Barlus Underwater Camera

This package provides configurations and a ROS 2 interface for interacting with the Barlus UW-S5-3PBX10 underwater camera.

Network Configuration

The default network configurations for the Barlus UW-S5-3PBX10 are as follows:

Address: 192.168.1.10 # Verify this using the Barlus VCS software
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1

In order to connect to the camera, add a new IPv4 network configuration with the same Netmask and Gateway used by the camera. For example,

Address: 192.168.1.17
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1

After establishing a connection, verify the RTSP stream using FFmpeg

ffplay -fflags nobuffer -flags low_delay -probesize 32 -rtsp_transport tcp -i "rtsp://192.168.1.10:554/user=admin&password=&channel=1&stream=0.sdp?"

The stream can also be recorded using

ffmpeg -i "rtsp://192.168.1.10:554/user=admin&password=&channel=1&stream=0.sdp?" -c:v copy -an recording.mp4

Using MediaMTX proxy

MediaMTX can be used to connect to the RTSP server embedded into the camera to multiplex the camera stream.

Prior to launching MediaMTX, first check the MediaMTX configurations set in the compose/mediamtx/mediamtx.yml file. In particular, confirm that the barlus RTSP path uses the correct IP address and authentication information for your specific camera setup.

After verifying the MediaMTX configurations, launch MediaMTX with docker compose

cd /path/to/compose/mediamtx \
docker compose up

Once running, the stream can be played using FFmpeg

ffplay  -fflags nobuffer -flags low_delay -probesize 32 -rtsp_transport udp -i rtsp://<your-ip-address>:<mediamtx-port>/barlus

ROS 2 interface

barlus_gstreamer_proxy has been implemented to convert frames received from the camera into ROS 2 sensor_msgs/Image messages using GStreamer. After building barlus_gstreamer_proxy, the node can be launched using

ros2 launch barlus_gstreamer_proxy gstreamer_proxy.launch.py

The raw frames will be published to the topic /barlus/image_raw. The camera intrinsics are available on the topic /barlus/camera_info.

Camera calibration

The camera intrinsics can be retrieved using the camera_calibration node. For example, to calibrate the camera using an 8x6 chessboard, run the following:

ros2 run camera_calibration cameracalibrator --size 8x6 --square 0.108 image:=/barlus/image_mono camera:=/barlus --no-service-check