ROS package released for the Serializer microcontroller

Announcement from Patrick Goebel to ros-users

Hello All,

I have released a ROS package for the Serializer microcontroller made by the Robotics Connection. I have been using and developing this package several months along with at least one other ROS user so I hope I have most of the egregious bugs fixed. Please let me know if you run into trouble with either the code or the Wiki page:

• Wiki
• SVN

The Serializer has both analog and digital sensor pins, a PWM servo controller, and a PID controller that works well with the ROS navigation stack.

The underlying driver is written in Python and provides some convenience functions for specific sensors such as the Phidgets temperature, voltage and current sensors, the Sharp GP2D12 IR sensor, and the Ping sonar sensor. It also includes two PID drive commands: Rotate(angle, speed) and TravelDistance(distance, speed) for controlling the drive motors. Most of the Serializer functions have been implemented though a few have not been tested since I don't currently have some of the supported sensors. The functions that have not been tested are:

• step (used with a bipolar stepper motor)
• sweep (also used with a bipolar stepper motor)
• srf04, srf08 and srf10 (used with a Devantech SRF04, SRF08 and SRF10 sonar sensors)
• tpa81 (used with the Devantech TPA81 thermopile sensor)

The driver requires Python 2.6.5 or higher and PySerial 2.3 or higher. It has been tested on Ubuntu Linux 10.04.

• Documentation for the Python Serializer library
• Official Serializer manual

Sincerely,
Patrick Goebel
The Pi Robot Project