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1. ROSCOPTER

ROS interface for Arducopter using Mavlink 1.0 interface. credit https://code.google.com/p/roscopter/

Currently it supports controlling the arducopter by overriding the RC command, and it publishes all the sensor data.

Table of Contents Building Running Getting sensor data Control Arming/Disarming Channels:

Building

  * Checkout repo
  * Checkout and build mavlink in the roscopter folder, or create a symlink to your existing mavlink build. The `roscopter/mavlink` folder should point to the built mavlink folder.
  * Mavlink can be checked-out from : git clone https://github.com/mavlink/mavlink.git
  * Build roscopter using `rosmake`.

Running

nodes/roscopter.py --device=/dev/ttyUSB0 --baudrate=57600

  * `--device` specifies the serial device. It could be `/dev/ACMx` or `/dev/ttyUSBx`. 
  * `--baudrate` specifies the baudrate. This should be 57600 if you are using XBee to talk to the APM, and 115200 if you are using a direct wired connection. 
  

Getting sensor data

Roscopter publishes sensor and other state data on the following topics:

  * /attitude : imu information
  * /gps :gps fix
  * /rc : value of current raw rc input
  * /state : shows wether the copter is armed or not, and the current mode 
  * /vfr_hud : airspeed, groundspeed, heading, throttle, alt, climb

Control

To enable control, run the roscopter node with --enable-control=true option.

nodes/roscopter.py --device=/dev/ttyUSB0 --baudrate=57600 --enable-control=true

Currently the only way of controlling the arducopter is by publishing to `/send_rc` topic. It takes raw RC channel values (between 1000-2000), and uses them to override the values received from the RC controller. To give control back to RC, publish 0 for the corresponding channel.

rostopic pub -1 send_rc roscopter/RC "{channel:[0,]}"

Arming/Disarming

Arming and disarming can be done by calling the `/arm` and `/disarm` services with no parameters.

Channels:

1. Roll
2. Pitch
3. Throttle
4. Yaw
5. Change APM Mode
6. Optional
7. Optional
8. Optional