Preview and Read Point Clouds from Ouster Lidar Sensor

You can preview and read point clouds from the supported Ouster^® lidar sensors by using the preview and the read functions of the ousterlidar object.

Preview Point Clouds

Create an ousterlidar object, ousterObj, for the OS0-64 sensor model. Specify the file path to the corresponding calibration file.

ousterObj = ousterlidar("OS1-64","C:/ouster/OS0-64G_sample.json");

Preview the point cloud data by using the preview function. The preview window opens. Note that you must close the preview figure before using the read function.

preview(ousterObj)

Preview window displaying point cloud data from Ouster lidar sensor.

After you preview the data, close the window by using the closePreview function.

closePreview(ousterObj)

Read Point Clouds

After you create an ousterlidar object, you can read point clouds from the object buffer with or without first using the start function to stream data.

If you use the start function, you can read the data available in the object buffer.

If you do not use the start function, the read function internally starts data streaming, reads the specified point clouds, and then stops streaming.

You can use the pcplayer function to visualize the point clouds.

Read Point Clouds Without Buffering

Create an ousterlidar object, ousterObj, for the OS0-64 sensor model. Specify the file path to the corresponding calibration file.

ousterObj = ousterlidar("OS1-64","C:/ouster/OS0-64G_sample.json");

Preview the point cloud data by using the preview function. The preview window opens. Note that you must close the preview figure before using the read function.

preview(ousterObj)

Preview window displaying point cloud data from Ouster lidar sensor.

After you preview the data, close the window by using the closePreview function. You must close the preview window before using the read function.

closePreview(ousterObj);

Read the most recent point cloud from the buffer.

[ptCloud,timestamp] = read(ousterObj,"latest");

Display the point cloud using the pcshow function.

pcshow(ptCloud)

Read Point Clouds from Buffer

Create an ousterlidar object, ousterObj, for the OS0-64 sensor model.

ousterObj = ousterlidar("OS0-64","OS0-64G_sample.json");

Start streaming point clouds into the object buffer by using the start function. The function continues streaming in the background.

start(ousterObj)

You can now select which data to read from the buffer using the read function.

Read the oldest point cloud in the buffer.

[ptCloud,timestamp] = read(ousterObj,"Oldest");

Read all point clouds available in the buffer.

[ptCloud,timestamp] = read(ousterObj,"all");

Read the latest point cloud in the buffer. When you read the latest point cloud, the function discards all the older point clouds in the buffer.

[ptCloud,timestamp] = read(ousterObj,"latest");

Read Specified Number of Point Clouds

You can specify the number of point clouds to read from the object buffer when using "oldest" or "latest" mode of the read function. For example:

read(ousterObj,10) reads the 10 oldest point clouds from the buffer. If you do not specify a read mode, the function uses "oldest" by default.
read(ousterObj,10,"oldest") reads the 10 oldest point clouds from the buffer.
read(ousterObj,20,"latest") reads the 20 most recent point clouds from the buffer. The function deletes all older point clouds from the buffer.