Listening to ROS 2 on Another Computer¶

Use Foxglove for visualization, or DDS discovery to connect ROS 2 nodes across computers.

Foxglove over a WebSocket¶

For visualization without a ROS installation on the laptop, start a Foxglove bridge on the SVEA and connect the host app/browser to ws://SVEA_IP:8765. floor2.launch.py starts this bridge by default for simulation. The hardware/simulation stack in svea.launch.py can include it with use_foxglove:=True. Development containers publish port 8765; hardware containers on native Linux use host networking.

Direct DDS communication¶

Both computers need compatible ROS 2 installations and message definitions. For the default DDS middleware, set the same agreed domain in every terminal that starts nodes on either computer:

export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=42
export ROS_AUTOMATIC_DISCOVERY_RANGE=SUBNET

42 is an example; use the domain assigned to your experiment. The base Docker image sets discovery to LOCALHOST, so override it inside the container before launching nodes. Exporting variables only on the host does not pass them through util/run automatically. Restart nodes and the ROS CLI daemon after changing discovery settings:

ros2 daemon stop
ros2 topic list
ros2 node list

The hosts must permit DDS traffic and multicast, or have explicit middleware peer configuration. Host networking on native Linux avoids Docker bridge NAT; macOS/Windows virtualization and WiFi policy can limit discovery. Publishing only the Foxglove port does not enable DDS discovery across hosts.

See the ROS 2 Jazzy discovery documentation for ROS_STATIC_PEERS and middleware-specific limitations. The discovery variables above do not configure rmw_zenoh.