Oculus Prime - ROS Installation

If your Oculus Prime ROV is equipped with an Orbbec sensor, you’re going to want to put it to use. To do that, you need ROS.

Step 1 – ROS Installation

Connect to Oculus Prime via ssh and install ROS Kinetic following the instructions at wiki.ros.org/kinetic/Installation/Ubuntu. Choose ‘Desktop-Full Install.’

NOTE: if running older Xubuntu 14.04 and installing ROS Indigo, follow similar instructions here.

Step 2 – Enable Oculus Prime Server Telnet Port

ROS nodes need to be able to communicate with the Oculusprime Java application via the telnet interface. To enable it:

Edit the oculus_settings.txt configuration file. Change the line:

telnetport disabled

To read:

telnetport 4444

(Requires server app restart to take effect). NOTE: Telnet can also be enabled (to port 4444 only), or disabled, in the web browser interface settings/calibration menu.

Step 3 – Install Ros Navigation Prerequisites

Install the required ROS Navigation packages:

$ sudo apt-get install ros-kinetic-move-base \ 
ros-kinetic-map-server ros-kinetic-amcl \ 
ros-kinetic-openni2-launch ros-kinetic-dwa-local-planner \
ros-kinetic-gmapping

NOTE: If using ROS Indigo, replace all above occurrences of 'kinetic' with 'indigo'.

Step 4 – Install Git

If necessary, install git by doing:

$ sudo apt-get install git

Step 4 – Oculus Prime Packages Installation

Create a ROS Workspace in your home folder by entering:

$ mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
$ cd ~/catkin_ws/src
$ catkin_init_workspace
$ cd ~/catkin_ws/
$ catkin_make

Change to the ‘src’ directory within your ROS Workspace, and clone the oculusprime_ros package from github:

$ cd ~/catkin_ws/src
$ git clone https://github.com/xaxxontech/oculusprime_ros.git

NOTE: we recommend this source method of installing the oculusprime_ros package (instead of 'apt-get install ros-kinetic-oculusprime'), so that the automatic software updater can update the ROS package without need for root access.

Next, clone the modified depthimage_to_laserscan package:

$ git clone https://github.com/xaxxontech/depthimage_to_laserscan.git

And clone the default ROS openni2_camera package:

$ git clone https://github.com/ros-drivers/openni2_camera.git

Step 5 – Install Orbbec Astra Drivers

NOTE: if you’re using a ASUS Xtion camera instead of an Astra, skip to step 6.

If you have an Orbbec Astra camera, drivers have go be installed manually (we find Orbbec’s recent astra_camera drivers to be noisier than the original development drivers). Enter the following commands exactly in order as listed below:

mkdir ~/temp/
cd ~/temp/
wget http://www.xaxxon.com/downloads/orbbec_openni2_files.zip
unzip orbbec_openni2_files.zip
cd orbbec_openni2_files
sudo mv 558-orbbec-usb.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
sudo adduser oculus video
sudo mv libopenni2.pc /usr/lib/pkgconfig/
cd /usr/lib/
sudo mv ~/temp/orbbec_openni2_files/libOpenNI2.so .
cd OpenNI2/
sudo mv ~/temp/orbbec_openni2_files/* ./Drivers/

Step 6- Build Packages

Build all the packages using catkin_make:

$ cd ~/catkin_ws/
$ catkin_make

Now add the new workspace to the default ROS environment by doing:

$ echo "source $HOME/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

Finally, reboot the machine:

$ sudo reboot