Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G Camera Setup

[tom]

@doe43john77 I'd recommend loading VOXL SDK 0.9.5 for RB5 and going from there: https://developer.modalai.com/asset/view/124

[doe43john77]

@tom Hi Tom. I updated the firmware of the RB5 to the VOXL 0.9.5 SDK. The update went smoothly. I'm trying to connect the drone to QGroundControl but I'm not having luck. I think I've covered all my bases: the host PC and drone are on the same Wi-Fi network, the drone's voxl-px4 service is running (as confirmed by using the voxl-inspect-services command). Suggestions?

[tom]

@doe43john77 There are a few other services necessary in order to connect to QGC.

• voxl-mavlink-server needs to be running
• voxl-vision-px4 needs to be running

You also need to modify the config file at /etc/modalai/voxl-vision-px4.conf and change the qgc_ip value to the IP address of your ground station and restart the service with:
systemctl restart voxl-vision-px4

[doe43john77]

@tom I have enabled and started running the voxl-mavlink-server service but only been able to enable (but not start) the voxl-vision-px4 service. I've included a more detailed output voxl-vision-px4 service by running systemctl status voxl-vision-px4 -l:

rb5:/$ systemctl status voxl-vision-px4 -l
● voxl-vision-px4.service - voxl-vision-px4
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/bin/voxl-vision-px4; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2023-06-12 18:52:55 UTC; 33s ago
  Process: 2759 ExecStart=/usr/bin/voxl-vision-px4 (code=exited, status=255)
 Main PID: 2759 (code=exited, status=255)

Jun 12 18:52:55 m0052 voxl-vision-px4[2759]:     frame:              tof
Jun 12 18:52:55 m0052 systemd[1]: voxl-vision-px4.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=255/n/a
Jun 12 18:52:55 m0052 voxl-vision-px4[2759]: voa_input #4
Jun 12 18:52:55 m0052 voxl-vision-px4[2759]:     enabled:            1
Jun 12 18:52:55 m0052 voxl-vision-px4[2759]:     type:               rangefinder
Jun 12 18:52:55 m0052 voxl-vision-px4[2759]:     input_pipe:         rangefinders
Jun 12 18:52:55 m0052 voxl-vision-px4[2759]:     frame:              body
Jun 12 18:52:55 m0052 voxl-vision-px4[2759]: =================================================================
Jun 12 18:52:55 m0052 voxl-vision-px4[2759]: loading extrinsics config file
Jun 12 18:52:55 m0052 systemd[1]: voxl-vision-px4.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

Also, I tried modifying the voxl-vision-px4.conf file with the IP address of my host machine with QGC in case the voxl-vision-px4 service needs the IP address for proper startup, but that didn't help.

Additionally, I saw the word "extrinsics" in the systemctl output and I was curious if it was referring to the opencv files we had to backup before the upgrading the SDK (which I did btw).

[tom]

@doe43john77 In order to get all of the services in a know good spot, you should be able to run voxl-configure-mpa and select RB5-Flight and it'll setup all the services all needed. Then you would have to go back and modify the qgc_ip again in the conf file.

In regard to the opencv files, that's likely unrelated to this issue, but to restore them, you would just throw them into /data/modalai

[doe43john77]

@tom Got it! Its connecting to QGC now!

I still don't understand how to start up the cameras. The instructions in the user guide are in terms of the deprecated rb5-streamer package.

[tom]

@doe43john77 If you ran through voxl-configure-mpa then voxl-camera-server should be enabled and running, you can check this with voxl-inspect-services.

Your options for viewing a camera stream are either using voxl-portal (navigate to the IP address of your drone in your PC's browser and select the camera tab)

or using voxl-streamer in order to stream to programs like QGC or VLC. This can be setup using voxl-configure-streamer

[doe43john77]

@tom Got it! I can access the VOXL Portal page and view the camera feed. The hi-res camera is sending 480p video for some reason. Is there a configuration file I need to tweak to push out the 4K resolution?

[tom]

@doe43john77 You can find some info here: https://docs.modalai.com/voxl-camera-server/#changing-the-resolution-of-an-image-sensor

The default was set low as otherwise you're pumping a ton of data over the network which may not be necessary depending on the application

[doe43john77]

@tom Ah. This is a simple config file change. Thank you!