ROS on NavQ will allow you to interface with sensors, control your drone using MAVROS, and more. To get started, follow the install guide below and then continue to the next sections.
NOTE: ROS1 support is good, but the Mobile Robotics team at NXP's focus is on ROS2. There is a lot more documentation on ROS1 than ROS2, but ROS2 may be easier to use in the long run. We suggest that you do not cross-polinate with ROS, i.e. only use ROS1 or ROS2, not both. Keep in mind that any documentation under the ROS1 section is for ROS1 only, and vice versa.
NOTE: HoverGames participants should be using the Demo image. If you flashed your NavQ with the image from the HoverGames website, or if you're using the image that came installed on the SD Card included in your kit, you're using the Demo image.
When you install ROS Noetic on your NavQ, make sure to install the base version of ROS and not the desktop version. If you install the desktop version, critical gstreamer packages for NavQ can be overwritten and therefore become non-functional.
To install ROS, you need to be on the Demo image. You can follow the guide for installing ROS Noetic Ninjemys at http://wiki.ros.org/noetic/Installation/Ubuntu
If you're using NavQ comercially and are running the HoverGames-BSP image, you'll follow these steps.
ROS Melodic is automatically installed on the HoverGames-BSP image. It includes MAVROS by default. You will need to do a little bit of setup, though, once you first boot your image.
Run the following commands to enable ROS on the HoverGames-BSP image:
You'll also want to download the following script and run it to install GPS geoids:
Now, you can continue with the ROS tutorials for setting up a build environment and installing your first package. We will go over this in the next section.
The 8MMNavQ can control your HoverGames drone by communicating with the RDDRONE-FMUK66 over MAVROS. A UART cable will be included in the kit that connects the UART3 port on the 8MMNavQ to the TELEM2 port on the RDDRONE-FMUK66.
NOTE: This page is for ROS1 only. MAVLINK and MAVROS are deprecated for ROS2 applications. ROS2 uses microRTPS and PX4 ROS Com in place of MAVROS.
NOTICE: When running the off-board script, make sure that you confirm the landing zone for your drone in QGroundControl. The local position parameter in the offboard ROS node is set to x:0, y:0, z:2, which means it will hover at 2 meters above its landing zone. If the drone takes off from a position away from its landing zone, it will quickly return to its landing zone and hover 2 meters above it. This is especially important to note if you turn the drone on indoors and then place it somewhere outside to take off. We don't want your drone to smack into a building!
Connect to your FMU over USB and open QGroundControl. Navigate to Settings -> Parameters -> MAVLink and set these parameters:
Also, you'll need to make sure that the settings in Settings -> Parameters -> Serial look like this:
A coding guide for the ROS node we will be using is located at the link below.
This guide will help you install the ROS node outlined in the MAVROS Offboard Example.
To start, you'll want to make sure that you have already set up a development environment for ROS. ROS has a guide on how to get a catkin workspace set up in the link below.
Once you've completed that tutorial, you'll maybe want to add an extra line to your ~/.bashrc so that your devel/setup.bash is always sourced when you open a new terminal:
This will ensure that your development environment is properly set up when you open a new shell.
Follow the "binary installation" guide on the page below to install the necessary MAVROS packages from apt.
Make sure to use 'noetic' in place of 'kinetic' in the commands they give you on this page. Also, you do NOT need to follow the "Source Installation" section of the guide.
To create our first ROS package, we will want to navigate to our catkin workspace's src folder and run the following command:
This command will create a new package folder named offb and will add the dependencies roscpp, mavros_msgs, and geometry_msgs to the 'CMakeLists.txt' and 'package.xml' files. Next, you'll want to take the code from the PX4 MAVROS example and create a file named offb_node.cpp in the src/ folder in the offb package. Your directory structure should now look like this:
In order to build your ROS package, you'll need to make some edits to CMakeLists.txt so the catkin build system knows where your source files are. Two edits need to be made.
The first edit is to add your executable to CMakeLists. Your executable should be named offb_node.cpp. Uncomment line 136 to add it:
The second edit is link your target libraries (roscpp, mavros_msgs, and geographic_msgs). Uncomment lines 149-151 to do so:
And that's all you need to do for now to set up your workspace!
To build your ROS node, return to the root of your catkin_ws/ directory and run:
To run our ROS node, we need to make sure that MAVROS is running. On the NavQ, run the following command:
This will start roscore and the mavros node with a pointer to the UART port /dev/ttymxc2 at a 921600 baud rate. To run the ROS node we created, run the following in an ssh terminal:
and your drone should take off to an altitude of 2 meters!
