ROS 2 nodes for Windows

[patrick-muecke-itk]

Hi,

could you please provide a convenient way to get ROS 2 nodes for the Ensenso sensors for Windows?

ROS 1 is already past end-of-life and the ROS 2 instructions (https://github.com/ensenso/ros_driver/blob/master/docs/ROS2.md) only work under Linux.

Please provide documentation and scripts to obtain ROS 2 nodes on Windows (11).

Thank you 🙂

[benthie]

Hi Patrick,

you are actually the first one asking for Windows support. I do not have a working Windows setup right now and I am not sure how soon we will have the resources to work on the support for ROS2 on Windows.

The ROS2 instructions are written for Linux, you're right, however, there is actually just the prepare_ros2_build.sh script that must be migrated to Windows if I do not miss anything. This script simply adds COLCON_IGNORE and CATKIN_IGNORE files to the Ensenso packages and copies code from the ROS1 folders to the corresponding locations in the ROS2 folders. Maybe you could try to migrate this to e.g. a PowerShell script yourself? I am happy to help with that. The remaining steps are installing the Ensenso SDK and a few required Python packages.

[benthie]

I just noticed that there is no ROS2 distribution supporting Windows 11 yet, only Windows 10.

[patrick-muecke-itk]

I just noticed that there is no ROS2 distribution supporting Windows 11 yet, only Windows 10.

That is correct, but Windows 10 will reach its end-of-life in October, so this will also change very soon probably.
The Ensenso ROS2 build process will hopefully and probably work for both Win 10 and 11.

I'll try to emulate prepare_ros2_build.sh for Windows. Is there a way I can contact you directly in case of problems? Thanks!

[benthie]

That is correct, but Windows 10 will reach its end-of-life in October, so this will also change very soon probably.

I am not sure if that's going to change anything, because the ROS release dates are yearly in May and tightly coupled to the Ubuntu (LTS) releases. At least up until now.

You can post your questions to this issue and I will help in case of any problems.

[patrick-muecke-itk]

I have created a batch file prepare_ros2_build.bat that works, but I saw that there are actually no requirements for the environment, such that calling export ROS_VERSION=2 && ./.github/scripts/prepare_ros2_build.sh in a git bash has the same effect.

However, now I get the following error upon calling colcon build:

(pixi_ros2_kilted) c:\pixi_ws\ensenso\ros_driver>colcon build
Starting >>> ensenso_camera_msgs
Starting >>> ensenso_description
--- stderr: ensenso_description
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:3 (project):
No CMAKE_C_COMPILER could be found.

CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:3 (project):
No CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER could be found.

--
Failed <<< ensenso_description [3.61s, exited with code 1]
Aborted <<< ensenso_camera_msgs [3.69s]

Summary: 0 packages finished [3.89s]
1 package failed: ensenso_description
1 package aborted: ensenso_camera_msgs
2 packages had stderr output: ensenso_camera_msgs ensenso_description
3 packages not processed

I am using ROS2 KK and have MS Visual Studio 2019 installed. cl.exe is in the path. I use the x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2019 to start a pixi shell, then source the Ros Environment (call local_setup.bat) and then call colcon build from the Ensenso Repo root.

Thanks!

[benthie]

Have you been able to compile other ROS packages so far in your environment, e.g. one of the examples provided by ROS? A missing compiler to CMake looks like a setup problem to me, because so far no Ensenso package specific errors occurred.

[patrick-muecke-itk]

No, I downloaded the ROS2 binaries for Windows and did not need to compile anything.

[benthie]

Hi Patrick,

so far you did not have to compile anything, that's right. By running colcon build in your workspace, which includes the Ensenso ROS driver, the build framework uses CMake and a C++ compiler to compile our package. I think you have to do a little bit more of setup to get your ROS up and running.

I suggest you check out the tutorials on the ROS2 website. Especially section Writing a simple publisher and subscriber (C++) is interesting because there C++ gets compiled. If this works, the CMake error from above should be gone.

Kind Regards
Benny

[patrick-muecke-itk]

Thanks Benny! I indeed get the same error when trying to compile the ROS examples. I'll look into it and notify you how it's going.

[patrick-muecke-itk]

The CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER error was due to a somehow broken installation of my Visual Studio. It is fixed now and I got the ROS2 examples to compile completely.

Trying to compile the Ensenso Nodes, ensenso_camera_msgs and ensenso_description compile fine, but for ensenso_camera I get the following error:

--- stderr: ensenso_camera
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:24 (find_package):
By not providing "Findcv_bridge.cmake" in CMAKE_MODULE_PATH this project
has asked CMake to find a package configuration file provided by
"cv_bridge", but CMake did not find one.

Could not find a package configuration file provided by "cv_bridge" with
any of the following names:

cv_bridgeConfig.cmake
cv_bridge-config.cmake

Add the installation prefix of "cv_bridge" to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH or set
"cv_bridge_DIR" to a directory containing one of the above files. If
"cv_bridge" provides a separate development package or SDK, be sure it has
been installed.

[benthie]

Yes, that sounds familiar. Please have a look at https://github.com/ensenso/ros_driver/blob/master/.github/scripts/install_external_dependencies.sh: there in line 14 and 15 the external dependencies are installed. With the according Windows command you should be able to install those missing packages.

[patrick-muecke-itk]

cv_bridge is part of the ROS package vision_opencv and is not affected by install_external_dependencies.sh.
But I was able to check out the package and compile it.

Now I am facing the next problem and I don't know how to solve it:
ensenso_camera requires another package perception_pcl. But I cannot compile it, as it requires pcl and I cannot add it to my pixi environment. When I add it to the toml file (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros2/ros2/refs/heads/kilted/pixi.toml) it cannot find a version without conflicts to the other dependencies.

What can I do?

[benthie]

ROS Kilted Kaiju seems to come with OpenCV included, at least the Jazzy installation page still had a dedicated on how to install OpenCV and the latest version does not anymore.

The cv_bridge is included in the ensenso_camera package's manifest (package.xml) as a package dependency, so you should be able to install it with rosdep from within your workspace folder by running:

rosdep install --from-paths src -y --ignore-src

I think you should remove your manually compiled cv_bridge first and let rosdep do the work for you. At least that's a source of error when it comes to package dependency problems I have encountered in the past.

[patrick-muecke-itk]

I tried this, but it did not work.
I did the following:

1. Create clean pixi WS and installed ROS2 KK into it
2. pixi install and pixi shell and source ORS environment (ROS2 example build now in this setup)
3. clone ensenso driver repo to pixi_ws\ros2-windows\src\ros_driver
4. call pixi_ws\ros2-windows\src\ros_driver/.github/scripts/prepare_ros2_build.sh in a git bash to setup ROS 2 build
5. pixi add rosdep
6. rosdep init
7. rosdep update
8. call rosdep install --from-paths . -y --ignore-src fom pixi_ws\ros2-windows\src\ros_driver

But this does not work, i get the following error

(pixi_ros2_kilted) c:\pixi_ws\ros2-windows\src\ros_driver>rosdep install --from-paths . -y --ignore-src
ERROR: the following packages/stacks could not have their rosdep keys resolved
to system dependencies:
ensenso_description: Unsupported OS [windows]
ensenso_camera_test: Unsupported OS [windows]
ensenso_driver: Cannot locate rosdep definition for [catkin]
ensenso_camera_msgs: Cannot locate rosdep definition for [message_runtime]
ensenso_camera: Cannot locate rosdep definition for [roscpp]