Difficulties Testing Thrusters with Flight Controller

General Discussion
1

I’m working on controlling four thrusters for an ROV using the Blue Robotics flight controller and an Xbox controller. I have the flight controller, power supply, and Blue Robotics ESC, and I’m using the thrusters linked below.

I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by the vast amount of information available on Blue Robotics and the flight controller. I tried using QGroundControl to turn the thrusters on and off but wasn’t successful. What would be the best approach to achieve this with an Xbox controller? I’m also unsure if this control can be implemented through C++.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated—thanks for the help!

Thrusters: APISQUEEN Underwater Brushless Propeller

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Hi @bennyboi42
Welcome to the forums! That sounds like a fun project, and a pretty minimal amount of thrusters! Are you configuring their layout something like the “simple-rov” below?

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When you mention “flight controller” I assume you mean the Navigator? If you’re using a supported autopilot alternative, that’s ok, but you will still need a Raspberry Pi 4.

You’ll want to flash your Pi’s SD card with BlueOS, and follow our BlueROV2 software setup guide from there!
You’ll basically be connecting your computer to the Raspberry Pi via tether, but for testing can just use an ethernet cable. Your Xbox controller can be used via QGround Control, but Cockpit is an alternative solution for a more configurable software interface.

You shouldn’t need to develop any custom code to get your ROV off and running! Unless maybe you thruster layout doesn’t match any of the available options…

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Hi Tony,

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction! I’ll be using the same configuration as mentioned below for my ROV.

I did mean the navigator, and I’ve successfully connected it to my Raspberry Pi 4B and loaded up cockpit. Is there any documentation available on how to set up and test the motors within cockpit? I see there’s a joystick connection, which should be fairly straightforward to configure.

Thanks for your help!

Best,
Ben

4

Hi @bennyboi42 -
Glad you got things going! Cockpit is just for controlling the vehicle - you can complete thruster direction setup and all your sensor calibrations in BlueOS under vehicle setup.