Full Development Bringup

Full Development Environment Startup

This is a tutorial and explanation on how to bringup the development environment from scratch.

Set up the environment:

cd ~/ros2_ws/src/mrover_drone/
source /opt/ros/humble/setup.zsh
source install/setup.zsh

Run the drone_sim launch file:

ros2 launch drone_sim px4_sitl_gz_ros2.launch.py

If testing base-station code, connect mavros:

This reflects how the groundstation code will interact with PX4. Fcu_url is the address of the flight controller. Because we are running the software simulator locally, its the loopback address (127.0.0.1) at the default port of 14557.

cd ~/ros2_ws/src/mrover_drone/
source /opt/ros/humble/setup.zsh
ros2 launch mavros px4.launch fcu_url:="udp://:14540@127.0.0.1:14557"

If you are running with the actual drone, run ifconfig to find the radio link’s remote address. Then run:

ros2 launch mavros px4.launch fcu_url:="udp://localhost:14555@35.3.235.213:14550"

(assuming 35.3.235.213 is the remote address)

Checking for issues

To make sure everything is working as expected, run:

ros2 topic list

You should see a series of topics prepended with ‘mavros’ and some with ‘fmu’.

Now, side by side, run:

ros2 topic echo /mavros/global_position/global
ros2 topic echo /fmu/out/vehicle_global_position

You should see two different data formats, but if you check the latitude and longitude they should be the same.