[Feature] zed_interfaces as a package?

[flabrosse]

I'm trying to use services to talk to the ZED from a different computer than where the ZED is connected (and where the zed.launch is started). This implies having zed_interfaces on this computer. As far as I can see, the only way to have that is to install the whole of the ros wrapper.

Could we have a separate package for zed_interfaces?

This is made even more needed since on the latest ubuntu (20.04), the install fails because the package python-geographiclib is now python3-geographiclib.

Cheers,
Fred

[Myzhar]

@flabrosse zed_interfaces is already on a separate package, it's in the same Github repository, but the ROS packages are all separated.
You can simply copy the folder zed_interfaces in the src folder of the catkin workspace of the second computer and start to compile to make everything work.

[flabrosse]

Hi @Myzhar, thanks again for the quick response. Yes, this is what I ended up doing, but this also means that if I want to do a git pull, the whole thing will be pulled again. Not the end of the world, just annoying.

Thanks

[davesarmoury]

+1 for this request. Having interfaces and description packages in their own repo would make a distributed application easier. This repo can even include the new repo as a git sub module

[Myzhar]

I see what I can do about this request 👍

[Myzhar]

The zed_interfaces package has been removed from this repository and moved to its own zed-ros-interfaces repository for allowing better integration of the ZED Wrapper on remote ground stations that do not require the full package to be installed. To update your repository please follow the new update instructions.

[davesarmoury]

@Myzhar The meshes from https://github.com/stereolabs/zed-ros-wrapper/tree/master/zed_wrapper/urdf/models should also be moved so you can use rviz remotely without getting errors

[Myzhar]

Yes, it makes sense because they are loaded by Rviz and not propagated with the "robot description".

[Myzhar]

@davesarmoury done. Now the meshes are in the zed_interfaces repository and they can be correctly loaded by Rviz

$ git pull --recurse-submodules # update recursively all the submodules and it's for you

[davesarmoury]

Wonderful! Small improvement that will make life much easier :)

[Myzhar]

Thank you for your feedback

[flabrosse]

Thank you indeed!

[flabrosse]

Any particular reason why the package is called zed-ros-interfaces rather than zed_ros_interfaces? The latter is the ROS convention (I myself are in the process of renaming things...)

[Myzhar]

Because that's not the name of the package, but the name of the Github repository.
The names of the ROS packages included in this repository follow the ROS naming standard:
zed_ros -> the meta-package
zed_wrapper -> the package that contains the ZED Wrapper
zed_ros_interfaces -> the sub-module including the definitions of the custom topics and services
zed_nodelet -> the package that contains the ZED Nodelets

[flabrosse]

Fair enough. I always find it confusing that the top directory is not called the same as the package, but I have seen this before when there is more than one package.