Inquiry on Using Ouster-ROS and Ouster-SDK Simultaneously (ROS 2 Humble)

Software
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1

I would like to ask for your advice regarding a case reported by one of our customers using ROS 2 Humble on Jetson.

The customer attempted to use both the Ouster ROS driver (ouster-ros) and Ouster SDK (ouster-sdk) at the same time, in order to visualize and process LiDAR data. However, the setup did not work as expected, and they reached out to us for support.

To investigate, I conducted a test under the same conditions and found that I was unable to run both ouster-ros and ouster-sdk simultaneously on the same device.

  • I launched the ouster-ros driver.
  • In another terminal, I subscribed to topics and attempted to open the ouster-sdk visualization (viz).
  • I tested with both viz:=false and viz:=true, but in both cases the SDK visualization did not start or remained inactive.

This experience led me to wonder:
:backhand_index_pointing_right: Is it possible to use ouster-ros and ouster-sdk at the same time on the same device?
We would greatly appreciate it if you could share any insight, recommended practices, or known limitations — regardless of whether it’s on Jetson or any other platform.

Thank you in advance for your support.

2

I think it might be possible through the use of multicast..

Ouster sensor can be configured to use multicast groups once you put the sensor in this state you can have multiple client connect to the same sensor. In this case, you could run ouster-ros with multiple instances of ouster-cli.

I have configured ouster-ros with multicast groups before but that was about 2 years ago last time I tried that, but I believe it is doable following this path.