README.md

Fixposition Driver ROS1

ROS (both ROS1 and ROS2) Driver for Fixposition Vision-RTK 2

Dependencies

• Eigen3, tested with version 3.3.7

• Boost, tested with version 1.65.0

• CMake

• tf ROS1 library

• eigen_conversions ROS1 library

• Catkin for ROS1

• fixposition_gnss_tf: Fixposition GNSS Transformation Lib

This driver operates as a ROS node, connecting to either a TCP or serial stream of Fixposition Vision-RTK output data, see Fixposition ASCII messages and the Integration Manual.

Installing dependencies on Ubuntu system

 sudo apt update
 sudo apt install -y build-essential cmake
 sudo apt install -y libeigen3-dev
 sudo apt install -y ros-{ROS_DISTRO}-tf ros-{ROS_DISTRO}-eigen-conversions

Installation

To install the node, extract / clone the code and fixposition_gnss_tf to your catkin workspace's src folder:

# The folder structure should look like this
fp_public_ws
├── src
│   ├── fixposition_driver
│   │   ├── fixposition_driver_lib
│   │   ├── fixposition_driver_ros1
│   │   ├── fixposition_driver_ros2 # will be ignore by catkin
│   ├── fixposition_gnss_tf

make sure you have sourced the setup.bash from ros:

/opt/ros/{ROS_DISTRO}/setup.bash, for example

source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash

and build it with:

catkin build fixposition_driver_ros1

This will build the ROS1 driver node and all its dependencies.

Then source your development environment:

source devel/setup.bash

Launch the Driver

• To launch the node in serial mode, run:

  roslaunch fixposition_driver_ros1 serial.launch

• In TCP mode (Wi-Fi):

  roslaunch fixposition_driver_ros1 tcp.launch

• In TCP mode (Ethernet):

  roslaunch fixposition_driver_ros1 tcp.launch

To change the settings of TCP (IP, Port) or Serial (Baudrate, Port) connections, check the launch/tcp.yaml and launch/serial.yaml files.

Check the messages

• Check rostopics:

  rostopic list

  there should be topics under the /fixposition namespace, for example:

  /fixposition/corrimu
  /fixposition/navsatfix
  /fixposition/odometry
  /fixposition/odometry_enu
  /fixposition/poiimu
  /fixposition/rawimu
  /fixposition/vrtk

• Check published message in the topic, for example the VRTK message: rostopic echo /fixposition/vrtk