ROS2 Foxy Not Preinstalled and ROS1 Melodic Not Standard

labkit

I want to run ROS (preferably ROS2 but ROS1 also acceptable) on a Starling 2 drone that I received 2-3 weeks ago. Some information for the product is as follows.

family code: MRB-D0005 (starling)
compute board: 4 (voxl2)
hw version: 3
SKU: MRB-D0005-4-V3-C6-T8
voxl-suite 1.2.0
system-image: 1.7.6-M0054-14.1a-perf

According to the ROS2 Installation Guide, ROS2 Foxy comes preinstalled on VOXL2. However, when searching in the /opt directory, all I can find is /opt/ros/melodic. Upon further inspection, the files within the melodic directory are only involved with converting Modal Pipe Architecture to ROS, while seeming lacking the standard directories and files present in a ROS Melodic installation.

Is ROS2 not supposed to come preinstalled on the Starling 2? What is the purpose of the content of the /opt/ros/melodic directory? Do I need to install ROS2 or ROS1 manually using the instructions in the ROS2 Installation Guide and ROS1 Installation Guide? Is ROS2 Foxy still the correct version to install, or can I install the more current Iron or Humble?

Thank you for your help.

Zachary Lowell 0

@labkit it is part of the SDK but not installed on the kernel - on you voxl2 please run the following:

sudo apt-get install voxl-ros2-foxy
sudo apt-get install voxl-microdds-agent
sudo apt-get install voxl-mpa-to-ros2
voxl-configure-mpa-to-ros2

Once this is done you should be ready to use ros2 by running source /opt/ros/foxy/setup.bash as well as export ROS_HOME=/opt/ros/foxy

Hope this helps. Also ensure that for the voxl-configure-mpa-to-ros2 line you have an active internet connection on the voxl2 as this requires some pip installs.

Thanks!
Zach