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ROS2 StarlingV2 image streaming

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  • A Offline
    A Offline
    aidens
    wrote on last edited by
    #1

    Hi,

    I am trying to stream images from the hires camera over ros using the starlingV2 drone for a robotics application. I am facing a lot of issues due to network bandwidth.

    I would like to know what the best approach to stream images from the hires_small_color camera stream to a host computer at a modest rate of 5hz. I have tried the following approaches

    Simply streaming the raw images over a ros topic at a rate higher than 1 hz seems to lead to significant latency and lag which at worst case has crashed my qvio and caused the drone to crash. Running iperf seems to suggest a bandwidth of about 200Mbits between my host computer and the drone, so I imagine the issue here is in the serialization of the images.

    Using a RTSP server seems to stream the images quickly, but for my use case I require accurate and aligned timestamps with QVIO.

    I have tried to subscribe to the /hires_small_encoded topic, but the entire mpa_to_ros2 program crashes with this error.

    Interface hires_small_encoded now publishing
    terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::bad_alloc'
      what():  std::bad_alloc
    

    I recently reflashed a recalibrated my starling2 drone. The following are the outputs of voxl-version

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    system-image: 1.7.8-M0054-14.1a-perf
    kernel:       #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat May 18 00:10:25 UTC 2024 4.19.125
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    hw platform:  M0054
    mach.var:     1.0.1
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    voxl-suite:   1.3.3
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    

    I am looking for any advice as to how to stream the hires_small images from the drone to a host computer at around 5hz.

    G 1 Reply Last reply
    1
    • A aidens

      Hi,

      I am trying to stream images from the hires camera over ros using the starlingV2 drone for a robotics application. I am facing a lot of issues due to network bandwidth.

      I would like to know what the best approach to stream images from the hires_small_color camera stream to a host computer at a modest rate of 5hz. I have tried the following approaches

      Simply streaming the raw images over a ros topic at a rate higher than 1 hz seems to lead to significant latency and lag which at worst case has crashed my qvio and caused the drone to crash. Running iperf seems to suggest a bandwidth of about 200Mbits between my host computer and the drone, so I imagine the issue here is in the serialization of the images.

      Using a RTSP server seems to stream the images quickly, but for my use case I require accurate and aligned timestamps with QVIO.

      I have tried to subscribe to the /hires_small_encoded topic, but the entire mpa_to_ros2 program crashes with this error.

      Interface hires_small_encoded now publishing
      terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::bad_alloc'
        what():  std::bad_alloc
      

      I recently reflashed a recalibrated my starling2 drone. The following are the outputs of voxl-version

      --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      system-image: 1.7.8-M0054-14.1a-perf
      kernel:       #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat May 18 00:10:25 UTC 2024 4.19.125
      --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      hw platform:  M0054
      mach.var:     1.0.1
      --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      voxl-suite:   1.3.3
      --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      

      I am looking for any advice as to how to stream the hires_small images from the drone to a host computer at around 5hz.

      G Offline
      G Offline
      gitcoder
      wrote on last edited by
      #2

      Wow, I had this same exact problem! Hopefully we get some feedback from the Devs soon.

      ModeratorM 1 Reply Last reply
      0
      • G gitcoder

        Wow, I had this same exact problem! Hopefully we get some feedback from the Devs soon.

        ModeratorM Offline
        ModeratorM Offline
        Moderator
        ModalAI Team
        wrote on last edited by
        #3

        @gitcoder You really shouldn't use ROS for this, especially when network bandwidth is limited. ROS and ROS 2 add significant network bandwidth both local to the device and over the network.

        If you really need it over ROS 2, you should use a compressimage sensor message. Here's some code we found through a search https://answers.ros.org/question/385599/how-to-publish-a-compressedimage-in-ros2-foxy/

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