ROS2 Bag Plotter

python3 GUI tool to read ROS2 bag files, plot topic data, and export CSV/plots.

Features

• Detects bag folders automatically (metadata.yaml, .db3, .mcap)
• Normalizes time to start at 0 seconds (t_sec)
• Plots known ROS message types directly
• Supports custom message recovery using pasted .msg definition
• Supports custom multi-field mapping (including array channels)
• Per-topic derivative checkbox (Plot d1/d2) to include first/second derivatives in the same plot figure/HTML
• Per-topic smoothing checkbox (Smooth d1/d2) for derivative traces, with GUI-selectable moving-average sample window
• Exports:
  • CSV files to csv/
  • HTML plots to plots/
  • PNG/SVG plots to plots/ (Plotly or Matplotlib fallback)

Installation

git clone https://github.com/L2S-lab/ros2bag_plotter.git
cd ros2bag_plotter
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

Install directly from GitHub (no clone)

python3 -m pip install --user "git+https://github.com/L2S-lab/ros2bag_plotter.git@main"

For development tools:

git clone https://github.com/L2S-lab/ros2bag_plotter.git
cd ros2bag_plotter
python3 -m venv .venv
pip install -e .[dev]

Run

ros2bag-plotter

In the app:

1. Select root folder containing one or more bag folders.
2. Pick bag and topics.
3. Plot, export CSV, or batch export all bags.

Check and update later (pip + GitHub)

Check installed version:

python3 -m pip show ros2bag-plotter

Update to latest main:

python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade "git+https://github.com/L2S-lab/ros2bag_plotter.git@main"

Install/update to specific tag or commit:

python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade "git+https://github.com/L2S-lab/ros2bag_plotter.git@v1.1.0"
python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade "git+https://github.com/L2S-lab/ros2bag_plotter.git@<commit_sha>"

Force reinstall from GitHub even if version string is unchanged:

python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade --force-reinstall "git+https://github.com/L2S-lab/ros2bag_plotter.git@main"

Testing

ruff check src tests --select F,E9
pytest -q