ModalAI Forum

Hey @Hector-Gutierrez
I tried recreating your issue, however I am able to calibrate the imu over QGC and then arm the drone too, while running voxl-vision-hub and voxl-open-vins-server
May I know what changes you made to voxl-vision-hub? Could you share your voxl-vision-hub.conf file too?
Am I correct to assume that you made your changes to the voxl-vision-hub dev branch then installed it on the starling 2?

Hey @Aniruddha
I was able to recreate your issue with ROS2 jazzy, seems like there is a mismatch between topic size between the versions.
I use humble on my laptop and havent faced any issues, try using it and let me know your results

I'll investigate this issue further

@Aniruddha
Even after matching the versions, I am not able to recreate your error
I will try relfashing my voxl2, to start from a clean slate similar to your setup right now.
Since you reflashed the voxl2, is there something you changed on the voxl2 for your goals? I assume that after a reflash, I should have the same setup as you

@Aniruddha
What version SDK are you using? What are the versions of voxl-mpa-to-ros2, voxl-microdds-agent , voxl-ros2-foxy and voxl-px4. You can find it with the command: voxl-version
My suspicion is that the ros2 message being published is of a different size than what ros2 subscriber is expecting, and that's causing the break
Here are the versions I used that worked for me:
voxl-mpa-to-ros2 0.0.7-202511100959
voxl-microdds-agent 3.0.0-0-202511141239
voxl-ros2-foxy 0.0.1-202511141235
voxl-px4 1.14.0-2.0.134

Hey @Aniruddha
I tried recreating the issue on my setup using a Starling V2 Max connected to my computer over Wi-Fi. On my end, I’m able to echo ROS 2 topics both on the drone and from the computer without any issues. I even added the same static IP configuration you used, and I was still able to echo my topics without any errors.

You also mentioned seeing an error on the drone side for the voxl_mpa_to_ros2_node, could you clarify what the exact error is? Are you unable to run ros2 topic echo directly on the drone as well, or is the problem only when echoing from your computer? Additionally, which drone model are you using?

Hey @Aniruddha
As I understand it, you are able to see the topics on your computer but cant echo them. Which topic are you trying to echo so I can try to recreate it on my end?

Hey @Aniruddha,
Thanks for reaching out, could you provide more information about your setup and how things are communicating?

Hey, I wanted to know if the VOXL 2 supports Bluetooth, ideally with an SDK that makes integration easy. If not, is there a module you’d recommend for adding Bluetooth support?

Hey @voxltester
It seems there is an issue with how MicroXRCE and the microhard modem interfaces are starting up, I had to edit the service files to get the topics on the VOXL2.
Edit /etc/systemd/system/voxl-microdds-agent.service:

[Unit]
Description=voxl-microdds-agent
SourcePath=/usr/bin/MicroXRCEAgent
After=network.target
After=multi-user.target

[Service]
User=root
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/bin/MicroXRCEAgent udp4 -p 8888

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Edit /etc/systemd/system/voxl-modem.service:

[Unit]
Description=Modem Initialization
After=sdsprpcd.service

[Service]
User=root
Type=oneshot
ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 2
ExecStart=/usr/bin/voxl-modem-start
RemainAfterExit=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Add export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=0 to your .bashrc
Reboot the VOXL2, and the topics should come up
Thanks

Hey @svempati
I trained a model in the docker command as provided by you. I am able to run an inference on potholes following exactly the steps provided by @Zachary-Lowell-0 earlier.
Could I ask you what your voxl-tflite-version is? And if you havent yet, could you try to run this version: http://voxl-packages.modalai.com/dists/qrb5165/sdk-1.6/binary-arm64/voxl-tflite-server_0.5.1_arm64.deb
Make sure to change the .tflite model and labels as shown in the loom video after the install, then run voxl-configure-tflite

Thanks

@voxltester,
When you say voxl-microdds-agent doesnt work, do you mean it doesnt run? Or it doesnt create the topics? Whats the terminal output when you run it directly from the terminal?
Is your setup like earlier where you have the hat on and the wifi dongle is connected on the hat?

If the topics are only showing up after disabling the wifi interface, then I suspect its a ip routing issue, and that voxl microdds agent is binding to the first interface that comes up, which is the wifi.

Hey @yunwool
Just to be clear, consider only your first drone, if you run export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=1, then run ros2 topic list, you aren't seeing any topics right?

After you set the ROS_DOMAIN_ID of a drone to 1, to get the PX4 topics to show up, on QGC > Analyze Tools > MAVLink Console, run the following commands:

param set XRCE_DDS_DOM_ID 1
param save

Then power cycle the drone, give it like 15s after boot up, then the topics should come up directly when running ros2 topic list on that drone.

Hey @greg_s
I was able to reproduce the issue where the drone does not fly correctly toward the setpoint. I think reviewing the extrinsics.conf file is a good next step, as there may be an incorrect transform defined there.

Hey @yunwool
Did you try setting the ROS_LOCALHOST_ONLY variable to limit the topics to your local device?

Hey @greg_s
I just wanted to confirm, are you dragging the planned point to the height desired? By default, simply clicking on the map will generate a point at height 0.
Let me know, thanks

Hey @greg_s,
Can you post your voxl-logs and flight logs?

Thanks

Hey @yunwool
I would recommend writing export ROS_DOMAIN_ID=1 in your ~/.bashrc and then restarting all terminals so the change takes effect. This should prevent other ROS 2 messages from appearing in your environment, since you’ll effectively be using your own domain.

Optionally, you may want to look into the ROS_LOCALHOST_ONLY variable as well, since I do believe if someone else sets their domain ID to 1, you would see their messages.

@kgn-mdlai Thank you for bringing this up, a fix to this is currently being worked on.
Thanks

Hey @dvz, thanks for your query

We’re currently in the process of updating the voxl-tag-detector to support additional AprilTag families beyond just the 36h11.

If you’d like to try this yourself in the meantime, the following line in main.cpp creates the detector for the 36h11 family: here

To add support for the tagCustom48h12 family, you can:

Add the include:

#include <tagCustom48h12.h>

Replace the detector creation line with:

tf = tagCustom48h12_create();

Please note that this change may affect the current functionality, you’ll likely need to make additional modifications in main.cpp to ensure it builds and runs correctly.
As mentioned, we’re actively working on making this a much smoother process in the future. But if you’d like to get started now, the above steps should point you in the right direction.

@Rupesh Apologies for the late reply
It looks like there’s an issue with how the AprilTag system is relocalizing the drone. In my tests, the z-value appears to be misinterpreted, which could explain why your drone was climbing in altitude to correct its height estimate. We’re actively working on a fix.