Seek ROS Driver. This is a rudimentary ROS driver to run a Seek thermal camera leveraging the Seek SDK. Tested with the Seek Linux SDK 3.8.0.0 using a S304SP Mosaic Core Starter Kit and ROS Melodic
This package provides two primary functions:
- It publishes the display Image, filtered Image, thermography image and telemetry data at a set interval
- It provides a service to restart the camera
Seek SDK [Tested with 3.8.0.0]
ROS [Tested with Melodic]
OpenCV [Tested with 4.5.1]
mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/howde-robotics/seek_driver.git
cd ..
catkin_make
source devel/setup.sh
roscore
Plug in your Seek Camera. In a new terminal
cd ~/catkin_ws
source devel/setup.sh
roslaunch seek_driver seek_driver.launch
In a new terminal
cd ~/catkin_ws
source devel/setup.sh
rviz
Navigate to the 'add' at the bottom left, select 'By Topic'. Under seek_camera/displayImage select 'Image'. Select 'Okay'.
the rviz window should looking similar to this:
Imagery is published using cv_bridge and image_transport
/seek_camera/displayImage Is the display Image
/seek_camera/filteredImage Is the filtered image
/seek_camera/temperatureImageCelcius Is the thermography image
The data types of the images are variable (BGRA32 for display image, 16 bit unsigned int for filtered image, 32 bit float for thermography). If inspected using rostopic echo, they will appear to be 8 bit unsigned int values. This is an artifact of the image_transport library. Once the images are decoded on the other side, they will return to their native formats.
Telemetry information is published using a custom msg defined in msgs, over the topic /seek_camera/telemetry
This node also provides a ROS service to restart the camera is if was disconnect or experiencing errors. This srv is defined in srvs and available under seek_driver/restartCamera
An example use: Launch the ROS node with the seek camerea NOT plugged in.
roslaunch seek_driver seek_driver.launch
This will show a ROS error and no information will be streamed. Plug in the camera and call the restart service
rosservice call /seek_camera/restart_seek
The camera should now be operational
Decoding imagery is very simple after it has been published using cv_bridge. A subscriber callback of the following variety is effective:
void SeekListener::displayDataCallback(const sensor_msgs::ImageConstPtr& msg)
{
cv::Mat displayImage = cv_bridge::toCvShare(msg, "bgra8")->image;
//Do something with the displayImage, which is a gain controlled
//and colored version of the filtered Data
}
The second parameter of toCvShare is the cv_bridge encoding string. For display imagery, it is "bgra8", for thermography images is "32FC1" and for filtered imagery is "mono16"