lcm-spy(1)
๐ lcm-spy โ the manual page, bestie edition โจ
okay so you found lcm-spy(1), the traffic inspection tool from the Lightweight Communications and Marshalling (LCM) crew. buckle up, this one's fun ๐
๐ธ NAME ๐ธ
lcm-spy โ traffic inspection tool. that's it, that's the name, short and iconic ๐
โจ SYNOPSIS โจ
lcm-spy [options]
just the binary and whatever options you're feeling. slay.
๐ฆ DESCRIPTION ๐ฆ
so lcm-spy is the Lightweight Communications and Marshalling traffic inspection utility. it's a graphical tool for viewing messages received on an LCM network ๐ and the vibe is very much like Ethereal/Wireshark and tcpdump โ it can inspect all LCM messages received and give you information and statistics on the channels being used. main character energy, honestly ๐
when you hand it appropriate LCM type definitions, lcm-spy is able to automatically detect and decode messages, and it can display the individual fields of recognized messages. the catch: for unrecognized messages, lcm-spy is limited to displaying statistics only. no decoding for the mystery messages, sorry bestie ๐ญ
here's what lcm-spy collects for each channel:
- Channel name
- Number of messages received
- Message Rate (Hz)
- Bandwidth (KB/s)
- and on its own, this information can often be used to verify that messages are being transmitted on the expected channels, and at the expected data rates. lowkey a vibe check for your network ๐ซถ
๐ OPTIONS ๐
these are the options lcm-spy provides:
-l,--lcm-url=URLโ use the specified LCM URL. that's it, that's the whole thing.-t,--title [LABEL]โ displayLABELin the window title โจ cute lil nameplate for your window.--title-urlโ display the LCM URL in the title instead. iykyk.-h,--helpโ shows some help text and exits. classic. respectful. we love a helpful queen ๐
๐ง AUTOMATIC MESSAGE DECODING ๐ง
here's where it gets magical. if a Java class generated by lcm-gen for an LCM type definition is contained within a JAR file that is on the Java classpath, lcm-spy automatically detects the class and uses Java reflection to insert the corresponding LCM type definitions into a type database ๐ฎ
and subsequently? lcm-spy is able to automatically recognize and decode messages received that correspond to all such types. no cap, it just knows ๐
๐ SEE ALSO ๐
๐ COPYRIGHT ๐
lcm-spy is part of the Lightweight Communications and Marshalling (LCM) project. permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. see the file COPYING in the LCM distribution for more details regarding distribution.
LCM is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. see the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details. you should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with LCM; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
fr fr, read the license. it's giving "legally required but also lowkey important" ๐
๐ AUTHOR ๐
this manual page was written by Albert Huang. absolute legend, we stan ๐ซถ
and that's the whole thing bestie!! this page came to you from the LCM project, dated 2009-07-28 โ a classic, an icon, a moment in history โจ stay decoding, stay slaying, and remember: lcm-spy(1) loves you ๐๐ธ
๐ฆ where this page comes from
- ubuntu noble: liblcm-bin 1.5.0~repack1-0ubuntu1 ยท LGPL-2.1-or-later
- ubuntu questing: liblcm-bin 1.5.0~repack1-0ubuntu2
- ubuntu resolute: liblcm-bin 1.5.0~repack1-0ubuntu4 ยท LGPL-2.1-or-later
- ubuntu stonking: liblcm-bin 1.5.0~repack1-0ubuntu4 ยท LGPL-2.1-or-later
- ๐ girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms