System: Jetson Orin Nano, JetPack 6.2.1, Isaac ROS Dev Docker Image.
Problem: Standard ROS 2 GUI tools fail to render video from a source-built ZED camera driver, even though the underlying SDK and hardware are functional inside the container.
Steps to Reproduce:
Follow the official “Isaac ROS ZED Setup” guide to successfully build the zed-ros2-wrapper from source inside the container.
Verify the SDK works: Run /usr/local/zed/tools/ZED_Explorer inside the container. Result: Success. Live video is displayed correctly.
Launch the ROS 2 driver: ros2 launch zed_wrapper zed_camera.launch.py .... The node starts and publishes topics (confirmed via ros2 topic list).
Launch rviz2 and add an Image display for the camera topic with QoS set to Best Effort.
Observed Result: The RViz display remains blank. No video is shown.
Conclusion: A potential incompatibility between the ROS 2 Humble visualization tools and the graphics stack in the official Isaac ROS container for JetPack 6.2.1.
Thank you for the feedback regarding the Isaac ROS documentation. We’ve just released it, and positive feedback confirms that it’s valid.
Where are you launching RViz2? Inside the container? On the Jetson host? On a remote machine on the same local network?
Please note that the Jetson Orin Nano computing power may not be enough to run the camera processing and RViz2 simultaneously.
I recommend you try to subscribe to the topics from a remote machine on the same local network.
Also, remember to check that you are using the same ROS_DOMAIN_ID in all the environments.
Thank you for your welcome to the community and quick response.
To answer your questions:
Yes, we are running everything (the ZED driver and RViz) inside the container on the Jetson Orin Nano itself.
I tested your theory about the performance bottleneck. While running the ZED driver and trying to display the blank RViz window, I monitored the system with jtop. The GPU usage spiked to 97%, while the CPU usage was only around 50%.
I confirmed that ROS_DOMAIN_ID is the same
This seems to confirm your theory that the GPU is being overloaded. Do you have any recommendations for configuration changes to reduce the GPU load?
Unfortunately, RViz2 uses OpenGL for rendering, and it takes a lot of GPU resources, so the only valid recommendation is not to run it on a Jetson and use it remotely instead.
Thank you for the clarification. It will save me a lot of time and allow me to move on. What I really want to do is run the many Isaac ROS2 apt installs as a next step. If I’m likely to run into similar performance problems a heads up would be appreciated. I have my sites on a AGX or Thor in my future.