Migration Guide

Introduction

The Fixposition ROS Driver underwent a significant overhaul since tag 8.0.0, which breaks compatibility with previous tags of the driver. The installation procedure has changed significantly and is documented in Installation and usage. We recommend all users to migrate to the new version.

The user can always access the previous version of the ROS driver by switching to tag 7.0.7. The corresponding documentation for this release is available in (DEPRECATED) Installation and usage. To switch to the previous version, simply execute the command git checkout 7.0.7.

Motivation

This reworked version includes new messages (such as NOV_B-INSPVAX and the Fusion Epoch Collector), as well as the possibility of supporting any new messages with little effort. In addition, it completely reworked how messages are received and processed from the sensor, ensuring a faster and safer communication.

It’s worth noting that, despite improving the behavior of the ROS node and the corresponding topic, the names remain intact and the user shouldn’t perform any changes outside the driver to support the new version. On top of that, we updated the TF tree, completely changed the configuration YAML file (e.g., serial/tcp both use the same launch file, just need to change the connection type in the yaml), and moved the odometry converters inside the ROS driver, so only one repository is required.

Procedure

To migrate to the new driver version, simply git pull the corresponding changes or switch to one of the new tags (e.g., git checkout 8.0.0). Aside of performing the installation steps detailed in Installation and usage, it is important to update the configuration file found in fixposition_driver/fixposition_driver_ros[1,2]/launch/config.yaml. Here you will likely need to update the TCP client (or serial connection) parameter stream: tcpcli://10.0.2.1:21000.

On another note, if you were previously using the Fixposition ROS Odometry Converter, this node is no longer required. You can simply use the converter inside the ROS driver by enabling the converter in the configuration file, selecting the corresponding topic name and type, and enabling the necessary input dimensions and scale factor.

Lastly, it is wroth noting that the previous launch files do not exist anymore. The serial and TCP launch files have been merged into a single node.launch file. Thus, for all of the features available in the ROS driver, this is the only node you need to execute.

Further steps

There are many configuration options available in the reworked ROS driver, such as NMEA and Fusion collectors, delay warnings, NAV2 compatibility mode, etc. If you have any questions regarding the installation procedure, migration steps, or any of the new functionalities, do not hesitate to contact us at support@fixposition.com.