I have set up a secondary raspberry pie, to log data on the blue boat.
I would like to be able to read the MaVlink Data From the blue OS companion, UDP 192.168.2.1:14551
I was able to get Python three, and pi Mavlink Library installed on the secondary pie, and it is connected to the blue OS companion, using the ethernet switch.
I can successfully talk to the secondary raspberry pie, without issues, but when I try to do the python programming and open the UDP And Port stated above I get an error 99 (Can’t access that IP and Port)
Do I need to make a change to the blue OS companion, to open up that UDP port, so that the secondary raspberry pie can listen in To the MV link, heartbeat, and request other data occasionally?
I think I found a clue, so asking for confirmation.
I plan on going to the BlueOS Mavlink endpoints page, and using the “circular blue +” in the bottom corner of the web page (which I never notice or look at).
I’ll try to set up 192.168.2.1:14551 tomorrow as a UDP and report back.
Hi Andrew -
Note that the IP address for your companion Pi is the same as what we recommend ground control station computers to be configured as, so you could run into IP address conflicts if using the default address in two places…
Additionally, installing a entirely secondary Raspberry Pi is more hardware complexity and power consumption than necessary to log data! Setting an endpoint should get your intended solution working…
However!
ArduRover already collects log data, available in the Log Browser, that captures all information the autopilot uses and is outputting. This is easily viewed with this web based tool. If you’d like to add your own values to this log file, this is possible via http request, such as detailed in this easy Node-RED example!
You could also log whatever data via python code, and install it in BlueOS as an extension. This code could be developed on your own computer until it was working, and then packaged in a docker container for installation, making it easy to share with the world!
The Pi 4 running the show has considerable headroom in this application - it is not even managing the video stream that the same hardware streams on the BlueROV2 !(by default at least…)
Hello,
To clarify, the secondary RPi (I call it DATAPI ) is 192.168.2.101. It is a Pi-zero (version1)
The BlueOS companion with the navigator hardware attached has the 192.168.2.1 address.
Please let me know if that changes the original advice about using pymavlink on the DATAPi to listen/log (and maybe send control commands in the future).
I’ll see if I can easily access the log files and read the last line periodically for the data updates I’m looking for (just gps and time, for now).
The secondary, DATAPI is so that I can muck around with the data handling, without bothering the navigation/blueOs pi. I really want to keep the standard BlueOS-Pi as straight-forward/right-out-the-box as possible.
I appreciate the battery life savings advice of only running a single RPi, but the Pi zero doesn’t use much, and our near-future deployments will be for much less than the 6x battery packs can provide.
For longer, over the horizon deployments, I’ll be looking into the solar charger.
With all that said, I dabbled in node red over the pandemic, and will give it a try on the BlueOS RPi.
Hi @oceanq -
Unless you’ve changed something, the default Raspberry Pi has an IP of 192.168.2.2 - not .2.1! The .2.1 address is used by your topside control computer…
Whatever code you run on the Pi zero could easily run on the standard Pi 4 - BlueOS is entirely designed around making running custom applications in parallel easy!
A secondary Pi zero seems a bit silly to me, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a valid approach - just redundant vs. running code onboard. Checkout this example to see how simple an extension running custom python can be - and it runs in BlueOS in a docker container parallel to all other vehicle processes!
Hey!
Sorry about mixing up the IP, I was writing all that away from the bench, and obviously confused the digits.
I appreciate the input and give it a try going forward.
Thank you again for helping out the community in so many ways.