sawSartoriusScale

This SAW component contains code for interfacing with Sartorius scales (www.sartorius.com). It has been tested on a Sartorius GC 2502 with a serial connection (USB). It compiles on Windows, Linux and likely MacOS. This repository provides a core component as well as:

• Example application with Qt based GUI
• ROS node (also with Qt based GUI)

Links

• License: http://github.com/jhu-cisst/cisst/blob/master/license.txt
• JHU-LCSR software: http://jhu-lcsr.github.io/software/

Dependencies

• cisst libraries: https://github.com/jhu-cisst/cisst
• Qt for user interface
• ROS and ROS CRTK (optional) - works with ROS 1 and ROS 2!

Compilation and configuration

Linux permissions

Sartorius scales use a serial port to communicate. When connecting your scale to your computer, a pseudo device will be added to the /dev directory.   Usually something like /dev/ttyS01, /dev/ttyUSB0 or /dev/ttyACM0. Using the command dmesg can help identify which device is used. Check the file permissions on said device, e.g.,

ls -al /dev/ttyUSB0
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 188, 0 Jan  3 09:32 /dev/ttyUSB0

On Ubuntu, the OS usually sets the ownership of /dev/ttyUSB0 to root and the group to dialout. To grant permissions to read and write to the device, use the command sudo adduser <user_id> dialout to add users to the dialout group. Please note that the user has to logout/login for the new group membership to take effect.

Build

You can find some documentation re. compiling cisst and SAW components for in the dVRK wiki:

• ROS 1
• ROS 2

For Linux with ROS, we provide a VCS files to retrieve all the git repositories you need for sawSartoriusScale in the vcs directory.

Configuring the scale

For the scale and the PC to communicate properly, they need to have the same settings. On the PC side, the defaults are hard coded in the SetSerialPortDefaults method:

    this->SerialPort.SetBaudRate(osaSerialPort::BaudRate9600);
    this->SerialPort.SetCharacterSize(osaSerialPort::CharacterSize7);
    this->SerialPort.SetParityChecking(osaSerialPort::ParityCheckingOdd);
    this->SerialPort.SetStopBits(osaSerialPort::StopBitsOne);
    this->SerialPort.SetFlowControl(osaSerialPort::FlowControlHardware);

On the scale side, you need to make sure it is configured to use the same settings (see manual in the manual directory). The serial port settings are on page 30.

Running the examples

Main example

The main example provided is sawSartoriusScaleQtExample. The command line options are:

sawSartoriusScaleQtExample:
 -s <value>, --serial-port <value> : serial port (e.g. /dev/ttyUSB0, COM...) (optional)
 -l, --log-serial : log all serial port read/writes in cisstLog.txt (optional)
 -D, --dark-mode : replaces the default Qt palette with darker colors (optional)
 -m, --component-manager : JSON file to configure component manager (optional)

To run the example for a given serial port

sawSartoriusScaleQtExample -s /dev/ttyUSB0

ROS

If you also want to use the ROS node for ROS 1, run:

rosrun sartorius_scale sartorius_scale

For ROS 2, run:

ros2 run sartorius_scale sartorius_scale

Other "middleware"

Besides ROS, the ForceDimension component can also stream data to your application using the sawOpenIGTLink or sawSocketStreamer components. See:

• sawOpenIGTLink
• sawSocketStreamer