YDLIDAR T-mini Pro 360-Degree Laser Range Scanner User Manual

: June 12, 2024
: YDLIDAR

Table of Contents

YDLIDAR T-mini Pro LIDAR DEVELOPMENT KIT
- Development Kit
OPERATION UNDER WINDOWS
LINUX ROS OPERATION
Revise
References
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Download This Manual (PDF format)

YDLIDAR T-mini Pro 360-Degree Laser Range Scanner User Manual

YDLIDAR T-mini Pro LIDAR DEVELOPMENT KIT

The development kit of YDLIDAR T-mini Pro lidar (hereinafter referred to as T-mini Pro) is an accessory tool provided for performance evaluation and early development of the T-mini Pro. Through the T-mini Pro development kit, and with the evaluation software, users can observe point cloud data scanned by T-mini Pro on your environment or development on the SDK.

Development Kit

The T-mini Pro development kit has the following components:

T-mini Pro Lidar
USB Type-C Cable
USB Adapter Board

FIG 1 YDLIDAR T-MINI PRO DEVELOPMENT KIT

CHART 1 YDLIDAR T-MINI PRO LIDAR DEVELOPMENT KIT DESCRIPTION

Item	Qty	Description
T-mini Pro Lidar	1	Standard version of the T-mini Pro Lidar, internal

integrated motor drive, can realize motor stall control and motor control
USB Type-C Cable| 1| Use with USB adapter board to connect T-mini Pro and PC. USB cable is both a power supply cable and a data cable
USB Adapter Board| 1| Realize USB to UART, convenient for the rapid interconnection of T-mini Pro lidar and PC. In addition, it provides Micro USB power interface (PWR) for auxiliary power supply

Note: USB Adapter board has two interface: USB_DATA、USB_PWR.
USB_DATA: Data powered interface. In most cases, this interface can be used to meet power and communication requirements.
USB_PWR: Auxiliary power supply interface. The USB interface of some development platforms has weak current drive capability. At this time, auxiliary power supply can be used.

OPERATION UNDER WINDOWS

Device Connection

When T-mini Pro is evaluated and developed under windows, T-mini Pro and PC need to be interconnected. The specific process is as follows:

FIG 2 YDLIDAR T-MINI PRO DEVICE CONNECTION STEP 1

FIG 3 YDLIDAR T-MINI PRO DEVICE CONNECTION STEP 2

Connect the adapter board with T-mini Pro first, then connect the USB cable to the USB port of the adapter board and the PC. Note that the Type-C interface of the USB cable is connected to the USB_DATA of the USB interface board, and the idle mode is used after T-mini Pro is powered on. The motor does not rotate.

The drive current of USB interface of some development platforms or PC is not sufficient. Tmini Pro need to be connected to the auxiliary power supply of +5V, otherwise the lidar will be abnormal.

FIG 4 YDLIDAR T-MINI PRO AUXILIARY POWER SUPPLY
Device Connection

Driver Installation

To evaluate and develop the T-mini Pro under Windows, you need to install the serial port driver of the USB adapter board. The USB adapter board of this kit adopts CP2102 chip to realize serial port (UART) to USB signal conversion. Its driver can be downloaded from our official website or downloaded from the official website of Silicon Labs.

https://www.ydlidar.com/dowfile.html?id=97

http://cn.silabs.com/products/development-tools/software/usb-to-uart-bridge- vcp-drivers

After unzipping the driver package, run the CP2102’s Windows driver installation file (exe file under CP210x_VCP_Windows). Please select the 32-bit version (x86) or 64-bit version (x64) installation program according to the version of the windows operating system.

FIG 5 YDLIDAR T-MINI PRO DRIVER VERSION SELECTION

Double-click the exe file and follow the prompts to install it.

FIG 6 YDLIDAR T-MINI PRO DRIVER INSTALLING

After the installation is complete, you can right-click on [My Computer] and select [Properties]. On the open [System] screen, select [Device Manager] from the left menu to access the Device Manager.

Expand [Port] to see the serial port name corresponding to the identified USB adapter, that is, the driver installation is successful. The following figure shows COM3. (Note that the port must be checked in case of T-mini Pro and PC interconnection).

FIG 7 YDLIDAR T-MINI PRO DRIVER INSTALLATION CHECK
Driver Installing

How to Use LidarViewer

YDLIDAR provides LidarViewer, a point cloud data visualization software for T-mini Pro realtime scanning. Users can use this software to visually observe the T-mini Pro scanning map: YDLIDAR provides T-mini Pro real-time point cloud data and real-time scanning frequency. At the same time, the scanned data can be saved offline to an external file for further analysis. Visualization software download link: https://www.ydlidar.com/Public/upload/download/TOOL.zip

Before using the YDLIDAR software, make sure that the T-mini Pro USB adapter board serial port driver is installed successfully, and interconnect the T-mini Pro with the USB port of the PC. Run the evaluation software: LidarViewer.exe, select the corresponding serial port number and model number. Meanwhile, users could choose language on the top right corner.

FIG 8 YDLIDAR T-MINI PRO EVALUATION SOFTWARE

If there is no T-mini Pro model, please refer to the following to add T-mini Pro model.

FIG 9 YDLIDAR T-MINI PRO PARAMETER CONFIGURATION

If the connection is correct, you will see the following screen:

FIG 10 POINTCLOUD VIEWER INTERFACE
Parameter Configuration

Start Scanning

Click to start scanning and display the environment point cloud. Click to stop it. as shown below:

FIG 11 LIDAR SCANNING POINT CLOUD DISPLAY
Parameter Configuration

Data Storage

During lidar scanning, click [File] in the main menu, select [Export to Excel], and save point cloud data according to the prompts. Then the system will save the point cloud information scanned in a circle in Excel format.

FIG 12 SAVE DATA
Parameter Configuration

Display Mean and Standard Deviation

Click [Tools] in the main menu, then select [Mean And STD] – [View].

FIG 13 YDLIDAR T-MINI PRO DISPLAY MEAN AND STANDARD DEVIATION

Choose one according to your needs, move the mouse to the test position, right-click the pop-up menu, and select [Lock Mouse Tracking].

FIG 14 LOCK MOUSE TRACKING
Display Mean

Display Intensity Value

Click [Data] in the main menu and select [Intensity Histogram].

FIG 15 DISPLAY INTENSITY VALUE
Display Mean

The main window is displayed as follows, showing the intensity values of a total of 100 points on the left and right of the mouse lock position.

Display intensity histogram

Play and Record
Click [Tools] in the main menu, then select [Record and Play].

FIG 16 RECORD AND PLAY

The main window is displayed as follows:

To record lidar data, click to start recording, and click to stop recording.

In non-scanning mode, click to start play.

The play process is as follows:

FIG 17 PLAY PROCESS
Display intensity histogram

Debug

Click [Tools] in the main menu, and then select [DebugON] to output the raw lidar data to the “viewer_log.txt” and “viewer_log_err.txt” files.

FIG 18 START DEBUGGING
Play and Record

Filter

Click [Tools] in the main menu, and then select [Filter] to add Lidar data filtering algorithm.

FIG 19 FILTER SETTING
Filter

Note: For more functions of Lidar Viewer, please click [Help], select [More Information], and learn more about how to use it.

LINUX ROS OPERATION

There are many Linux versions this article only uses Ubuntu 18.04, Melodic version ROS as an example.

SDK driver address:

https://github.com/YDLIDAR/YDLidar-SDK

ROS driver address:

https://github.com/YDLIDAR/ydlidar_ros_driver

Device Connection

Under Linux, the T-mini Pro and PC interconnect processes are consistent with those under Windows. See Device Connection under Window.

Compile and Install YDLidar-SDK

ydlidar_ros_driver depends on the YDLidar-SDK library. If you have never installed the TDLlidar-SDK library, or it has expired, you must first install the YDLidar-SDK library. If you have the latest version of YDLidar-SDK installed, please skip this step, then go to the next step.

$ git clone https://github.com/YDLIDAR/YDLidar-SDK.git
$ cd YDLidar-SDK/build
$ cmake ..
$ make
$ sudo make install

ROS Driver Installation

Cloning GitHub’s ydlidar_ros_driver Package:
$ git clone https://github.com/YDLIDAR/ydlidar_ros_driver.git
ydlidar_ws/src/ydlidar_ros_driver
Build the ydlidar_ros_driver software package:
$ cd ydlidar_ws
$ catkin_make
Package environment Settings:
$ source ./devel/setup.sh
Note: Add a permanent workspace environment variable. It will be very convenient if ROS environment variables are automatically added to your bash session every time you start a new shell:
$ echo “source ~/ydlidar_ws/devel/setup.bash” >> ~/.bashrc
$ source ~/.bashrc
Verify that your package path is set, echo the ROS_PACKAGE_PATH variable.
$ echo $ROS_PACKAGE_PATH
You should see something like this: /home/tony/ydlidar_ws/src:/opt/ros/melodic/share.
Create Serial Port Alias [Optional] $ chmod 0777 src/ydlidar_ros_driver/startup/*
$ sudo sh src/ydlidar_ros_driver/startup/initenv.sh

Note: After completing the previous operation, re-insert the LiDAR again.

Run the ydlidar ros driver

Run ydlidar ros driver with startup file, as shown below:

$ roslaunch ydlidar_ros_driver Tmini.launch

RVIZ Scan Result Checking

$ roslaunch ydlidar_ros_driver lidar_view.launch

Note: Take G4 as an example by default. If you use other lidars, change the lidar.launch file in lidar_view.launch file to the corresponding **. (If using T-mini Pro lidar, change to Tmini.launch)
RVIZ Scan Result Checking

FIG 20 YDLIDAR T-MINI PRO RVIZ
RVIZ Scan Result Checking

Modify Scan Angle

The scanning data seen by running the launch file is displayed by default with 360- degree data. To modify the display range, you need to modify the configuration parameters in the launch file. The specific operation is as follows:

Switch to the directory where the corresponding [launch file] is located, edit the file, and its content is as shown in the figure:
$ vim Tmini.launch
FIG 21 TMINI.LAUNCH FILE

Note: For more information about the file contents, please refer to
https://github.com/YDLIDAR/ydlidar_ros_driver#configure-ydlidar_ros_driver- internal-parameter
The T-mini Pro lidar coordinates follow the right-hand rule within ROS, with an angle range of [-180, 180]. “angle_min” is the start angle, and “angle_max” is the endangle. The specific scope needs to be modified according to actual use.
FIG 22 YDLIDAR T-MINI PRO COORDINATES DEFINITION