Introduction

In the pheeno_ros repository, there exists two files to utilize the Raspberry Pi’s camera. The first is pi_cam_node.py and the other is raspicam_ros_pub.cpp. A cursory inspection reveals that they are the same code but written in different languages; however, one would be wrong to make that assumption. The python implementation of the camera is a node that publishes “raw” images taken from the node using Raspberry Pi’s native camera API. The other uses a library called RaspiCam, which was created by the brilliant researchers of the “Applications of Artificial Vision” (A.V.A) group located at the University of Cordoba.

By providing two ways to access the Pheeno’s camera module, our platform provides greater flexibility for researchers, enthusiasts, and students. This guide will primarily focus on installing and using the RaspiCam (NOT the python version).

Installing RaspiCam on a Raspberry Pi

NOTE: We recommend installation of the OpenCV version, and this guide will reflect that installation!

These instructions are an adapted form of those located on RaspiCam project website. If you have more questions, or would like more information about the project, we would kindly refer you to their website.

The first step is simply to download the package from here. We are currently using version 0.0.16. If a newer version is available, we suggest you use that one. Once downloaded and in your ~/Downloads folder, we will need to unzip the files.

$ cd ~/Downloads
$ unzip raspicam-x.x.x.zip

where the x.x.x will be your version number, for example:

$ cd ~/Downloads
$ unzip raspicam-0.1.6.zip

NOTE: If an error occurs reading that unzip is not a command, then you will need to install the unzip package using sudo apt-get install unzip.

Once complete, we will cd into the unziped directory, create a build folder, and then cd into the build folder.

$ cd raspicam-0.1.6
$ mkdir build
$ cd build

Finally, we will run the cmake command to prepare the program for installation.

$ cmake ..

The command will print out various messages, but one message is particularly important to the installation:

-- CREATE OPENCV MODULE=1

If the message is printed out as such, then we know that OpenCV has been incorporated into the RaspCam build. If it is equal to 0, then you will need to install the Raspbian OpenCV package. The final step to install RaspiCam are these following commands:

$ make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo ldconfig

NOTE: One issue that I have seen come up frequently is misplaced .cmake files in the /usr/local/lib/cmake folder. cd into that directory and check to see if a raspicam folder was created. If it was not create and you see Findraspicam.cmake and raspicamConfig.cmakefiles, we will need to make one and move those files into the newly created folder with the following commands:

$ cd /usr/local/lib/cmake
$ sudo mkdir raspicam
$ sudo mv raspicamConfig.cmake raspicam/
$ sudo mv Findraspicam.cmake raspicam/

Installing image_transport

Once RaspiCam is installed, we will need to install the image_transport ROS packages to use our raspicam_ros_pub.cpp file. To start, we will need to clone the package from GitHub.

$ cd ~/Downloads
$ git clone https://github.com/ros-perception/image_common.git

We do not need everything in the image_common folder, so we will move just the image_transport package to our ~/catkin_ws/src/ directory.

$ cp ~/Downloads/image_common/image_transport/ ~/catkin_ws/src/

Satisfying Other Dependencies

Before we can compile and install the image_transport package, we will need to download some other ROS pack dependencies. We will start by first changing directories to our catkin workspace’s src folder.

$ cd ~/catkin_ws/src

The next steps will require cloning the packages from their respective GitHub repositories into the src folder.

image_transport_plugins

$ git clone -b indigo-devel https://github.com/ros-perception/image_transport_plugins.git

plugin_libs

$ git clone -b indigo-devel https://github.com/ros/pluginlib.git

dynamic_reconfigure

$ git clone https://github.com/ros/dynamic_reconfigure.git

audio_common

$ git clone indigo-devel https://github.com/ros-drivers/audio_common.git

gstreamer and Other Plugins

These dependencies are distribution specific and can be installed with an apt-get call.

$ sudo apt-get install gstreamer-0.10 libgstreamer0.10-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev vorbis-tools libvorbis-dev libtheora-dev

Compiling Everything with catkin_make

To finally compile and install all the packages, we will change directory to our catkin workspace and run catkin_make and caktin_make install

$ cd ~/catkin_ws
$ caktin_make -j2
$ catkin_make install -j2