RB5 Kit + SDK queries

[Cris Thomas]

Re: Compatibility of VOXL SDK with the Qualcomm Flight RB5 Drone

Hi team,

I seek a few clarifications regarding the RB5 and its SDK before proceeding to recommend the platform in our framework for a project.

1. SDK Ubuntu Version? Does it support 20.04 and newer versions?
2. ROS1/2 support and sample codes (MAVROS-PX4)?
3. ROS support drivers for the onboard sensors (including image sensors)?
4. WiFi modes: Station and softAP support?
5. Possibility for VNC/GUI (maybe over WiFi)?
6. Thundercomm RB5 SOM Onboard Storage and memory? SD Card option?
7. Does the kit comes with all sensors (including stereo) as shown here?
8. Other than onboard WiFi6, all other connectivity options are addon? (5g/4g etc)

Thanks in advance

[Chad Sweet]

Hi Cris, some answers to your questions:

1. Ubuntu 18.04 for the time being (datasheet).
2. ROS 1 and 2 are easily installed. Examples are pending. Current SDK is documented here
3. The image sensors are available via gstreamer. We will have an IMU API soon.
4. Soft AP and station mode are supported (docs)
5. VNC/GUI - we have not tried this, but it's Ubuntu so it seems likely something could be tried
6. See datasheet for architecture. Yes, there is an SD Card slot.
7. The kit comes with everything shown here, the 5G modem is optional.
8. The 4G add-on, 5G add-on, Microhard add-on are all optionally supported.

[Cris Thomas]

@Chad-Sweet Thank you so much for the response to the above queries.

Following up with the same,

1. Is there documentation for Soft-AP setup for RB5 flight?
2. There are 3 cam groups connecting a total of 6 cameras (out of 7 supported by RB5) through J6, J7, and J8. What is the possibility of adding an extra camera to the setup (eg: down-facing) for some custom image processing at the edge?
3. The documentation shows named pipes for cameras 0,1,2,4,5 and RTSP streaming for camera 3. Can all cameras be accessed via both named pipe and GStreamer?
4. Is MAVROS pre-installed in the RB5 system image? It will be very helpful and interesting to see the RB5-PX4-MAVROS interfacing and setups. Are they similar to that of VOXL?

Thanks in advance.

[Moderator]

1. For softap, there are references here on how to enable
2. At some point more flexibility will be added for camera configurations. Right now the shipping configuration is all that is supported. There is already a tracking camera at 45°. You should be able to create a mount to point that straight down if you prefer.
3. Only one active gstreamer instance for each camera can be running. The camera servers use gstreamer to get the camera data and publish that to a named pipe. So if an instance of a camera server is running, then a new gstreamer instance for that same camera can't be started.
4. MAVROS is not pre-installed. That is planned in a future version of the SDK, likely one or two months away. We do have customers using it today though. Note in offboard mode the default behavior is a figure-8. See post here for the fix