Build Instructions

Requirements

• a recent C++ compiler with C++14 support:
  • GCC >= 4.9
  • Clang >= 3.6
  • others may work though not tested
• CMake >= 3.2

• Boost >= 1.46.1

  If your system is missing a suitable boost installation, you can download and extract the latest Boost release from http://www.boost.org/ and specify its path using the following catkin/CMake argument:

  -DBOOST_ROOT=/path/to/boost

• ROS >= Jade Turtle

  This is only needed for ROS Bridge. You can compile without ROS using the following CMake argument:

  -DNO_ROS=On

• Doxygen >= 1.8.7 and Graphviz >= 2.36.0

  This is only needed for compiling the documentation.

If your OS is Ubuntu 14.04 / Linux Mint 17.3 or newer, you can install all requirements with the following commands:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu $(lsb_release -usc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net:80 --recv-key 0xB01FA116
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:george-edison55/cmake-3.x
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ros-jade-ros-base cmake clang-3.6 libboost-all-dev doxygen graphviz
sudo apt-get install cmake clang-3.6 libboost-system-dev libboost-filesystem-dev ros-jade-catkin ros-jade-roscpp ros-jade-std-msgs ros-jade-sensor-msgs ros-jade-message-runtime doxygen graphviz

CMake/Catkin Arguments

The following CMake/Catkin arguments are available:

• -DDRIVER=<name>

  Specify the driver to compile and use. At the moment, the following drivers are available: lincan, peak_linux, serial, socket, virtual, dummy.

• -DBUILD_DRIVERS=<;-separated-list of names>

  Semicolon-separated list of additional CAN drivers to build. You can use the same values as for DRIVER.

• -DBUILD_ALL_DRIVERS=On

  Build all available drivers.

• -DPCAN_PREFIX=<path>

  Path to the PCAN drivers needed by the peak_linux driver. See Drivers section.

• -DEXHAUSTIVE_DEBUGGING=On

  Enable exhaustive debugging.

• -DNO_ROS=On

  Exclude anything depending on ROS.

• -DINSTALL_EXAMPLES=On

  Install example programs when running make install.

• -DSDO_RESPONSE_TIMEOUT_MS=<timeout>

  Timeout in milliseconds when waiting for an SDO response.

• -DCONSECUTIVE_SEND_PAUSE_MS=<timeout>

  Pause between two consecutively sent CAN frames in milliseconds.

Initialize ROS and create Catkin workspace

If your ROS installation is fresh you shoud first initialize it like described here.

sudo rosdep init
rosdep update
echo "source /opt/ros/jade/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

You will need a Catkin workspace:

mkdir ~/arbitrary_path/catkin_ws
cd ~/arbitrary_path/catkin_ws
mkdir src
cd src
catkin_init_workspace

Build process without ROS Bridge

KaCanOpen without the ROS part can be built easily using CMake:

git clone https://github.com/KITmedical/kacanopen.git
cd kacanopen
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DDRIVER=<driver> -DNO_ROS=On ..
make

Replace <driver> by a CAN driver name (see section Drivers).

Build process including ROS Bridge

Your KaCanOpen repository must reside or be symlinked inside src:

cd ~/arbitrary_path/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/KITmedical/kacanopen.git

Now you can build it:

catkin_make -DDRIVER=<driver>

Replace <driver> by a CAN driver name (see section Drivers).

Examples

There are several examples on how to use KaCanOpen. Source files are in the examples/ dictionary.

When building with Catkin, you can excute example programs like that:

cd your_catkin_workspace
source devel/setup.bash
rosrun kacanopen kacanopen_example_motor_and_io_bridge # roscore needs to be running

Otherwise just run them from build/examples/:

./build/examples/kacanopen_example_listdevices

Drivers

KaCanOpen provides several CAN drivers (currently only for Linux).

• socket (default)

  For use with SocketCAN, formerly known as LLCF. It's a CAN networking stack being part of the Linux kernel. It's probably the most popular CAN driver infrastructure and there are many devices supporting SocketCAN.

  One of them is USBtin, which we use for development purposes. If you want to use USBtin with KaCanOpen just run dev/init_usbtin.sh.

  Use "slcan0" and "500K" as arguments for Core.start(busname,baudrate) / Master.start(busname,baudrate).

• serial

  Driver for use with serial character devices.

• virtual

  This driver can be used without any CAN hardware. It spans a virtual CAN network using POSIX pipes.

• peak_linux

  For use with CAN hardware by PEAK-System. You will need PCAN drivers installed for successful compilation:

  wget http://www.peak-system.com/fileadmin/media/linux/files/peak-linux-driver-7.15.2.tar.gz
  tar -xzf peak-linux-driver-7.15.2.tar.gz
  mv peak-linux-driver-7.15.2 ~/peak
  cd ~/peak
  make
  

  Then build KaCanOpen with the CMake/Catkin flag -DPCAN_PREFIX="~/peak". You can replace ~/peak as you wish.

• lincan

  For use with LinCan kernel drivers.

You can also use any driver from the CanFestival, as they are binary-compatible. They also have Windows drivers.