ROS-and-NodeRed

How to get data from ROS (here good old indigo) via ROS-bridge.

Ubuntu version: 14.06.4 LTS

ROS Version: Indigo

NodeRed Version 2.1.3

Installing Node-Red

Install Node.js, for this older version of Ubuntu i forced it. Thereafter I just used npm and the guide at Node-Red to install and run NodeRed.

There are one issue, the old firefox in Ubuntu 14.06.04 will not show the Flow side for Node-red at http://localhost:1880/, but I just connect via my main PC.

The Dashboard is no issue.

Installing and using ROS-web-bridge

Rosbridge-suiteprovides a JSON API to ROS functionality for non-ROS programs. To install in indigo use the following command:

sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-rosbridge-server

the pictures and simpel code example late in this document is using the standard ROS-launch command

roslaunch rosbridge_server rosbridge_websocket.launch

This will run rosbridge and create a WebSocket on port 9090 by default.

Node-RED and ROS

node-red-contrib-ros have been used (thank you to nhong)

The Flow

The Node-RED Flow can be found under Code

The subscriber can subscribe to multiple diffenten ros Types

The Publisher can only publish std_msgs/Int16, std_msgs/Int32 and std_msgs/String

The Dashboard (and ROS Topics)

As always... Have fun with the data and code