achim-k / foxglove_websocket_server

A simple websocket server that exposes ROS topics using the Foxglove websocket protocol

Foxglove WebSocket Server

A simple websocket server that exposes ROS topics using the Foxglove websocket protocol, providing a smooth integration with Foxglove Studio.

C++ was chosen as the implementation language for the following reasons:

• True multi threading support unlike Python (Global interpreter lock)
• The node can be deployed as a nodelet

Launch

Use the provided launch file that also spins up the rosapi node which is required to get available topics and their message definitions.

roslaunch foxglove_websocket_server foxglove_server.launch

Topic discovery

By default, topic discovery is performed periodically by calling the rosapi/topics_and_raw_types service. This behavior can be disabled by setting the topic_discovery_period parameter to 0. In this case, you will have to manually trigger topic discovery using the provided discover_topics service.