[GIS] Are there any open source software for obtaining and processing data from the Velodyne HDL-32E lidar

Question

Does anybody know if a FOSS package exists? The best I could find are the scripts at binarymillenium. I was just hoping somebody here knows of a complete package for obtaining and processing the data.

Answer 1

Not sure of a complete package I'm afraid. Given that it is very specialised you might struggle to find one unfortunately.

However, if you are keen (or know someone that is) you could always try building one...

From the Velodyne HDL 32E user manual Appendix B:

The HDL-32E outputs two UDP Ethernet packets — a data packet containing laser firing data located on Port 2368 and a positioning packet which contains GPS and positioning data located on Port 8308. The packet at Port 2368 contains a header, a data payload of firing data and status data. Data packets are assembled with the collection of all firing data for twelve laser firing sequences.

In theory this means that to capture data all you need is software listening and capturing data on Ports 2368 and 8308. One solution if you know Python would be Twisted - see this documentation on listening on UDP ports.

Then you could go on with modification of the script that you'd already seen on binarymillenium - and in the Velodyne manual is a diagram that describes the content of the UDP packet which you could hopefully use. From there how you use the data is up to you.

Sorry I can't give you a packaged solution, but hopefully this helps!