VelodyneHDL

A minimal driver for Velodyne HDL-32E/64E VLP-16 lidars

Most Velodyne lidar drivers are needlessly complex, or specifically written for a particular middleware (e.g. ROS). This repo contains minimal, lightweight code to build shared libraries to interface to and decode packets from the Velodyne HDL (and VLP-16) family of lidars.

Contains

• PacketDriver: builds to PacketDriver.so, a library to read (via boost::asio) Velodyne packets streamed to UDP port 2368.
• PacketDecoder: builds to PacketDecoder.so, a library to decode (convert to x, y, z, intensity, etc.) Velodyne packets.
• PacketFileSender: builds to PacketFileSender, an executable to stream packets from a pcap file to UDP port 2368 (slightly modified code from VTK)
• PacketFileReader: a header file to read packets from a pcap file (code from VTK)
• PacketFileWriter: a header file to write packets to a pcap file (code from VTK)
• PacketBundler: builds to PacketBundler.so, a library to bundle streamed Velodyne packets into enough for a frame (a full 360 degree sweep) - useful if your middleware cannot handle the rate of Velodyne packet streaming (~1.8kHz)
• PacketBundleDecoder: bulds to PacketBundleDecoder.so, a library to decode a bundle of Velodyne packets

Example Usage

Under the tests directory you can find example code on how to use the PacketDriver and PacketDecoder libraries, as well as the PacketFileWriter header.

Dependencies

PCAP Library:

sudo apt-get install libpcap-dev

Boost Libraries:

sudo apt-get install libboost-all-dev

Build

Building:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Add To .bashrc:

export PATH="PATH:/..../path/to/build
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/..../path/to/build"
export LIBRARY_PATH="$LIBRARY_PATH:/..../path/to/build"
export CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH="$CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH:/..../path/to/source"

Usage

Streaming PCAP File:

PacketFileSender pcap_file.pcap

Interfacing to Velodyne:

test_PacketDriver

Interfacing to Velodyne and Decoding Packets:

test_PacketDecoder

Interfacing to Velodyne and Writing Packets to pcap File:

test_PacketWriter

Interfacing to Velodyne and Bundling Packets:

test_PacketBundler

Interfacing to Velodyne, Bundling Packets and Decoding Packet Bundles:

test_PacketBundleDecoder