Companion computer setup queries

Build
1

Hi,

I have a few questions about a build I am trying to set up open heart:

  1. How do I connect a flight controller to a Raspberry Pi? I cannot find any mention of how to do so in the guides - BlueOS Documentation

  2. After flashing blueos and starting up my Pi, I am met with this screen whose fields never load. The Vehicle Setup page accessed from the sidebar also never completes loading. Is this normal behaviour without a flight controller connected?

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  3. How do I set up a camera/camera stream? Again, I can find no instructions in the guides on how to do this. I’ve tried connecting a USB webcam and a camera via the CSI interface but nothing ‘just works’ by doing so.

Thanks,
Taylor

2

Hi @SwarleyAUS -
Happy to help!
Only some flight controllers besides the Blue Robotics Navigator are supported. Read more here. Generally they are connected via USB or directly to the GPIO pins (for numerous forms of communications to hosted sensors in the case of the Navigator.)

Not having a (supported) flight controller connected would prevent you from loading parameters to it, yes!

The only supported CSI camera is the Raspberry Pi Camera Module v2 - which are you trying to use? Generally USB cameras that support UVC and output H264 video should be plug and play, with devices showing up on the Video Streams page for stream configuration. Can you share what cameras you’ve tried to use? As well as what version of BlueOS?

3

Thanks Tony,

Now I have my autopilot board connected I am getting some more options. The autopilot is being detected but it is not one that is supported (speedybee f405 v3) so some things are still not working.

What is the blocker in getting other mavlink autopilot boards running Ardusub working with BlueOS? I see some errors about scripts and parameter sets not being defined?

The cameras are now appearing in the video streams section, but neither will load a thumbnail in their respective configure window and attempting to create a stream fails with “Could not create video stream: Json deserialize error: missing field frame_interval at line 1 column 215.”

I am using a generic CSI camera and a generic USB webcam. I have a Pi Cam V3 too but that isn’t free to test with atm.

This is with 1.3.1

Cheers,
Taylor

4

Hi @SwarleyAUS -
Your issues with the CSI camera are expected, as only the V2 CSI module is supported. Sorry for the news!

ArduSub itself will need to be compiled for the specific board definition to be supported by BlueOS, I believe?

5

Hi @SwarleyAUS.

This should allow you to use (I believe all) other flight controllers supported by Ardupilot.

It is only likely to go in next month, though, as we are only merging fixes in order to tag a new stable by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, you should be able to try it by going to “BlueOS Versions” in “Pirate mode” and adding my remote there: williangalvani/blueos-core.
Then find the all_boards version and load it.

6

Thanks to you both for the clarification.

Willian, your version does allow me to actually attempt programming of the FC where I previously couldn’t. However firmware installation is still unsuccessful.

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Regardless of this fact, I would have thought this would be unnecessary as the ardusub firmware has already been flashed to the FC through QGC prior? I guess there are more gaps to be addressed as the Autopilot Parameters and Vehicle Setup continue to fail to load.

I am wondering if the FC is partly to blame with this issue though as I cannot connect it to QGC or MP directly, as I believe I need to do to set up the vehicle prior to connecting to the CC? Will investigate further.

Thanks,
Taylor

7

yes flashing should not be required.
Can you not talk to the board directly via qgc by connecting it via usb to your PC? that might be an issue.

Other than that, all you need to do is setup the master endpoint on “Mavlink Endpoints” at the sidebar

8

Nevermind, this is not true here. have you tried multiple types? I think we have some intermitent issues while flashing.

9

For the record, I just flashed my KakuteH7 with no issues.

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Can you check your ardupilot_manager logs?

10

Hello,

Even with the “all_boards” version, I cannot flash firmware. However, does that even matter if I was able to flash with QGC and STM32CubeProgrammer? But it can actually see the versions now (STABLE-4.5.1). Additionally, the parameters still do not show up on the Autopilot Parameters tab.

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11

urchin are you able to talk to the FC directly via USB in MP or QGC? I cannot and I would think this is the reason I am having issues. Plane works fine on this FC, sub does not. You may be having the same issue.

12

@SwarleyAUS By “able to talk”, do you mean getting QGC to recognize the flight controller as a vehicle? In that case no (if I understand correctly, I should be able to tune parameters as well). Not sure if that is expected or not.

I have not tested it with Plane or anything else. After I loaded ArduSub as per the ArduPilot documentation and connected it to my laptop, this is all I saw:

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13

according to the Ardusub documentation, after flashing the firmware we need to complete the frame setup on the FC at the very least. I can’t connect my FC to do this atm.

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