Anthony Cavin

In this tutorial, we will create a custom ROS 2 Humble package called rosbag2reduct that records incoming ROS 2 topics into MCAP bag files on a Raspberry Pi and automatically uploads those files to a ReductStore instance with metadata labels. We'll walk through setting up ROS 2 Humble on the Pi, interfacing a USB camera using the v4l2_camera driver, deploying a lightweight YOLOv5 (nano) object detection node (using ONNX Runtime) to produce detection metadata, and implementing the rosbag2reduct node to capture data and offload it. We will also cover installing ReductStore on the Pi, configuring replication of labeled data to a central storage on your laptop (using label-based filters via the web console). This end-to-end guide is structured with clear steps, code examples, and configuration snippets to help you build and deploy the system.

As data-driven applications evolve, the need for efficient storage solutions continues to grow. ReductStore and MinIO are two powerful solutions designed to handle massive amounts of unstructured data, but they serve different purposes.

While ReductStore is optimized for time-series object storage with a focus on unstructured data such as sensor logs, images, and machine-generated data for robotics and IIoT, MinIO is a high-performance object storage system built for scalable, cloud-native applications with a focus on S3 compatibility and enterprise-wide storage needs.

In this article, we'll explore the differences between ReductStore and MinIO, examine where each excels, and discuss how they can be used together to build a more comprehensive data storage solution.

With the rapid growth of time-series data in AI, IoT, and industrial automation, choosing the right database solution can significantly impact performance, scalability, and efficiency. As we covered briefly in our whitepaper, ReductStore and TimescaleDB are two powerful but distinct solutions, each designed to handle time-series data in different ways. ReductStore specializes in unstructured time-series data, making it ideal for edge computing and large binary objects. TimescaleDB, on the other hand, is an extension of PostgreSQL, optimized for structured time-series data with robust querying capabilities. In this article, we'll explore these differences between ReductStore and TimescaleDB, as well as their other strengths, and when to use each.