High performance ROS 1 and ROS 2 WebSocket bridge using the Foxglove WebSocket protocol, written in C++.
Live debugging of ROS systems has traditionally relied on running ROS tooling such as rviz. This requires either a GUI and connected peripherals on the robot, or replicating the same ROS environment on a network-connected development machine including the same version of ROS, all custom message definitions, etc. To overcome this limitation and allow remote debugging from web tooling or non-ROS systems, rosbridge was developed. However, rosbridge suffers from performance problems with high frequency topics and/or large messages, and the protocol does not support full visibility into ROS systems such as interacting with parameters or seeing the full graph of publishers and subscribers.
The foxglove_bridge uses the Foxglove WebSocket protocol, a similar protocol to rosbridge but with the ability to support additional schema formats such as ROS 2 .msg and ROS 2 .idl, parameters, graph introspection, and non-ROS systems. The bridge is written in C++ and designed for high performance with low overhead to minimize the impact to your robot stack.
Note: This project is under active development and binary releases of foxglove_bridge might be quite outdated. For the latest features and bug fixes, consider building foxglove_bridge from source.
The foxglove_bridge package is available for ROS 1 Melodic and Noetic, and ROS 2 Humble and Rolling. Earlier releases of ROS will not be supported due to API design and/or performance limitations. The package can be installed with the following command:
$ sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-foxglove-bridgeTo run the bridge node, it is recommended to use the provided launch file:
ROS 1
$ roslaunch --screen foxglove_bridge foxglove_bridge.launch port:=8765<launch>
<!-- Including in another launch file -->
<include file="$(find foxglove_bridge)/launch/foxglove_bridge.launch">
<arg name="port" value="8765" />
<!-- ... other arguments ... -->
</include>
</launch>ROS 2
$ ros2 launch foxglove_bridge foxglove_bridge_launch.xml port:=8765<launch>
<!-- Including in another launch file -->
<include file="$(find-pkg-share foxglove_bridge)/launch/foxglove_bridge_launch.xml"/>
<arg name="port" value="8765"/>
<!-- ... other arguments ... -->
</include>
</launch>Parameters are provided to configure the behavior of the bridge. These parameters must be set at initialization through a launch file or the command line, they cannot be modified at runtime.
- port: The TCP port to bind the WebSocket server to. Must be a valid TCP port number, or 0 to use a random port. Defaults to
8765. - address: The host address to bind the WebSocket server to. Defaults to
0.0.0.0, listening on all interfaces by default. Change this to127.0.0.1to only accept connections from the local machine. - tls: If
true, use Transport Layer Security (TLS) for encrypted communication. Defaults tofalse. - certfile: Path to the certificate to use for TLS. Required when tls is set to
true. Defaults to"". - keyfile: Path to the private key to use for TLS. Required when tls is set to
true. Defaults to"". - topic_whitelist: List of regular expressions (ECMAScript grammar) of whitelisted topic names. Defaults to
[".*"]. - service_whitelist: List of regular expressions (ECMAScript grammar) of whitelisted service names. Defaults to
[".*"]. - param_whitelist: List of regular expressions (ECMAScript grammar) of whitelisted parameter names. Defaults to
[".*"]. - client_topic_whitelist: List of regular expressions (ECMAScript grammar) of whitelisted client-published topic names. Defaults to
[".*"]. - send_buffer_limit: Connection send buffer limit in bytes. Messages will be dropped when a connection's send buffer reaches this limit to avoid a queue of outdated messages building up. Defaults to
10000000(10 MB). - use_compression: Use websocket compression (permessage-deflate). Suited for connections with smaller bandwith, at the cost of additional CPU load.
- capabilities: List of supported server capabilities. Defaults to
[clientPublish,parameters,parametersSubscribe,services,connectionGraph]. - (ROS 1) max_update_ms: The maximum number of milliseconds to wait in between polling
roscorefor new topics, services, or parameters. Defaults to5000. - (ROS 2) num_threads: The number of threads to use for the ROS node executor. This controls the number of subscriptions that can be processed in parallel. 0 means one thread per CPU core. Defaults to
0. - (ROS 2) min_qos_depth: Minimum depth used for the QoS profile of subscriptions. Defaults to
1. This is to set a lower limit for a subscriber's QoS depth which is computed by summing up depths of all publishers. See also #208. - (ROS 2) max_qos_depth: Maximum depth used for the QoS profile of subscriptions. Defaults to
10. - (ROS 2) include_hidden: Include hidden topics and services. Defaults to
false.
cd <path/to/your/ros_ws>
git clone https://github.com/foxglove/ros-foxglove-bridge.git src/ros-foxglove-bridge
rosdep update
rosdep install --ignore-src --default-yes --from-path srccatkin_make
source install/local_setup.bash
roslaunch --screen foxglove_bridge foxglove_bridge.launch
colcon build --event-handlers console_direct+ --symlink-install
source install/local_setup.bash
ros2 launch foxglove_bridge foxglove_bridge_launch.xml
Foxglove Studio connects to foxglove_bridge for live robotics visualization.
A VSCode container is provided with a dual ROS 1 and ROS 2 installation and enough tools to build and run the bridge. Some bash aliases are defined to simplify the common workflow. Here's an example of building and running the ROS 2 node:
source /opt/ros/galactic/setup.bash
ros2_build_debug # or ros2_build_release
ros2_foxglove_bridgeTo test the bridge with example data, open another terminal and download the test .mcap files:
./download_test_data.shThen start playback:
source /opt/ros/galactic/setup.bash
ros2 bag play -l --clock 100 -s mcap data/nuScenes-v1.0-mini-scene-0061-ros2.mcapfoxglove_bridge is released with a MIT license. For full terms and conditions, see the LICENSE file.