Sick_Safetyscanners_Base CPP Driver

Table of contents

• Supported Hardware
• Getting started
• API
• Creators

A CPP standalone Driver which reads the raw data from the SICK Safety Scanners and takes custom functions to publish the data.

Supported Hardware

Supported are all microScan3, nanoScan3 and outdoorScan3 variants with Ethernet connection.

Getting started

The driver will be released on this github repository, and can then be installed from source.

Prerequisites

• Linux
• Correctly setup SICK Safety Scanner
• Connected SICK Safety Scanner and a correctly setup ethernet network. Both the host and the sensor have to be in the same network.
• Installed libboost

Installation

For installation this github repository has to be cloned and afterwards installed. If a custom install directory is wanted use the -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX option to specify a path.

git clone https://github.com/SICKAG/sick_safetyscanners_base.git
cd sick_safetyscanners_base
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<path to install folder> ..
make -j8
make install

Usage

To use the library in a driver the path of the installation has to be added to the cmake prefix path of your application. You can achieve this by using, bevor invoking cmake on your application.

export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=<path to install folder>

Afterwards the driver and the settings for the driver can be included with:

#include <sick_safetyscanners_base/SickSafetyscanners.h>
#include <sick_safetyscanners_base/Exceptions.h>
#include <sick_safetyscanners_base/Types.h>
#include <sick_safetyscanners_base/datastructure/CommSettings.h>

To get the driver up and running you need first to choose between the synchronous and asynchronous APIs based on your needs.

In the latter case you can also pass an instance of boost::asio::io_service to the constructor of the AsyncSickSafetyScanner.

API

Synchronous Client

In cases where you do not want the driver to spawn internal child threads to asynchronously process incomming sensor data you can use the SyncSickSafetyScanner class.

Example

// Sensor IP and Port
std::string sensor_ip_str = "192.168.1.11";
sick::types::ip_address_t sensor_ip = boost::asio::ip::address_v4::from_string(sensor_ip_str);
sick::types::port_t tcp_port {2122};

// Prepare the CommSettings for Sensor streaming data
sick::datastructure::CommSettings comm_settings;
std::string host_ip_str = "192.168.1.9";
comm_settings.host_ip = boost::asio::ip::address_v4::from_string(host_ip_str);
comm_settings.host_udp_port = 0;

// Create a sensor instance
auto safety_scanner = std::make_unique<sick::SyncSickSafetyScanner>(sensor_ip, tcp_port, comm_settings);

// Receive one sensor data packet
auto timeout = boost::posix_time::seconds(5);
sick::datastructure::Data data = safety_scanner->receive(timeout);

// ...

Asynchronous Client

If you dont need restrict your client to work with single-threaded blocking receive calls in a strict sequential manner you can use the AsyncSickSafetyScanner class. The sensor data callback required by the constructor has the following signature

void callback(const sick::datastructure::Data& data);

Example

// Sensor IP and Port
std::string sensor_ip_str = 192.168.1.11
sick::types::ip_address_t sensor_ip = boost::asio::ip::address_v4::from_string(sensor_ip_str);
sick::types::port_t tcp_port {2122};

// Prepare the CommSettings for Sensor streaming data
sick::datastructure::CommSettings comm_settings;
std::string host_ip_str = "192.168.1.9"
comm_settings.host_ip = boost::asio::ip::address_v4::from_string(host_ip_str);
comm_settings.host_udp_port = 0;

// Define a sensor data callback
sick::types::ScanDataCb cb = [](const sick::datastructure::Data &data) {
    std::cout << "Number of beams: " << data.getMeasurementDataPtr()->getNumberOfBeams() << std::endl;
};

// Create a sensor instance
auto safety_scanner = std::make_unique<sick::AsyncSickSafetyScanner>(sensor_ip, tcp_port, comm_settings, cb);

// Special case if a multicast IP is seltected as host_ip
// std::string host_ip_str = "235.235.235.2"
// comm_settings.host_ip = boost::asio::ip::address_v4::from_string(host_ip_str);
// std::string interface_ip_str = "192.168.1.9"
// auto interface_ip = boost::asio::ip::address_v4::from_string(interface_ip_str);
// auto safety_scanner = std::make_unique<sick::AsyncSickSafetyScanner>(sensor_ip, tcp_port, comm_settings, interface_ip, cb);

// Start async receiving and processing of sensor data
safety_scanner->run();

// ... Do other stuff

// Stop async processing
safety_scanner->stop();

Parameters of Communication Settings

The parameters can be set using the setters of the CommSettings class. To set for example to host_ip the following function can be called.

sick::datastructure::CommSettings m_communication_settings;
m_communication_settings.setHostIp("192.168.1.100");

COLA2 Functions (available on both driver API variants)

The Library allows to access variables of the sensor and invoke methods to change settings using the COLA2 protocol. The following methods can be called:

Troubleshooting

• Check if the sensor has power and is connected to the host.
• Check if both sensor and host are in the same subnet e.g. 192.168.1
• Are the correct IPs configured for the application?
• Is the correct Interface Type configured?

Creators

Lennart Puck
Martin Schulze

FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik

• http://www.fzi.de

on behalf of SICK AG

• http://www.sick.com