This tutorial will help setting up the takktile_ros package for ROS (Robot Operating System).
ROS homepage
Installation
This tutorial assumes that ROS is installed on an Ubuntu machine.
We tried it on 12.04, but should work on other versions as well.
The source code is hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/harvardbiorobotics/takktile_ros
1) Install TakkFast USB drivers
TakkFast USB (see http://www.takktile.com/tutorial:takkfast)
This will install TakkTile.py which is a dependency (currently included as a symlink in takktile_ros — need to fix this)
2) Get the code
Open a new terminal (Alt+t)
git clone --recursive https://github.com/harvardbiorobotics/takktile_ros.git
3) Add the package path to the ROS_PACKAGE_PATH
export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=$ROS_PACKAGE_PATH:/home
Or add it to the bash
echo "ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=\$ROS_PACKAGE_PATH:/home" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
4) Compile
cd takktile_ros
rosmake
5) set USB permissions
sudo cp 71-takktile.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
Viewing Topics
0) Make sure that Roscore runs in a different terminal
roscore
1) Run
rosrun takktile_ros takktile_node.py
2) Check how many sensors and which are connected
rostopic echo /takktile/sensor_info
3) Show raw values
rostopic echo /takktile/raw
4) To zero thermal drift
rosservice call /takktile/zero
This will set the zero point for the 'calibrated' topic (the scale may vary between sensors)
rostopic echo /takktile/calibrated
5) Save the values into a bag
rosbag record -O takktile_check.bag -a
6) Plot the data
Use the rxtools package to plot the data
First, install the rx package, where the <distro> is the name of the distribution (e.g. groovy)
sudo apt-get install ros-<distro>-rx
Then type:
rqt_plot /takktile/raw/pressure[1]:pressure[2]:pressure[3]
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