GSCam

This is a ROS package originally developed by the Brown Robotics Lab for broadcasting any GStreamer-based video stream via the standard ROS Camera API. This fork has several fixes incorporated into it to make it broadcast correct sensor_msgs/Image messages with proper frames and timestamps. It also allows for more ROS-like configuration and more control over the GStreamer interface.

Note that this pacakge can be built both in a rosbuild and catkin workspaces.

GStreamer Library Support

gscam supports the following versions of GStreamer

0.1.x: Default

Install dependencies via rosdep.

1.0.x: Experimental

Dependencies:

• gstreamer1.0-tools
• libgstreamer1.0-dev
• libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev
• libgstreamer-plugins-good1.0-dev

Ubuntu Install:

12.04

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gstreamer-developers/ppa
sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-tools libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-good1.0-dev

14.04

sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-tools libgstreamer1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-dev libgstreamer-plugins-good1.0-dev

Usage:

• Use the CMake flag -DGSTREAMER_VERSION_1_x=On when building
• See the Video4Linux2 launchfile example for an example of the differences in the GStreamer config lines

Notes:

• This has been tested with v4l2src

ROS API (stable)

gscam

This can be run as both a node and a nodelet.

Nodes

• gscam

Topics

• camera/image_raw
• camera/camera_info

Services

• camera/set_camera_info

Parameters

• ~camera_name: The name of the camera (corrsponding to the camera info)
• ~camera_info_url: A url (file://path/to/file, package://pkg_name/path/to/file) to the camera calibration file.
• ~gscam_config: The GStreamer configuration string.
• ~frame_id: The TF frame ID.
• ~reopen_on_eof: Re-open the stream if it ends (EOF).
• ~sync_sink: Synchronize the app sink (sometimes setting this to false can resolve problems with sub-par framerates).

C++ API (unstable)

The gscam c++ library can be used, but it is not guaranteed to be stable.

Examples

See example launchfiles and configs in the examples directory. Currently there are examples for:

• Video4Linux2: Standard video4linux-based cameras like USB webcams.
  • GST-1.0: Use the roslaunch argument GST10:=True for GStreamer 1.0 variant
• Nodelet: Run a V4L-based camera in a nodelet
• Video File: Any videofile readable by GStreamer
• DeckLink: BlackMagic DeckLink SDI capture cards (note: this requires the gst-plugins-bad plugins)