How to use a camera with Create 3 for ROS 2

[AsawareeBhide]

Hi! In the context of using a camera with ROS 2 -

1. Can a camera be connected directly to Create 3 via the USB-C connector or is a compute board needed in between?
2. If connected directly to Create 3, can the camera communicate with a compute board over WiFi like Create 3 does (using its ROS 2 wrapper)?

[alsora]

Long story short: you will need a compute board.

If you connect the camera to the create 3, the camera may power up but you will not have a way to run the camera driver software (you can't run custom software on the create 3 robot; moreover even if you could, this would likely be too computationally intensive for the robot processor).

There are similar questions in this forum that you can look at:

• What is the best way to power the Luxonis Oak D Lite ? #127
• Setup questions for camera with Pi 3B #90