VRPN and the Polhemus Liberty

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Started 5 years ago by arih
Latest reply from g_ireland

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arih

member
Joined: Aug '05
Posts: 10

Has anyone had any luck getting the Liberty to work (either with USB or serial) in Windows? I have my application working with the Fastrak, IC3, and Flock of Birds, but thus far the Liberty elludes me...

Posted 5 years ago #
#michael adrian

enthusiast
Joined: Jun '05
Posts: 66

Hello All!

After fighting with the Liberty device for hours I decided to download the VRPN source and figure out why the **** the liberty doesn't want to talk to the VRPN server.

The problem is located in "vrpn_Tracker_Liberty.C" in line 244:

if ( (statusmsg[0]!='0') || (statusmsg[ret-1]!=(char)(10)) )

This line checks the string that is returned by the Liberty after a "^V" command that returns the device status report. The string starts with "00v..." so the first check is OK. The second check (last character has to be 10) fails for whatever reason. After turning the line into

if ( (statusmsg[0]!='0') )

everything works just fine.

The most curious thing is that I successfully connected the Polhemus Patriot in the past using the VRPN server coming with Virtools and this one is using the Liberty driver.

I will report this issue to Virtools to make the fix go into the distribution sooner or later.

For the time being you might build a modified version of the VRPN server on your own. If you get the source (ftp://ftp.cs.unc.edu/pub/packages/GRIP/vrpn) be sure to pick version 06.07 beta10 located in the "older versions" folder since this is the version the VRPN client of Virtools uses.
If you are not familar with compilers just send me an e-mail and I will send you the executeable.

One other thing: Wether the Patriot nor the Liberty can be used with USB under Windows yet. You have to use the serial port ...

Thats it.

Regards,

Michael

Posted 4 years ago #
#hartholt

new member
Joined: Aug '08
Posts: 1

Hi,

I know this is a little bit of an old post, but we'll see who replies

I'm having some trouble getting the Polhemus Patriot to work with USB under Windows XP. I'm using version 7.10, which does seem to support USB for this device, using the Liberty driver. The USB port seems to be defined for Linux, though. How does one define a USB port for Windows?

Thanks!

Arno

Posted 3 years ago #
g_ireland

new member
Joined: May '12
Posts: 1

I'm trying to use the Polhemus Liberty with virtools 5.0 and not getting any communication.

My cfg is based on a version of vrpn.cfg which has examples of liberty support under Linux.
I'm using serial connection on COM1 and using COM1 in the cfg file.

Did Michael Adrian's fix ever make it into vrpn, specifically that supplied with Virtools 5.0?

Is anyone using the Liberty with Virtools 5.0? Just knowing that it was possible would be a major step forward

Thanks for your time

Gary

Posted 3 months ago #