In theory OpenHaptics should support many devices across different OSs but in practice it's not always easy to find and install the drivers for your haptic devices. We focus primarily on Linux but the code should work on Windows as well. On Linux, we tested a limited number of devices:
- SensAble PHANTOM Omni, i.e. the original system with a FireWire interface.
- Ethernet based Touch. This system has been sold under the brands Geomagic and 3DS
- USB based Geomagic Touch Stylus
This is the original Omni and many labs have some of these collecting dust on shelves. These systems use a FireWire interface. FireWire is a bit dated but it's still possible to find cheap adapters for modern desktop computers (~$50). It's a bit more challenging to find support for laptops.
If you have used the same computer with the 3DS drivers for the Ethernet based Touch, remove these drivers. There is a couple of scripts provided in this repository to remove the drivers and OpenHaptics (in directory 'utils').
The main issue with the SensAble Omni is that the drivers for a modern Linux are hard to find. The vendor's version is rather old and incompatible with most recent Linux distributions. You can find plenty of how-tos online to patch the driver installation but these tend to be incomplete. So we created a nifty little script to do the work: https://github.com/jhu-cisst-external/phantom-omni-1394-drivers
The Phantom Omni uses a FireWire port to communicate. When connecting your device to your computer, a pseudo device will be added to the /dev directory. Usually something like /dev/fw1, /dev/fw2 or higher. Using the command dmesg -w can help identify which device is used. First start dmesg -w in a terminal, then plug your device. You should see something like:
[33217.952060] firewire_core 0000:04:00.0: phy config: new root=ffc1, gap_count=5
[33224.507217] firewire_core 0000:04:00.0: phy config: new root=ffc1, gap_count=5
[33224.691773] firewire_core 0000:04:00.0: created device fw1: GUID 000b990082b6980c, S400
Check the file permissions on said device, e.g.,
crw------- 1 root root 243, 0 Mar 22 14:10 /dev/fw0
crw-rw---- 1 root plugdev 243, 1 Mar 23 18:19 /dev/fw1By default the drivers are configured so the OS sets the ownership of /dev/fw1 to root and the group to plugdev. To grant permissions to read and write to the device, use the command sudo adduser <user_id> plugdev to add users to the plugdev group. Please note that the user has to logout/login for the new group membership to take effect.
It is important to first run the SensAble provided configuration tool to make sure your device is properly detected and to name it (names are important if you have more than one Omni on the same computer). To do so, you will have to run the PHANToMConfiguration program with admin privileges:
sudo PHANToMConfigurationlibglw, you should install the package libglw1-mesa (for Ubuntu 18, name might be different on other distributions).
In the application, select the PHANToM Model. You should see a serial number appear on the bottom right if everything is working fine. Click Add... and then give your device a name (e.g. "left"). Don't forget to Apply before quitting using Ok.
In theory, one should be able to have multiple Phantom Omnis on a single computer but so far we were not able to do this on Linux. If you do figure out a solution, please let us know. As a stop gap solution, one can use ROS as middleware and 2 computers, one for each Omni.
The Geomagic/3DS looks like the original PHANTOM Omni except that the base is a couple of inches taller and has Ethernet ports instead of FireWire. The drivers from the vendor (3DS) should be used along their version of OpenHaptics (3.4 on Linux). Some of these devices might come with a USB based Ethernet adaptor so they can be used with computer. At the end, the actual communication is performed over an Ethernet port configured with Link-Local.
If you have used the same computer with the FireWire drivers, remove the older drivers and OpenHaptics for FireWire based devices. There is an uninstall script that comes with the FireWire drivers.
Driver install and configuration:
- Linux page with links to Open Haptics v3.4 and Touch Device Driver v2019.2.15: https://support.3dsystems.com/s/article/OpenHaptics-for-Linux-Developer-Edition-v34?language=en_US
- Linux instructions: https://s3.amazonaws.com/dl.3dsystems.com/binaries/Sensable/Linux/Installation+Instructions.pdf
Removing files:
- To remove the 3DS provided SDK, use script
utils/uninstall-3ds-openhaptics-3.4.shfrom this repository - To remove the 3DS provided drivers (
2019_2_15) use the scriptutils/uninstall-3ds-touch-2019.shfrom this repository
Use the provided Touch_Setup and Touch_Diagnostic to configure and test your device.
We got no luck getting this running, including with the 2019 3DS drivers. See older notes in 3DS_USB_Touch.md if you want to give it a try.