Developer Quickstart Guide

🚧 These docs are currently out of date. 🚧

They reflect the Meadowlark (Carbon dev kit) API and may not apply to Carbon systems.
Fully updated documentation will be published when Carbon Alpha ships in April 2026.

Questions? Reach out to us at: support@voyantphotonics.com

This guide will help you verify your Voyant API installation by building and running a simple example.

This is intended for developers who aim to build their own programs using the Voyant SDK.

Prerequisites

Voyant API installed (see Installation)

Building the Examples

To build the examples:

From /workspace/ if building in provided docker container.
From voyant-sdk/ if building on your native system.

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make

The built executables will be in the build/bin directory.

Running the Basic Client Example

The basic client example (voyant_client_basic) by default connects to a local stream of simulated Voyant LiDAR sensor data and displays the incoming data stream.

You can run the example with:

./bin/voyant_client_basic

See Live Client (C++) example documentation for more details.

Simulating a Device

To test the API without connecting a device, you can simulate a data stream from another terminal.

Remember: You can access a running docker container from another terminal with:
docker exec -it voyant-sdk-container bash

# Run the mock stream with the network configuration expected by the example
voyant_points_mock_stream --bind-addr 127.0.0.1:0 --group-addr 224.0.0.0:4444

You will see a rapid stream indicating data is being sent:

Sent message 1405 for frame 1 (range: 5.10m)
Sent message 1406 for frame 1 (range: 5.10m)
Sent message 1407 for frame 1 (range: 5.10m)
Sent message 1408 for frame 1 (range: 5.10m)

Check the output

If properly configured, your basic client will display a stream of received full LiDAR frames:

###############
Received frame:
Header{message type:2, device id:MDL-000, frame idx:35, stamp:1691391379.087802875, proto version:0.1.0, api version:0.1.0, fw version:0.1.0, hdl version:0.0.34}
Config{ len: 0 }
Points[24384] {{idx:6238209,ts:163840,pos:[43.984,0.193966,11.0427],v:1.22985,snr:12.3234,refl:0,noise:34.0003,min_snr:-0.00802298,drop reason:1},...}

Debugging

If you don’t see the expected output, try running (outside the docker container):

sudo ip route add 224.0.0.0/24 dev lo

And restart your examples.

Refer to our Connections Guide for more details.

Understanding the Output

The example output shows:

Header: Information about the frame, device, and versions
Config: Any configuration settings (empty in this example)
Points: An array of point data with position, velocity, signal-to-noise ratio, and other metrics

Next Steps

Now that you’ve confirmed your installation works:

Explore the pre-packaged tools to understand what functionality is available
Try the example applications to learn how to use the API
Begin developing your own applications with the Voyant API

For more advanced usage, refer to the API documentation.