Porting to ROS2?

[mathsten]

Hi! Has anyone tried vprn_client_ros with ROS2, specifically Dashing Diademata? Are there any plans to port it over?

[paulbovbel]

No plans, but PRs are very welcome! I don't have a VRPN system to test with at the moment.

[zeroos]

Hey!

We've been using this project previously (shameless plug: https://youtu.be/atLhROLzsFo) with a ROS2<->ROS1 bridge and, although a bit quirky sometimes, it was working fine.

However, now, while working on a new project I've decided to give it a try and rewrite vrpn_client_ros to work with ROS2: https://github.com/zeroos/vrpn_client_ros. We're still working on our project, so we might find some bugs, but the code seems to be working.

Unfortunately, while rewriting I skipped and commented out parts related to:

1. publishing TF, because we're not using it
2. accel and twist data, because OptiTrack does not provide them

I also got rid of a feature that made it possible to define multiple sensors per tracker (I didn't really understand how it works).

I thought it might still be helpful for some people, so I wanted to create a pull request, but apparently it's not possible on Github to request a new branch: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11635252/540717 ).

Would you be interested in accepting these changes? I do have some time in the close future, so if you think that something is missing I could try to improve it a bit.

[paulbovbel]

For sure, please do make a PR, I've spun up a foxy-devel branch.