Install ROS2 Desktop on the Ubuntu PC following steps in Install ROS.

1. Use these commands in the first terminal to decompress the image.

   source /opt/ros/<ros-version>/setup.sh
   export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=1
   ros2 run image_transport republish compressed raw --ros-args -r in/compressed:=/image_compressed -r out:=/image_repub
   

2. You can obtain real-time images from the image_repub topic in Rviz2.