Question regarding compatibility with event_camera_renderer

[shiba24]

Hi @berndpfrommer , thank you for all the great code stack under https://github.com/ros-event-camera. I'd like to use this for my next development project.

I have a question (maybe request) of the compatibility. Do you think if it is possible to make the RPG's DAVIS driver compatible for event_camera_renderer? I think that this is one reason that you make this dvs_msgs repo, correct?
It would be great if there was some instruction on how I can achieve something like:

roslaunch davis_ros_driver driver_nodelet.launch  # this is the compatibility part

# Later is the same as metavision case
roslaunch event_camera_renderer renderer.launch camera:=event_camera
rqt_image_view

I have been trying to figure this out, but not done yet. And created this issue.

Thank you!

[berndpfrommer]

The problem is that the RPG davis ros driver produces messages in a different format (dvs_msgs). I have plans to write a davis ros driver that uses the event_camera_msgs format, but have not done so for lack of hardware.
There is a compatibility layer of sorts, the event_camera_tools repository. Unfortunately the republisher node there converts only the new event_camera_msgs to dvs_msgs, not the other way around (what you need). If however you don't need real-time visualization you can store the dvs msgs in a rosbag and then convert them with a tool from the event_camera_tools repository to the new message format. Said conversion code has not been tested very thoroughly, so if you decide to use it and hit some errors please open an issue against that repository.

[shiba24]

write a davis ros driver that uses the event_camera_msgs format, but have not done so for lack of hardware.

Thank you. What steps do you think are necessary if I'd implement this? I have a hardware, so I can test it. Also if you have some ideas of the design and implementation already, I could contribute it.

I think real-time visualization (and running some algorithms in future) is of great use (at least in my case). If offline is fine, I'd use python and it's more straightforward to have this kind of compatibility.

The dvs_msgs is something many ROS-based research projects might use so far (defacto), but as we have two major hardware series now, the compatibility layer gets more important in my opinion. And ideally I'd like to have lightweight one for reltime execution of things (I saw the republish of https://github.com/ros-event-camera/event_camera_tools consumes lots of memory).

[berndpfrommer]

Can you see if this experimental code is any good? Make sure to grab the "use_event_camera_msgs" branch.
For lack of hardware the best I can do is compile. Please let me know what happens when you run it.

[shiba24]

Thank you so much, I will test it on Monday and let you know how it goes 🙏

[shiba24]

I have been trying, but haven't worked it out yet. Just for sharing - I will investigate a bit more by myself and share errors here later. Thanks.