3dmouse-hid

Use a 3D mouse as a web input device. Great for controlling robot end effectors.

Originally forked from webhid-space, with device support information taken from pyspacenavigator.

Usage

We have tested this code under Ubuntu 22.04. Note that WebHID is only supported by Chrome and Edge as of October 2023. You may experience issues using WebHID with Chromium in recent Ubuntu releases due to Snap isolation.

Connecting a 3D Mouse

Using (Ubuntu) Linux, in order to get access from user space, add the following, using the USB Vendor ID returned from lsusb to a udev rules file (e.g. /etc/udev/rules/50-3d-mouse.rules):

SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw", ATTRS{idVendor}=="046d", MODE:="0666", GROUP="input"

And run sudo udevadm control --reload-rules && sudo udevadm trigger

On other systems, this is not necessary.

Running the Included Demos

No build steps are required to run our included demos. Simply run a server using:

npm run test

Open localhost:8000/test in Chrome. Note WebHID is typically only available in HTTPS contexts.

Playing with the Visualization and Filters

You can test out the twist visualization using viz_test.html by opening http://localhost:8000/test/viz_test.html.

Testing with a Simulated UR5

We include a ROS2 Humble robot simulation to enable testing without a robot. You will need to install various UR ROS2 packages to use it:

sudo apt install ros-humble-ur-description ros-humble-controller-manager ros-humble-ur-moveit-config ros-humble-gazebo-ros-pkgs ros-humble-rosbridge-suite ros-humble-ros2-control ros-humble-position-controllers

Our main launch file calls launch files created by Universal Robotics for placing their robot model in a Gazebo simulation, and also homes the robot and configures camera views:

cd 3dmouse-hid/test/ros && ros2 launch ur_teleop_sim.launch.py

You should see two instances of RViz launch (which you may close). MoveIt 2 Servo, the package which provides the end-effector twist controller, will be initialized and activated in the final step of the launch file, after which you can confirm that servo is running:

ros2 topic pub /servo_node/delta_twist_cmds geometry_msgs/msg/TwistStamped "{ header: { stamp: 'now', 'frame_id': 'tool0' },  twist: {linear: {x: -0.1}, angular: {  }}}" -r 10

Now you should be able to open http://localhost:8000/test/ and follow the interface instructions to teleoperate the simulated robot.

Debugging WebHID Issues

Try using nondebug's WebHID Explorer to connect to the device. If the connection fails, take a look at chrome://device-log/ to see why.