Converting .pcap to .pcd

(Pre-requisite: See ROS Indigo Installation)

Start with sourcing ROS indigo.

source ~/ros_catkin_ws_indigo/install_isolated/setup.bash

Getting the ros velodyne

sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-velodyne

So this didn’t really work.
I will manually install the stack

Create a velodyne workspace

$ mkdir -p ~/velodyne_ws
$ cd ~/velodyne_ws

Creating rosinstall file for velodyne

rosintsall_generator --wet --exclude RPP --deps velodyne > velodyne.rosinstall

Compiling and making the velodyne.rosinstall

$ wstool init src velodyne.rosintall
$ catkin_make

When running from this workspace, source manually.

source ~/velodyne_ws/devel/setup.bash

Converting .pcap to .pcd

Now that our environment is finally ready, let’s convert a file!

Open a new terminal and source to velodyne workspace.

source ~/velodyne_ws/devel/setup.bash

Run velodyne_pointcloud to open the .pcap file as a point cloud in ROS (no visualization)

roslaunch velodyne_pointcloud 32e_points.launch pcap:=path/of/your/file.pcap

Open a new terminal and source to velodyne workspace.
Run the pointcloud_to_pcd to effectively convert that ROS pointcloud that’s currently open to a pcd file.

rosrun pcl_ros pointcloud_to_pcd input:=/velodyne_points _prefix:=path/to/save/it.pcd