metavision_driver

A combined ROS/ROS2 driver for event based cameras using Prophesee’s Metavision SDK. This driver is not written or supported by Prophesee.

If you are looking for more speed and features than the official Prophesee ROS driver you have found the right repository. This driver can cope with the large amount of data produced by Prophesee’s Gen3 and later sensors because it does little more than getting the RAW (currently EVT3 format) events from the camera and publishing them in ROS event_camera_msgs format.

The events can be decoded and displayed using the following ROS/ROS2 packages:

• event_camera_codecs has C++ routines to decode event_camera_msgs.
• event_camera_py module for fast event decoding in python.
• event_camera_renderer a node / nodelet that renders and publishes ROS image messages.
• event_camera_tools a set of tools to echo, monitor performance and convert event_camera_msgs to legacy formats and into “RAW” format.

Supported platforms

Tested on the following platforms:

• ROS Noetic (legacy, please transition to ROS2)
• ROS2 Humble and Rolling (also compiles on other versions, see CI)
• Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04 LTS
• Metavision SDK (OpenEB) 4.2.0, 4.6.2, 5.0.0

Tested on the following hardware:

• SilkyEVCam VGA (Gen 3.1 sensor)
• SilkyEVCam HD (Gen 4 sensor)
• Prophesee EVK4 (Gen 4 sensor)

Explicitly not supported: any data in the old EVT2 format. The sensor must produce data in the EVT3 format. The new EVT4 format is not yet supported.

Installation from binaries

On ROS2 you can install via

sudo apt install ros-${ROS_DISTRO}-metavision-driver

This will also install a version of OpenEB under /opt/ros/${ROS_DISTRO}. Unless you separately install OpenEB you will still have to install the required udev rules from the source tree directory udev/rules.d/, and restart udev, see OpenEB. For the SilkyEV cameras make sure that the plugin version matches the version of the ROS OpenEB vendor package that is installed (check the CMakeLists.txt file), or the camera will not be recognized! If the driver does not find the camera, try building from source (see below).

How to build from source

Prerequisites:

• install OpenEB
• install vcs (ubuntu package python3-vcstool).

Make sure you have your ROS1 or ROS2 environment sourced such that ROS_VERSION is set. For example for ROS1 noetic:

source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.bash

Create a workspace (metavision_driver_ws), clone this repo, and use vcs to pull in the remaining dependencies:

pkg=metavision_driver
mkdir -p ~/${pkg}_ws/src
cd ~/${pkg}_ws
git clone https://github.com/ros-event-camera/metavision_driver.git src/${pkg}
cd src
vcs import < ${pkg}/${pkg}.repos
cd ..

Optional (ROS1): to use the efficient recording nodelet clone the nodelet_rosbag repository into our src tree:

git clone -b open_bag_later [email protected]:berndpfrommer/nodelet_rosbag.git src/nodelet_rosbag

Now configure and build:

File truncated at 100 lines see the full file

Changelog for package metavision_driver

2.0.1 (2025-03-12)

• fixed freed memory access bug

• trail filter: fixed unintialized variable bug and handle gen3 cams

• support metavision 5.x

• set serial parameter type to string

• Support for trail filters (#50)

  * Added support for Metavision SDK trail filters (Andreas Ziegler) ---------Co-authored-by: Bernd Pfrommer <<[email protected]>>

• added udev files

• support for composable recording under jazzy/rolling

• Contributors: Andreas Ziegler, Bernd Pfrommer

2.0.0 (2024-07-05)

• depend on openeb_vendor
• work around foxy API differences
• fail more gracefully when EVT2 file is fed in
• fixed bug when playing back from file
• Contributors: Bernd Pfrommer

1.0.8 (2023-11-12)

• fix broken build on galactic
• more fixes to make flake8 happy
• reformat python code as "black" and fix import order
• Modify launch file to accept params as args.
• support mipi frame period configuration for Gen3.1
• changed viewer -> renderer
• ignore python cache files in launch directory
• ability to set mipi_frame_period
• Contributors: Bernd Pfrommer, agaidev

1.0.6 (2023-08-08)

• Package should now contain Prophesee default plugins
• Contributors: Bernd Pfrommer

1.0.5 (2023-08-07)

• added dependency on hal_plugins to cause metavision plugins to be built
• remove setting of unnecessary COMPILE_3DVIEW option
• Contributors: Bernd Pfrommer

1.0.3 (2023-08-04)

• changes to build on ROS2 build farm
• Contributors: Bernd Pfrommer

1.0.2 (2023-08-03)

• Try to pull in OpenEB dependencies via package.xml and figure out ROS1/ROS2 via cmake
• updated links in README
• Contributors: Bernd Pfrommer, Laurent Bristiel

1.0.1 (2023-07-24)

• Change package name from metavision_ros_driver to metavision_driver, and all references to event_array_msgs to event_camera_msgs
• Download and compile OpenEB if not already installed
• Contributors: Bernd Pfrommer

1.0.0 (2023-06-29)

• initial commit
• Contributors: Bernd Pfrommer, k-chaney