Introduction
Foxglove Studio can inspect data via multiple sources – including live and recorded data, ROS and non-ROS connections, as well as local and remote recorded data files.
On opening Foxglove Studio, you will see a dialog with a list of all possible data sources (i.e. local file, remote file, live connection, sample data) – click into any of these options to start visualizing your data.
Once you've loaded or connected to a data source, open the Topics tab in the left sidebar to view your current data source's topics – including their schema names, message counts, and publish rates.
All pre-recorded data sources (i.e. ROS 1, ROS 2, MCAP, and PX4 ULog files), whether they are loaded locally or from a remote URL, will be preloaded into Foxglove Studio. This means that you can visualize data over the course of the entire file at once.
For more information on the MCAP file format, check out the GitHub repo and Introducing the MCAP File Format. If you're interested in support for data formats that are not currently included, please share the protocols or serialization formats you're using.
By live connection
Depending on your live connection, you have access to different capabilities:
| ROS 1 | ROS 2 | Rosbridge | Foxglove WebSocket | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stream ROS 1 data | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Stream ROS 2 data | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Stream custom data | ✓ | |||
| Custom message schemas | ✓ | ros2#1159 | ✓ | ✓ |
| Publish messages | ✓ | studio#1661 | ✓ | ✓ (ROS 1, ROS 2, JSON) |
| Call services | ✓ | ✓ (ROS 1, ROS 2) | ||
| Call actions | ||||
| Read & set parameters | ✓ | studio#2614 | studio#2645 | ✓ |