coEncoder

Prerequisite

• Have ROS on your system

• Install dependencies

sudo apt install libavcodec-dev libavutil-dev libopencv-dev libcurl4 ros-{ros_distro}-foxglove-msgs -y

GPU Supported

coencoder currently supports encoding using GPUs, currently supports the following encoders:

"h264_nvenc",    // NVIDIA NVENC
"h264_qsv",      // Intel Quick Sync
"h264_amf",      // AMD VCE
"h264_vaapi",    // VAAPI (Linux hardware acceleration)

Configuration

If the system environment variable contains HOME, the config file is located at $HOME/.config/coencoder/config.json, otherwise, the config file is located at /tmp/coencoder/config/config.json. If you start coEncoder using rosrun (or ros2 run), you can use --config-file to specify the config file path.

{
  "enable_by_default": true,
  "log_directory": "/home/cos/logs",
  "log_level": "Debug",
  "topics_param": [
    {
      "bitrate": 1600000,
      "encoder_name": "h264_nvenc",
      "input": "/camera_0/raw_image",
      "output": "/camera_0/raw_image/h264"
    },
    {
      "bitrate": 1600000,
      "encoder_name": "libx264",
      "input": "/camera_1/raw_image",
      "output": "/camera_1/raw_image/h264"
    }
  ]
}

• enable_by_default: Whether to enable encoding by default
• log_directory: Log file path
• log_level: Log level, possible values: Debug / Info / Warn / Error
• topics_param: Array type, contains 3 fields
  • bitrate: Output bitrate
  • encoder_name: Encoder name, supports h264_nvenc, h264_qsv, h264_amf, h264_vaapi, and you can also use libx264 to encode frames by CPU. If this field is missing in the configuration, libx264 will be used for encoding
  • input: Input topic name
  • output: Output topic name

Online Configuration Modification

Online configuration modification requires coScout v1.1.8 or later

• Online configuration editing

  • Organization Settings -> Devices -> Device Configuration

    

  • Edit fields

    In device configuration, add the coEncoder field as shown in the image above. Note that coEncoder is a sub-field of plugin_config.

  • Configuration validity

    • The configuration MUST contain the topics_param field, and this field must be of array type.
    • Elements in topics_param MUST have three fields: input, output, bitrate. input and output are strings, bitrate is an integer.

Compile OR deb install

*** You can install CoEncoder by compiling it yourself. Alternatively, we will also provide a .deb package for installation. ***

• Compile

  • ROS1

    # Copy the project into your ROS workspace
    cp -r {this_repo} {your_ros_ws}/src/
    
    # Source ROS setup and build
    source /opt/ros/{ros_distro}/setup.bash
    
    cd {your_ros_ws}
    
    catkin_make --pkg coencoder install

  • ROS2

    # Copy the project into your ROS workspace
    cp -r {this_repo} {your_ros_ws}/src/
    # Source ROS setup and build
    source /opt/ros/{ros_distro}/setup.bash
    
    cd {your_ros_ws}
    colcon build --packages-select coencoder    

• deb Install

    dpkg -i ros-{ros distro}-coencoder_latest_{system arch}.deb

RUN

• ROS1

  # if install coencoder by Compile, source your workspace  
  source {your_ros_ws}/install/setup.bash
  # if install coencoder by deb, source ros
  source /opt/ros/{ros destro}/setup.bash
  
  roslaunch coencoder coencoder.launch
  # You can also use `rosrun` to start the node
  rosrun coencoder coencoder --config-file {your_config_file_path}

• ROS2

  # if install coencoder by Compile, source your workspace  
  source {your_ros_ws}/install/setup.bash
  # if install coencoder by deb, source ros
  source /opt/ros/{ros destro}/setup.bash
  
  ros2 launch coencoder coencoder_launch.xml
  # You can also use `ros2 run` to start the node  
  ros2 run coencoder coencoder -- --config-file {your_config_file_path}