# dheera/rosshow

Visualize ROS topics inside a terminal with Unicode/ASCII art

Repository: https://github.com/dheera/rosshow
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/rosshow
Language: Python
License: BSD-3-Clause
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2025-12-29T03:18:51+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 59/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 59, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3407, "days_push": 247, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1145, forks 97 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:45.669989+00:00)

## What it is
rosshow is a Python CLI tool that visualizes ROS and ROS2 topics directly in the terminal using Unicode Braille or ASCII art. It renders sensor messages like images, point clouds, laser scans, IMU data, GPS fixes, and numeric time series without needing rviz or port forwarding.

## Use cases
- debug robot sensor topics over ssh without rviz
- visualize ros topics in terminal
- view point cloud data from velodyne in terminal
- plot laser scan messages over ssh
- see camera image topics without port forwarding
- render occupancy grid maps in terminal
- plot imu and gps sensor data from a robot

## When to choose
- you ssh into robots and need quick sensor debugging without rviz or X forwarding
- you work with ROS1 or ROS2 and want lightweight terminal-based topic visualization
- your terminal only supports ASCII and you still need to see sensor data
- you want to inspect std_msgs numeric streams as time series plots

## When to avoid
- you need full 3D visualization, transforms, or rich rviz features
- you use custom message types beyond std_msgs and sensor_msgs
- you need to record or analyze topic data rather than just eyeball it
- you are not working in a ROS ecosystem

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: data-visualization, developer-tools, terminal-ui
- domain: robotics, developer-tools, data-visualization
- platform: python, cli
- tags: ros, ros2, sensor-debugging, ascii-art, unicode-braille, terminal-visualization, robotics-debugging, debugging, command-line, linux

## Member repositories
- dheera/rosshow (main) score 59

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:45.669989+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:34:29.906706+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/dheera/rosshow (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:45.669989+00:00, sha e031f79f8bb7)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.