PCAP to PCD

A tool to convert a .pcap file from a Velodyne VLP-16 LiDAR sensor
to multiple .pcd PointCloud files.

This stand-alone VLP Grabber can save you time from
compiling PCL (PointCloud Library) from source.

Author: David Butterworth, 2019.
using code from PCL and Tsukasa Sugiura.

Installation:

Code was tested on:

• Ubuntu 16.04 with PCL 1.7.2
• Ubuntu 18.04 with PCL 1.8.1

Dependencies:
sudo apt install libpcl-dev libpcap-dev pcl-tools

Compile:

mkdir build
cd build/
cmake ..
make

Sample data:
http://midas3.kitware.com/midas/community/29/

Usage:

Playback the data in PCL Visualizer:
./main -pcap /path/to/data.pcap
Press 'q' key to exit.

Convert the data to .pcd files:
./main -pcap /path/to/data.pcap -saveframes 1
This saves each scan as a separate file
e.g.
cloud00000.pcd
cloud00001.pcd
cloud00002.pcd
etc.

To view one of the scans:
pcl_viewer cloud00000.pcd