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Spinnaker ROS2 Camera Driver

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2

This package provides a ROS2 driver for Teledyne/FLIR cameras using the Spinnaker SDK. For hardware-synchronized cameras use the Spinnaker synchronized camera driver by following the link from the flir driver repository.

NOTE: This driver is not written or supported by FLIR.

Tested Configurations

Cameras

The following cameras have been successfully used with this driver:

  • Blackfly S (USB3, GigE)
  • Blackfly (GigE)
  • Grashopper (USB3)
  • Oryx (reported working)
  • Chameleon (USB3, tested on firmware v1.13.3.00)
  • FLIR AX5 (GigE)

Note: if you get other cameras to work, please report back, ideally submit a pull request with the camera config file you have created.

Platforms

  • ROS2 Galactic under Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (no longer actively tested)
  • ROS2 Humble/Iron under Ubuntu 22.04 LTS ROS2 Rolling/Jazzy under Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
  • Spinnaker 3.1.0.79 (other versions may work as well but this is what the continuous integration builds are using)

How to install

This driver can be used with or without installing the Spinnaker SDK, but installing the Spinnaker SDK is recommended because during its installation the USB kernel configuration is modified as needed and suitable access permissions are granted (udev rules). If you choose to not use the Spinnaker SDK, you must either run the linux setup script by running ros2 run spinnaker_camera_driver linux_setup_flir or perform the required setup steps manually, see Setting up Linux without Spinnaker SDK. Without these setup steps, the ROS driver will not detect the camera. So you must either install the Spinnaker SDK (which also gives you the useful spinview tool), or follow the manual setup steps mentioned earlier.

Installing from packages

For some architectures and ros distributions you can simply install an apt package:

sudo apt install ros-${ROS_DISTRO}-spinnaker-camera-driver

The package will bring its own set of Spinnaker SDK libraries, so you don’t necessarily have to install the SDK, but it’s recommended, see above.

Building from source

  1. Install the FLIR spinnaker driver. If you skip this part, the driver will attempt to download the Spinnaker SDK automatically to obtain the header files and libraries.
  2. Prepare the ROS2 driver build: Make sure you have your ROS2 environment sourced:
source /opt/ros/<my_ros_distro>/setup.bash

Create a workspace (~/ws), clone this repo:

mkdir -p ~/ws/src
cd ~/ws/src
git clone --branch humble-devel https://github.com/ros-drivers/flir_camera_driver
cd ..

To automatically install all packages that the flir_camera_driver packages depends upon, run this at the top of your workspace:

rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src
  1. Build the driver and source the workspace:
colcon build --symlink-install --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON
. install/setup.bash

How to use

Topics

Published:

  • ~/image_raw: the camera image (image_transport)
  • ~/image_raw/camera_info: camera calibration
  • ~/meta: meta data message containing e.g. exposure time.

Subscribed:

  • ~/control: (only when enable_external_control is set to True)
    for external control exposure time and gain.

Parameters

The driver itself has no notion of the camera type (Blackfly, Grasshopper etc), nor does it explicitly support any features that the FLIR cameras have. Rather, all camera features (called Spinnaker Nodes) are mapped to ROS parameters via a yaml file that is specific to that camera type. On startup the driver reads this parameter definition file. In the config directory there are some parameter definition files for popular cameras (blackfly_s.yaml etc) that expose some of the more frequently used features like frame rate, gain, etc. You can add more features by providing your own parameter definition file, see How to develop your own camera configuration file. The ROS driver code is just a thin wrapper around the Spinnaker SDK, and should allow you to access all features available in FLIR’s spinview program.

In addition to the parameters defined in the .yaml files, the driver has the following ROS parameters:

  • adjust_timestamp: see About time stamps below for more documentation. Default: false.
  • acquisition_timeout: timeout for expecting frames (in seconds). If no frame is received for this time, the driver restarts. Default is 3.
  • buffer_queue_size: max number of images to queue internally before shoving them into the ROS output queue. Decouples the Spinnaker SDK thread from the ROS publishing thread. Default: 4.
  • camerainfo_url: where to find the camera calibration yaml file.
  • compute_brightness: if true, compute image brightness and publish it in meta data message. This is required when running with the synchronized driver, but incurs extra CPU load. Default: false.
  • connect_while_subscribed: if true, connect to the SDK and pull data from the camera only while subscribers to image or meta topics are present. This feature reduces compute load and link utilization while no ROS subscribers are present, but adds latency on subscription: after a subscription the first image will be published up to 1s later than without this option.
  • dump_node_map: set this to true to get a dump of the node map. Default: false.
  • enable_external_control: set this to true to enable external exposure control. This feature is being deprecated, do not use. Default: false.
  • frame_id: the ROS frame id to put in the header of the published image messages.
  • image_queue_size: ROS output queue size (number of frames). Default: 4
  • parameter_file: location of the .yaml file defining the camera (blackfly_s.yaml etc)
  • serial_number: serial number of the camera. If you don’t know it, put in anything you like and the driver will croak with an error message, telling you what cameras serial numbers are available

Example usage

The driver comes with an example launch file (driver_node.launch.py) that you can customize as needed.

# launch with --show-args to print out all available launch arguments
ros2 launch spinnaker_camera_driver driver_node.launch.py camera_type:=blackfly_s serial:="'20435008'"

Using multiple cameras at the same time

The FLIR Spinnaker does not support two programs accessing the Spinnaker SDK at the same time, even if two different cameras are accessed. Strange things happen, in particular with USB3 cameras. You can however run multiple cameras in the same address space using ROS2's Composable Node concept, see the example launch file multiple_cameras.launch.py.

If you are using hardware synchronized cameras please use the spinnaker_synchronized_camera_driver, which will associate the images triggered by the same sync pulse with each other and give them identical time stamps.

About time stamps

By default the driver will set the ROS header time stamp to be the time when the image was delivered by the SDK. Such time stamps are not very precise and may lag depending on host CPU load. However the driver has a feature to use the much more accurate sensor-provided camera time stamps. These are then converted to ROS time stamps by estimating the offset between ROS and sensor time stamps via a simple moving average. For the adjustment to work the camera must be configured to send time stamps, and the adjust_timestamp flag must be set to true, and the relevant field in the “chunk” must be populated by the camera. For the Blackfly S the parameters look like this:

'adjust_timestamp': True,
'chunk_mode_active': True,
'chunk_selector_timestamp': 'Timestamp',
'chunk_enable_timestamp': True,

Network Configuration for GigE cameras

The Spinnaker SDK abstracts away the transport layer so a GigE camera should work the same way as USB3: you point it to the serial number and you're set.

There are a few GigE-specific settings in the Transport Layer Control group that are important, in particular enabling jumbo frames from the camera per FLIR’s recommendations. The following line in your camera-specific config file will create a ROS2 parameter gev_scps_packet_size:

gev_scps_packet_size int "TransportLayerControl/GigEVision/GevSCPSPacketSize"

that you can then set in your ROS2 launch file:

"gev_scps_packet_size": 9000

As far as setting up the camera’s IP address: you can set up DHCP on your network or configure a static persistent IP using spinview in “Transport Layer Control”>“GigE Vision”. Check the box for “Current IP Configuration Persistent IP” first to enable it, then set your desired addresses under “Persistent IP Address”, “Persistent Subnet Mask” and “Persistent Gateway”. NOTE: these look like regular IPs, but to set them you have to enter the 32-bit integer representation of the IP address/mask. By hand/calculator: convert the IP octets from decimal to hex, then combine them and convert to a 32-bit integer, ex: 192.168.0.1 -> 0xC0A80001 -> 3232235521.

The “Transport Layer Control”>“GigE Vision” section of spinview is also where you’ll find that “SCPS Packet Size” setting, which you can change when not capturing frames, and verify it works in spinview and without needing to spin up a custom launch file to get started, though it helps, and you’ll probably want one anyway to specify your camera’s serial number.

If you do not set up DHCP or set a static IP, your camera will probably assign itself an IP address according to the Link-Local address scheme. The address will be 169.254.xxx.xxx, where the x's are randomly generated. In your computer's network settings, change the IPv4 Method for the port that connects to your camera to "Link-Local Only." (You could also set the IPv4 Method to "Manual" with an address of 169.254.100.1 and a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0).

For more tips on GigE setup look at FLIR’s support pages here and here.

How to develop your own camera configuration file

The camera configuration file defines the available ROS parameters, and how they relate to the corresponding Spinnaker nodes. The Spinnaker API follows the GenICam standard, where each property (e.g. exposure mode, gain, …) of the camera is represented by a node. Many properties are of integer or floating point type, but some are enumerations (“enum”). Before you modify a configuration file you can explore the Spinnaker Nodes by using the spinview applications that comes with the Spinnaker SDK. Once you know what property you want to expose as a ROS parameter, you add a mapping entry to the yaml configuration file, e.g.:

- name: image_width
  type: int
  node: ImageFormatControl/Width

With this entry in place, the ROS driver will now accept an integer parameter of name image_width, and whenever image_width changes, it will apply this change to the Spinnaker Node ImageFormatControl/Width.

Enumerations (enum) parameters are slightly trickier than float and integers because their values are restricted to a set of strings. Any other strings will be rejected by the Spinnaker API. Please document the valid enum strings in the configuration file, e.g.:

- name: line1_linemode  # valid values: "Input", "Output"
  type: enum
  node: DigitalIOControl/LineMode

The hard part is often finding the node name, in the last example "DigitalIOControl/LineMode". It usually follows by removing spaces from the spinview display names. However, in the SpinView GUI you can also see the true name by double-clicking on a node under the features tab and looking for "Name" (as opposed to "Display Name"). If that doesn't work, launch the driver with the dump_node_map parameter set to "True" and look at the output for inspiration.

NOTE: !!!! THE ORDER OF PARAMETER DEFINITION MATTERS !!!!

On node startup, the parameters will be declared and initialized in the order listed in the yaml file. For instance you must list the enum exposure_auto before the float exposure_time because on startup, exposure_auto must first be set to Off before exposure_time can be set, or else the camera refuses to set the exposure time.

Known issues

  1. If you run multiple drivers in separate nodes that all access USB based devices, starting a new driver will stop the image acquisition of currently running drivers. There is an ugly workaround for this currently implemented: if image delivery stops for more than acquisition_timeout seconds, the acquisition is restarted. This operation may not be thread safe so the driver already running could possibly crash. This issue can be avoided by running all drivers in the same address space with a composable node (see stereo launch file for example).

Troubleshooting/Common Issues

  1. Driver doesn't find camera. This is usually due to incorrect permissions, missing udev files etc. Install the Spinnaker SDK and get SpinView to work.

  2. Driver doesn't publish images and/or warns about incomplete images for GigE cameras

    rate [Hz] in  39.76 out   0.00 drop   0% INCOMPLETE 100%

    The reason for the incomplete images is usually that you are exceeding the network bandwidth, causing packets to be dropped such that incomplete frames arrive at the host. Check for the MTU on all network cards and switches to be 9000 (jumbo frames). Sometimes the MTU for switches has to be set higher. Also make sure the GigE camera has jumbo frames enabled, i.e. gev_scps_packet_size is set to 9000.

  3. Driver reports dropped packages. This means the connected subscriber is not picking up fast enough. Check CPU utilization of subscribers and the available network bandwidth between driver and subscriber.

  4. Image seems laggy when viewed. This is usually not a camera driver issue, but related to ROS2 RMW or the image viewer. Check CPU utilization on displaying host and network bandwidth.

  5. Camera doesn't reach desired frame rate. First play around in SpinView to reproduce the problem there. For GigE cameras, check network bandwidth. Switch to Bayer images to reduce network bandwidth by a factor of three. Check your exposure time. The frame rate cannot exceed the inverse of the exposure time.

Setting up Linux without Spinnaker SDK

Only use these instructions if you did not install the Spinnaker SDK on your machine.

  1. Somewhere in your .bashrc file, set the following env variable:
export SPINNAKER_GENTL64_CTI=/opt/ros/${ROS_DISTRO}/lib/spinnaker-gentl/Spinnaker_GenTL.cti
  1. Add the “flirimaging” group and make yourself a member of it
sudo addgroup flirimaging
sudo usermod -a -G flirimaging ${USER}
  1. Bump the usbfs memory limits

The following was taken from here. Edit the file /etc/default/grub and change the line default to:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash usbcore.usbfs_memory_mb=1000"

Then

sudo update-grub

If your system does not have /etc/default/grub, create the file /etc/rc.local, and change its permissions to ‘executable’. Then write the following text to it:

#!/bin/sh -e
sh -c 'echo 1000 > /sys/module/usbcore/parameters/usbfs_memory_mb'

exit 0
  1. Setup udev rules
echo 'SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1e10", GROUP="flirimaging"' | sudo tee -a /etc/udev/rules.d/40-flir-spinnaker.rules
echo 'SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="1724", GROUP="flirimaging"' | sudo tee -a /etc/udev/rules.d/40-flir-spinnaker.rules
sudo service udev restart
sudo udevadm trigger
  1. Logout and log back in (or better, reboot)

sudo reboot

How to contribute

Please provide feedback if you cannot get your camera working or if the code does not compile for you. Feedback is crucial for the software development process. However, before opening issues on github first verify that the problem is not present when using spinview.

Bug fixes and config files for new cameras are greatly appreciated. Before submitting a pull request, run this to see if your commit passes some basic lint tests:

colcon test --packages-select spinnaker_camera_driver && colcon test-result --verbose

License

This software is issued under the Apache License Version 2.0. The file cmake/TargetArch.cmake is released under a custom license (see file).