FLIR PTU Driver

A basic ROS 2 driver for FLIR E-series Pan-Tilt units, based on FLIR-PTU-Python.

Parameters

• port (string, default: /dev/ttyUSB0) – Serial port to which the PTU is connected.
• baud (integer, default: 9600) – Baud rate for serial communication with the PTU.
• publishing_rate (double, default: 5.0) – Frequency (Hz) at which the PTU state is published.

Topics

• ptu/state (sensor_msgs/JointState) – Publishes the current pan and tilt angles of the PTU in radians.

  • name – Joint names (["ptu_pan", "ptu_tilt"]).
  • position – Current joint positions in radians.

• ptu/cmd (sensor_msgs/JointState) – Receives commands to move the PTU to specified angles.

  • name – Expected to contain "ptu_pan" and "ptu_tilt".
  • position – Desired joint positions in radians.
  • velocity (optional) – Desired joint velocities in rad/s.

Running the Node

ros2 launch flir_ptu_driver ptu.launch.py

Or with run:

ros2 run flir_ptu_driver ptu_node.py

UDEV Rules (optional)

To make the serial port consistent, we can map it to a specific device based on its parameters.

Find the ID_VENDOR_ID and ID_MODEL_ID with:

udevadm info -q all -n /dev/ttyUSB0

Then create the rule:

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-pan-tilt.rules

And add:

SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="0557", ATTRS{idProduct}=="2008", SYMLINK+="pantilt", MODE="0666"

Reload:

sudo udevadm control --reload-rules
sudo udevadm trigger

We should now have a symlink from /dev/ttyUSBX -> /dev/pantilt.