Week 2 Report – 3rd to 9th June

Received the Erle Brain from my mentors. It is a Linux-based autopilot that consists of a BeagleBone Black and a PixHawk Fire cape put together. Thanks to my mentors for the same 🙂

Got APM Planner running on my Arch Linux system. Instructions for the same can be found in my previous post.

The main ardupilot repository, ie https://github.com/diydrones/ardupilot, has undergone changes and the vehicle code is now in the form of .cpp files, instead of the earlier .pde format, and each vehicle now has its own header file.

Support for building from .pde files might be removed from the build system too, and hence it shall be my goal for the next week to incorporate the changes to the existing work.

I also had some issues SSHing into the Erle Brain. Hope to get it sorted out…

Posted on by beaglepilot2 0

Installing APM Planner on Arch Linux

APM Planner is available for Ubuntu as a .deb file and can be downloaded here.

However, if you are using another linux distro like Arch Linux, you will have to build from source. The following steps will help you to achieve the same –

  • Install the dependencies –

sudo pacman -S git qt5-base qt5-serialport qt5-script qt5-webkit qt5-svg libsndfile sdl sdl2

tar xvjf flite-2.0.0-release.tar.bz2
cd flite-2.0.0-release/
./configure
make
sudo make install

  • Now, to build APM Planner from source –

git clone https://github.com/diydrones/apm_planner
cd apm_planner/
qmake qgroundcontrol.pro
make
sudo make install

You can now run APM Planner by typing apm_planner in a terminal.

Posted on by beaglepilot2 2

Week 1 Report – 27th May to 2nd June

Completed the introductory video this week. You can find it here.

I have started working on the APMSubmarine vehicle part. Most of the .pde files need to be modified for the underwater vehicle and I’m working towards the same. I’m starting with the common ones such as log, sensors etc. Will push changes in the next couple of days…

Posted on by beaglepilot2 0

Hello world!

This is where I will be posting updates to the GSoC 2015 project titled BeaglePilot 2.0: Making underwater drones.

Project abstract –

The aim of the project is to create an open hardware underwater vehicle based on BeagleBone Black. The project will involve using the OpenROV code base and the APM, to provide autopilot capabilities. ROS will be used as a bridge (mavros) to interface with the APM. The project will enable hobbyists to get access to a low cost, easy to use and open hardware underwater vehicle platform with autopilot capabilities which they can modify according to their needs and requirements.

The code repository is located on Github and you can also access a Twitter feed via the sidebar or by following @beaglepilot2.

Cheers!

Rohith Madhavan

Posted on by beaglepilot2 0