ROSboard

ROS node that runs a web server on your robot. Run the node, point your web browser at http://your-robot-ip:8888/ and you get nice visualizations.

This repo is currently under heavy overhauling; visualizations for NavSatFix, PointCloud2, LaserScan, Odom will be added soon. Drag-and-drop ROS bag support is also planned, but for now you can launch the node and play a bag to get visualizations.

ROS1/ROS2 compatible. This package will work in either ROS version.

Mobile friendly. Designed so you can walk around next to your robot with a phone while viewing ROS topics.

Light weight. Doesn't depending on much. Consumes extremely little resources when it's not actually being used.

Easily extensible. Easily code a visualization for a custom type by only adding only one .js file here and referncing it inside the top of index.js.

You can run it on your desktop too and play a ROS bag.

Also be sure to check out my terminal visualization tool, ROSshow.

Prerequisites

sudo pip3 install tornado
sudo pip3 install simplejpeg  # recommended, but ROSboard can fall back to cv2 or PIL instead

If you intend to use this with melodic or earlier, you also need rospkg to allow python3 ROS1 nodes to work.

sudo pip3 install rospkg      # required for melodic and earlier distros

Running it the easy way (without installing it into a workspace)

source /opt/ros/YOUR_ROS1_OR_ROS2_DISTRO/setup.bash
./run

Point your web browser at http://localhost:8888 (or replace localhost with your robot's IP) and you're good to go.

Installing it as a ROS1 package

1. Run ./configure-ros1 after cloning this repo. It should now be a valid ROS1 package. Throw it inside your catkin workspace, then run catkin_make, source devel/setup.bash, the usual stuff.

2. rosrun rosboard rosboard_node or put it in your launch file

Installing it as a ROS2 package

1. Run ./configure-ros2 after cloning this repo. It should now be a valid ROS2 package. Throw it inside your colcon workspace, then run colcon build, source install/setup.bash, the usual stuff.

2. ros2 run rosboard rosboard_node or put it in your launch file

FAQ

How do I write a visualizer for a custom type?

Just add a new viewer class that inherits from Viewer, following the examples of the default viewers. Then add it to the imports at the top of index.js and you're done.

How does this work in both ROS1 and ROS2?

I make use of rospy2, a shim library I wrote that behaves like ROS1's rospy but speaks ROS2 to the system, communicating with rclpy in the background. This allows using the same ros node code for both ROS1 and ROS2, and only needs slight differences in the package metadata files (package.xml and CMakeLists.txt, hence the configure scripts). It does mean that everything is written in ROS1 style, but it ensures compatibility with both ROS1 and ROS2 without having to maintain multiple branches or repos.

Why don't you use rosbridge-suite or Robot Web Tools?

They are a great project, I initially used it, but moved away from it in favor of a custom Tornado-based websocket bridge, for a few reasons:

• It's less easy to be ROS1 and ROS2 compatible when depending on these libraries. The advantage of doing my own websocket implementation in Tornado is that the custom websocket API speaks exactly the same language regardless of whether the back-end is ROS1 or ROS2.

• Custom implementation allows me to use lossy compression on large messages (e.g. Image or PointCloud2) before sending it over the websocket, robot-side timestamps on all messages, and possibly throttling in the future.

• I don't want the browser to have "superuser" access to the ROS system, only have the functionality necessary for this to work.

• I also want to add a basic username/password authorization at some point in the future.

• Many times in the past, the robot web tools are not available immediately on apt-get when ROS distros are released, and one has to wait months. This depends on only some standard Python libraries like tornado and optionally PIL and does not depend on any distro-specific ROS packages, so it should theoretically work immediately when new ROS distros are released.