Jetson VL53L5CX obstacle distance companion sensor to PX4 autopilot.

Setup

Using the pololu VL53L5CX (can be powered via 5v directly, connect VIN, SCL, SDA, & ground to the jetson GPIO.

Clone this repo into a ROS 2 overlay workspace alongside px4_msgs: colcon build --packages-select px4_msgs jetson_obs_distance

Source the overlay: . install/setup.bash

Parameters

I2C bus index depends on the Jetson i2c port (and the jetson board used). Usually it is either bus 0, bus 1, or bus 7. For example on bus 0: ros2 run jetson_obs_distance jetson_obs_distance --ros-args -p i2c_bus:=0

Confirm obstacle distance message and the overlay in Qgroundcontrol

Testing

Built and tested on ROS 2 Foxy. Built package in ROS 2 humble without issues but not tested.

Note that these sensors are for indoor use only! Outdoors the ambient light can be too strong for the VL53L5CX sensor.