I have a blueboat and I have to use it for a competition. I am able to control it using Mavros and a laptop that acts as a ground station. The competition required the blueboat to have an rgb led that changes color based on status. Green for autonomous mode, yellow for manual mode, red for when its killed. I have a blueboat subsea RGB led but I am not sure how to integrate it. When I plug it to the rgb led pins on the flight navigator, it doesnt light up. From my understanding it should reflect the status led on the navigator but it doesnt. The Led is fine though as it works with an arduino. I am also concerned as to how to change the colors of the led and was planning to run a ros2 script on the rpi itself to manage that but i am unable to download the ros2 extension on my blueos.
I would appreciate any and every advice on the led not turning on when connected to navigator and also on how to actually control the led once i get that working.
The ROS2 extension is not going to have access to the pin that controls the RGB led - this is managed by the autopilot!
Can you share how you connected the RGB indicator to the Navigator? This should “just work” although you may find red and green swapped relative to the internal RGB led…
I connected the RGB indicator to the RGB pins on the Navigator. I was following the guide on how to connect the led to the Navigator on the BlueROV - this one.
If ROS2 cannot be used to control the led, then would I have to use LUA scripting to directly communicate with the autopilot? I just found out about navigator web assistant but havent really looked in depth into it and was wondering if thats a suitable alternative.
Navigator web assistant completely disables the autopilot - not the right fit for your application.
A LUA script also can’t adjust the RGB LED, because the Ardupilot firmware is controlling it!
The guide you link is for the BlueROV2 - a critical difference for the BlueBOat is the 5V servo rail is NOT powered, and as a result, your RGB LED is not powering up. You need to connect 5V to the AUX 5V connection point, a 5V ubec can do this, but don’t connect it to the Navigator main 5V input - this will collide it with the 5V supply from the BlueBoat power switch and cause damage! You could connect 5V from the Main 5V header to the Aux to do this, or the 5V JST-PA output of the power switch.
To modify the light’s behavior, you’ll need to modify the autopilot itself, and compile and flash the modified firmware…