VOXL FLight Deck + ROS/MAVROS

[alfa budiman]

My research group is building a hexacopter with the VOXL Flight Deck. I'm working on setting up ROS / MAVROS on the VOXL Flight Deck as well as on the computer.

I've followed the documentation on VOXL SDK for setup ROS on host PC, setup ROS on VOXL and running MAVROS on VOXL with PX4. I've also setup connection with Q Ground control and I'm able to arm the VOXL Flight Deck.

So when the hexacopter is actually built, how do I fly it using MAVROS?

My thought process is:
1 - run docker image with mavros
2 - run mavros
3 - publish to mavros topics

Also, we do have some RB5 drones and I did try the offboard flight example (https://docs.px4.io/main/en/ros/mavros_offboard_python.html) but I wasn't sure if the drone was responding to it or not. I asked about it on another thread and got no response (https://forum.modalai.com/topic/1108/rb5-drone-and-ros/5)

Also, when I run MAVROS on VOXL, I tried to rostopic echo several topics and got no return as if the topic wasn't being published at all. How do I fix this?

[Chad Sweet]

Have you viewed the mavros tutorial here? https://docs.modalai.com/mavros/

[alfa budiman]

I haven't tried it but I was just able to publish to /mavros/setpoint_velocity/cmd_vel_unstamped and the motor speed appeared to respond as expected when testing without propellers. This only works if the drone is set to offboard mode.