Spacenav Nodes

spacenav_node

Published topics

• spacenav/offset (geometry_msgs/Vector3)

  Publishes the linear component of the joystick's position. Approximately normalized to a range of -1 to 1.

• spacenav/rot_offset(geometry_msgs/Vector3)

  Publishes the angular component of the joystick's position. Approximately normalized to a range of -1 to 1.

• spacenav/twist (geometry_msgs/Twist)

  Combines offset and rot_offset into a single message.

• spacenav/joy (sensor_msgs/Joy)

  Outputs the spacenav's six degrees of freedom and its buttons as a joystick message.

Parameters

• zero_when_static

  sets values to zero when the spacenav is not moving

• static_count_threshold

  The number of polls needed to be done before the device is considered "static"

• static_trans_deadband

  sets the translational deadband

• static_rot_deadband

  sets the rotational deadband

• linear_scale

  sets the scale of the linear output

  takes a vector (x, y, z)

• angular_scale

  sets the scale of the angular output

  takes a vector (x, y, z)

The linear_scale and angular_scale parameters take vector arguements. The easiest way to set these parameters is with a launch file like so:

<launch>
  <node pkg="spacenav_node" type="spacenav_node" name="$(anon spacenav_node)" output="screen">
    <rosparam param="linear_scale">[.25, .25, .25]</rosparam>
    <rosparam param="angular_scale">[.5, .5, .5]</rosparam>
  </node>
</launch>

Running the spacenav_node

Running the node is straightforward

$rosrun spacenav_node spacenav_node

The node is now publishing to the topics listed above.

Examples

Viewing the output from the spacenav can be done as follows:

$ rostopic echo /spacenav/joy