Re: [Playerstage-users] Player Device Drivers

[brian g. <ge...@ro...>]

On Thu, 4 Sep 2003, Vikram Harinath wrote:

> You have 4 sensors - Laser, IR, strain guages and wheel encoders -
> connected up to a micro controller board. This is then connected to a
> laptop using a serial port connection. I.E. The data from all the
> sensors is being sent down one serial line. Note: The laser sensor data
> is just being passed through by the micro controller to the laptop.
> 
> Does the current player driver for the SICK Laser sensor have the
> ability to know that - of the data coming down the serial - which is the
> data being sent by the laser sensor ?
> 

hi Vik,

To my knowledge, Player's sicklms200 driver will not do that for you, since
it's designed to talk to one laser on one serial line.  You'll need a new
driver that talks to your micro and then provides the data from each sensor
via the appropriate interface (laser, ir, position, and maybe a new
interface for the strain gauge?).

There are already several instances of this kind of driver.  For example,
Player's p2os family of drivers talk over a serial line to the P2OS
micro found in ActivMedia robots and provide the resultant data via a
variety of interfaces (position, sonar, power, aio, dio, bumper, gripper,
and sound).  The reb and rwi drivers work similarly.

However, for a new driver, I would recommend not replicating the exact
structure of those drivers, which make rather inelegant use of static
class members and have separate drivers for each interface.  A much
better model is the readlog driver, where a single driver can be multiply
instantiated via different interfaces.

If you're interested in writing a driver for your setup, I can provide
more information and direction.

        brian.