MCAP is an open-source self‑describing container for efficient logging in robotics and pub/sub systems-fast to write and fast to seek. MCAP files can store multiple channels of timestamped, heterogeneous data of any format including ROS, JSON, and Protobuf, with embedded schemas for long-term readability. Its row-oriented, append-only design ensures fast, reliable writes, while optional.
MCAP is a modular, performant, and serialization-agnostic container file format, useful for pub/sub and robotics applications. - foxglove/mcap. MCAP (pronounced "em-cap") is an open source container file format designed for multimodal log data in robotics and pub/sub applications.
This document provides a high-level overview of the MCAP ecosystem, including the file format specification, language implementations, tooling, and testing infrastructure. MCAP (pronounced "em-cap") is an open source container file format for multimodal log data. It supports multiple channels of timestamped pre-serialized data, and is ideal for use in pub/sub or robotics applications.
Foxglove can load local ROS 1 (.bag) and MCAP (.mcap) files for visualization. Log messages to an MCAP file and the Foxglove app for live visualization. MCAP Integration Relevant source files This document covers the MCAP file format integration within the Foxglove SDK, including writer configuration, compression options, and cross-language interfaces.
MCAP (Message Capture Archive Protocol) serves as the primary file. MCAP is also designed to support efficient reading and seeking within files, even over remote connections. Similar to ROS 1 bag files, MCAP supports indexed reading of messages and fast local or remote access to summary data.
MCAP readers can efficiently extract data for a given topic and timestamp without having to scan the entire file. Foxglove's mission is to increase the GDP of robotics. We build commercial and open source software to help robotics developers get to market faster and scale to millions of units.
🔎 Foxglove is our flagship visualization and observability platform for multimodal data. 🧢 MCAP is an open source file format for multimodal data.