Program Robots Like a Boss
In this tutorial I’ll show you how to create a ROS node outside a catkin workspace – both for Python and Cpp. Most of the post is dedicated to linking ROS libraries to a Cpp file, because as you’ll see it’s quite simple for Python. Why would you want to create a node outside of … Read more
This tutorial is a practical guide on how to use rostopic and rosmsg command line tools to debug a ROS topic. If you wonder how to monitor the publishers you’ve created, how to easily print the data from a topic, or even how to monitor a topic’s bandwidth, this post is for you. Through a … Read more
This tutorial is a practical guide on how to use rosservice and rossrv command line tools to debug a ROS service. You know those command line tools are useful, but it’s hard for you to really understand how to use them efficiently? Well, this tutorial is for you. I’ll show you step by step exactly … Read more
WiringPi is a Cpp library for Raspberry Pi. With this library you can use many of the functionalities provided by the GPIO header: digital pins, SPI, I2C, UART, etc. Although there are many Python libraries for Raspberry Pi GPIOs, Cpp is quite a bit behind. Fortunately, there is WiringPi. In this post you’ll install WiringPi, … Read more
In this tutorial I’ll show you how to use and compile WiringPi in your ROS Cpp nodes, so you can talk to hardware devices from your ROS application. Make sure to read this introduction to WiringPi before if you don’t know the library well. The WiringPi library is a great tool for Raspberry Pi (4, … Read more
In this tutorial I’ll show you how to communicate between a Raspberry Pi 4 (also works with 3, 3B, 3B+) and an Arduino (Uno), using the SPI protocol. The Raspberry Pi will be configured as a master, and the Arduino as a slave. On Raspberry Pi we’ll use the WiringPi library inside a Cpp code … Read more
In this tutorial I’ll show you how to communicate between a Raspberry Pi 4 (also works with 3, 3B, 3B+) and an Arduino (Uno), using the I2C protocol. The Raspberry Pi will be configured as a master, and the Arduino as a slave. You’ll see how to setup the communication, read an write, thanks to … Read more
In this tutorial I’ll show you how to write a Cpp program with WiringPi on your Raspberry Pi board, to communicate with a sensor through I2C protocol. Make sure to read this introduction to WiringPi before if you don’t know the library well. We’ll just use the basic functionalities of the ADXL345 here: read acceleration … Read more
You’re programming with ROS, or are just getting started, and you wonder: should you use Python vs Cpp with ROS? Of course… It depends. But in this post I’ll try to go beyond this “it depends” answer, to give you some points on when to you use one language or the other. To this question, … Read more
In this tutorial I’ll show you how to use ROS Duration in your ROS code – for roscpp and rospy. Through several examples you’ll see some of the most common use cases where ROS Duration is useful. Also, for each example you’ll learn about the differences between the Python and Cpp implementation, which is sometimes … Read more