BlueOS (Raspberry Pi 4B/5) and Cubepilot Orange Setup

Blue Robotics Software
1

Hi everyone,

I’ve been struggling with the following issue for a while, searched through the forum (“BlueRobotics Software>BlueOS”) and Googled but haven’t been successful yet and I’ve hoping someone might be able to provide me with some direction. If this issue has surfaced before, I apologize and if you could, link me to the ticket/topic and I’ll continue reading - thank you.

What I’ve done to date:

  • Installed BlueOS-raspberry-linux-arm-v7-bullseye-pi4 (on Pi 4B) and also tried BlueOS-raspberry-linux-arm64-v8-bookworm-pi5 (on Pi 5)

  • connected the Cubepilot and Raspberry Pi via CubePilot (CP) Telem1 and Rasperry Pi via:
    GND_pin6_CP <—> GND_pin14_RPI
    TX_pin2_CP ↔ RX_pin10_RPI_GPIO15
    RX_pin3_CP ↔ TX_pin8_RPI_GPIO14

  • Loaded up CubeOrange with the following via USB:
    Board name: CubeOrange
    FW: 4.5.3 (STABLE)
    Vehicle type: Unknown
    Path: /dev/ttyACM0

When I unplugged the USB after programming the Cube and Pi, the BlueOS was no longer able to see the Cube Orange. It appears that BlueOS only sees the Cube when plugged in with USB(?).

First, I checked if MAVLink transmission was running on the CubePilot with a Serial to USB dongle and saw ASCII gibberish outputting on Telem1. To my understanding, this is normal as the output is of type binary - ie CubePilot was transmitting.

Second, I confirmed on Mission Planner that it was transmitting via MAVLink2, 57600 on Telem1.

Then I connected the serial pins back up to the Pi and using Terminal inside BlueOS, the following commands and its returns were seen:

root@blueos:~# ls -l /dev/serial*
lrwxrwxrwx 8 root 4 Jul 2024 /dev/serial0 -> ttyAMA10

root@blueos:~# ls -l /dev/ttyAMA*
crw-rw---- 204, 64 root 4 Jul 2024 /dev/ttyAMA0
crw-rw---- 204, 66 root 4 Jul 2024 /dev/ttyAMA2
crw-rw---- 204, 67 root 4 Jul 2024 /dev/ttyAMA3
crw-rw---- 204, 68 root 4 Jul 2024 /dev/ttyAMA4
crw-rw---- 204, 74 root 4 Jul 2024 /dev/ttyAMA10

root@blueos:~# cat /dev/serial*
File: /dev/serial0  <EMPTY>

root@blueos:~# cat /dev/ttyAMA0
File: /dev/ttyAMA0 
* outputs binary data *

Similarly, if I activate red-pill and via pi@blueos, I can see the binary output:

image
image1872×308 33.7 KB

Therefore, I do believe there is serial connection between the Pi/BlueOS and CubePilot(?). But I’m quite lost at this point in what else I can try.

Please and thank you in advance.
Regards,
Ron.

2

Hi @ryan354 -
Welcome to the forums!

Sorry for the confusion, but a direct serial connection between the Pi and your CubePilot is not supported by BlueOS. If you leave a USB cable connected between the two, everything should work as expected!

For future reference, you can find BlueOS specific documentation here, but specific mention of this (current) limitation isn’t present - yet!

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3

Thank you so much for the clarification - ok, I can move forward with my build. :smile:

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