jaredjohansen

jaredjohansen

I've looked over the VOXL2 documentation and found that there are 3 camera groups and various camera configs.

I also read that the TOF sensor is not yet supported. Do you have an approximate timeline for when the TOF sensor would be supported?

When the TOF sensor is supported, would we be able to plug in 2-3x TOF sensors simultaneously?

jaredjohansen

We have a FLIR BOSON 320 IR camera (resolution = 320x256). We connected this camera to a Windows laptop via USB. We downloaded and ran the Manufacturer's FLIR Boson GUI. With the GUI open, and the FLIR camera connected, we can see video streaming to their GUI. This leads us to believe that the camera is functioning properly and can stream video via a USB connection.

On the FLIR Boson GUI, we found that to change settings on the camera, we needed to select the COM port in the bottom-right of the GUI. With that selected, we confirmed the USB Video mode was set to "UVC" (instead of "IR16").

We connected the IR camera to the USB port on the VOXL. We found it was sending data on /dev/video2. We updated voxl-streamer.conf to use dev/video2 for the device. We ran 'voxl-streamer -c uvc-video'. On QGC, the video stream would come through, but it would produce a green screen (with occasional blips where strips of the screen would have black and white noise).

We tried opening up the rtsp stream using VLC to see if QGC was the problem. VLC threw an error and would not display anything. We reverted to using QGC with the green screen.

We experimented with the resolution in voxl-streamer.conf (including 320x256 and 640x360 and 640x480) and the frame rate (15, 30 and 60), but this did not make it work.

Since there are two USB connectors on the IR camera, we tried each one. That didn't work.

We read in a forum post that a green screen from a camera means that the camera is underpowered. We built a cable that would allow us to supply power to the camera from another source that we knew could supply sufficient power. This did not work. We ditched the custom cable and connected it via USB again.

Do you have any documentation or instructions on setting up a FLIR boson camera with VOXL?

jaredjohansen

I know that you can install ROS2 on the VOXL2.

I'm familiar with the voxl-mpa-to-ros command on the VOXL1 (and how it calls a roslaunch file that starts the voxl_mpa_to_ros_node).

Are there plans to create the equivalent of a voxl2-mpa-to-ros2 that publishes all of the VOXL2 Flight Deck sensor data as ROS2 topics? (I hope so!) This would be really handy for anyone using the VOXL2, rB5, or Sentinel to develop as part of a ROS2-enabled system.

jaredjohansen

We got it to work by just navigating to the launch file and invoking the roslaunch command from there (and excluding the package name): roslaunch voxl_mpa_to_ros.launch. Thanks, @Alex-Gardner!

jaredjohansen

I have an Ubuntu 20.04 machine with docker installed.

I have followed these instructions to install voxl-docker.

I have downloaded the latest voxl-cross, voxl-emulator, and voxl-hexagon from here. I have used docker load to create docker images from each of these tar.gz files.

When I try to run the emulator, it gives me the error below:

jared@jared-ubuntu:~/voxl-docker$ docker images 
REPOSITORY          TAG       IMAGE ID       CREATED          SIZE
voxl-hexagon        v1.1      f5790a3358ca   19 minutes ago   6.38GB
voxl-emulator       v1.7      c0709663abe6   20 minutes ago   3.4GB
voxl-cross          v1.1      77eda1fa0a0e   21 minutes ago   1.06GB
roskinetic-xenial   v1.0      bfb82886c74f   21 months ago    1.63GB
registry            0.9.1     56cfd79a53f5   5 years ago      423MB
jared@jared-ubuntu:~/voxl-docker$ voxl-docker -i voxl-emulator:v1.7 -e "/bin/bash"
launching image: voxl-emulator:v1.7 with the following command:
docker run --rm -it --net=host --privileged -w /home/jared --volume=/dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb -e LOCAL_USER_ID=0 -e LOCAL_USER_NAME=root -e LOCAL_GID=0 -v /home/jared/voxl-docker:/home/root:rw -w /home/root voxl-emulator:v1.7 /bin/bash

docker: Error response from daemon: OCI runtime create failed: container_linux.go:380: starting container process caused: exec: "/bin/bash": stat /bin/bash: no such file or directory: unknown.

As I understand it, It's telling me that there is no such thing as /bin/bash in the container. I don't really believe that is true, because this webpage uses the bash command: voxl-docker -i voxl-emulator -e "/bin/bash build.sh".

Can you help me understand what I am doing wrong (and why this is not working)?

===============

What I am trying to (eventually) do is to build my own docker image (in Ubuntu) that I can adb push to my VOXL and run it there. As I understand it, if I docker build <path_to_my_own_dockerfile> on my Ubuntu machine, once I transfer it to the VOXL, it won't work because the architecture is not the same.

If I want to docker build on my Ubuntu machine and have it work on the VOXL, I believe I will need to run the voxl-emulator and docker build inside of that. Is that correct?

jaredjohansen

We are incorporating the VOXL2 into an enclosed payload. Are there specific components that are main sources of heat that we should take extra precaution at dissipating?

jaredjohansen

Update: I completely removed docker and voxl-docker from my system.

I rebooted, reinstalled docker, and followed these steps to install voxl-docker.

Now, I get a different error (same as here) :

jared@jared-ubuntu:~/voxl-docker$ voxl-docker -i voxl-emulator -e "/bin/bash"
launching image: voxl-emulator with the following command:
docker run --rm -it --net=host --privileged -w /home/jared --volume=/dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb -e LOCAL_USER_ID=0 -e LOCAL_USER_NAME=root -e LOCAL_GID=0 -v /home/jared/voxl-docker:/home/root:rw -w /home/root voxl-emulator /bin/bash

standard_init_linux.go:228: exec user process caused: exec format error

I followed the instructions at the link. The first two commands ran without any issues. I had to modify the last one to fit my architecture:

sudo apt-get install qemu binfmt-support qemu-user-static
docker run --rm --privileged multiarch/qemu-user-static --reset -p yes

jared@jared-ubuntu:~/voxl-docker$ docker run --rm -t amd64/ubuntu uname -m
Unable to find image 'amd64/ubuntu:latest' locally
latest: Pulling from amd64/ubuntu
7b1a6ab2e44d: Pull complete 
Digest: sha256:7cc0576c7c0ec2384de5cbf245f41567e922aab1b075f3e8ad565f508032df17
Status: Downloaded newer image for amd64/ubuntu:latest
x86_64

That worked. Now the voxl-emulator appears to work too:

jared@jared-ubuntu:~/voxl-docker$ voxl-docker -i voxl-emulator -e "/bin/bash"
launching image: voxl-emulator with the following command:
docker run --rm -it --net=host --privileged -w /home/jared --volume=/dev/bus/usb:/dev/bus/usb -e LOCAL_USER_ID=0 -e LOCAL_USER_NAME=root -e LOCAL_GID=0 -v /home/jared/voxl-docker:/home/root:rw -w /home/root voxl-emulator /bin/bash

+ USER_ID=0
+ USER_NAME=root
+ GID=0
+ getent group 0
root:x:0:
+ echo 'Starting with UID : 0'
Starting with UID : 0
+ useradd --shell /bin/bash -u 0 -g 0 -o -c '' -M root
useradd: user 'root' already exists
+ addgroup root users
+ export HOME=/home/root
+ HOME=/home/root
+ ls -ld /home/root
drwxrwxr-x 8 james host_group 4096 Nov  1 21:45 /home/root
+ echo 'root ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL'
+ ls -l /etc/sudoers.d/
total 8
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 30 Nov 23  2020 james
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 29 Nov  1 22:26 root
+ cat /etc/sudoers.d/root
root ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
+ chmod 777 /tmp
+ chmod 711 /usr/bin/sudo
+ chmod +s /usr/bin/sudo
+ ls -l /usr/local/bin/su-exec
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 7660 Aug 14  2018 /usr/local/bin/su-exec
+ ls -l /bin/bash
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 959344 Aug 12  2018 /bin/bash
+ echo 'exec /usr/local/bin/su-exec root /bin/bash'
exec /usr/local/bin/su-exec root /bin/bash
+ exec /usr/local/bin/su-exec root /bin/bash
bash-4.3#

jaredjohansen

We are incorporating the VOXL2 into an enclosed payload. Are there specific components that are main sources of heat that we should take extra precaution at dissipating?

jaredjohansen

Thanks, @modaltb! What you've pointed me to is very helpful! I'll look into it!

jaredjohansen

@James-Strawson , I saw that you worked on the original voxl-px4-shell.

Do you know if there is a way to access the PX4's nuttx nsh> shell on the VOXL2?

(For ROS2 to communicate with the PX4 on the VOXL2 through the micrortps_bridge, it is my understanding that I need to start the micrortps_client via the PX4 nuttx shell.)

jaredjohansen

Awesome. That is super helpful! I was able to follow those instructions and access the pxh> shell.

According to these instructions, if I have access to the NuttShell/System Console (nsh> shell, I believe), I should be able to start the micrortps_client running.

Is there a way to access the nsh> shell on the VOXL2?

(For others, I'll note that the nsh> shell is available on the VOXL1, which is nice to simulate things like the GPS signal being lost as described here.)

jaredjohansen

Got it. Thanks. One more follow-up question.

The VOXL1 had a tool called voxl-px4-shell that gave you access to the PX4 console. I don't see something like that for VOXL2. Will that be a future capability? If so, do you have an estimate on when it'd be available? Thanks!

jaredjohansen

The VOXL's coordinate frame is NED/FRD (as described in this video). This is inline with typical aerospace applications.

ROS and most of the robotics world (see bottom of page 4) use the ENU/FLU coordinate frame.

I would like to use the voxl-qvio output as odom data. The output of this service is in the NED/FRD coordinate frame. Is there some way to have QVIO output the drone's coordinates in the ENU/FLU coordinate frame instead?

jaredjohansen

Oops. Sorry, @Eric-Katzfey! I meant to say @Alex-Kushleyev.

@Alex-Kushleyev, any help/instructions/pointers you can give?

jaredjohansen

I'm trying to setup a micrortps_bridge (https://docs.px4.io/main/en/ros/ros2_comm.html) on a VOXL2/Sentinel.

On one side of the micrortps_bridge, I have a Docker container.
This Docker container has Ubuntu 20.04, ROS2 foxy, a number of supporting libraries (e.g., gradle, Fast-DDS) and some custom ROS2 SW. From within the Docker container, I am able to run the micrortps_agent and ROS2 SW. It appears that everything on this side of the micrortps_bridge is working.

On the other side of the micrortps_bridge is the micrortps_client. I am uncertain how to properly set this up on the VOXL2. I found this post (which attempts to setup the bridge on the VOXL1 but had some issues) and this post (which sets up ROS1 on VOXL2). Neither are quite what I am looking for.

I am wondering if there is any guidance on how to do setup a micrortps_bridge on the VOXL2. @Eric-Katzfey, you were involved in the post from a year ago with @ryan_meagher and @benjamin-linne that attempted to get the micrortps_bridge working on VOXL1. Is there any help/instructions/pointers you can give me?

jaredjohansen