New in ROS Diamondback

This package provides a ROS wrapper for the Sensoray Model 626 analog and digital I/O card drivers. This multifunctional board features analog to digital (ADC), digital to analog (DAC), and counters for motor encoders. For further technical specifications please visit the product website.

Driver Installation

This installation is generally untested, but works on my machine with 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04 machine and Diamondback.

First, check out the sensoray626 package from the repository.

svn co https://mediabox.grasp.upenn.edu/svn/penn-ros-pkgs/penn_lightweight_teleop/trunk/sensoray626 sensoray626

Within the repository is a folder named s626-1.0.1, which contains the Sensoray's Linux SDK files (v1.0.1) that are also available on the product website. The README file in this folder has instructions for building and installing the kernel level driver for the 626. For simplicity (and because it seems that these drivers must be reinstalled every time the computer is restarted), I wrote a script to automate the build and install process. This script must be run as sudo.

roscd sensoray626
sudo ./setup626.py

One important thing to note is that this script disables comedi. The comedi driver does not support analog i/o functionality and conflicts with the manufacturer's driver.

Now we can make the package, which should build the core&mod library as lib/libsensoray626.so and a demo program as bin/demo_cpp. Run the demo program to verify successful installation of the driver.

make
rosrun sensoray626 demo_cpp

Using Sensoray 626 in your node.

Add the following line to CMakeLists.txt in your package to link to the library in the sensoray626 package.

target_link_libraries(YOUR_EXECUTABLE_NAME_HERE sensoray626)

External API Documentation

Sensoray provides documentation for the API as part of their Windows SDK, or for convenience you can download just the document here.