Clover

Connecting Raspberry Pi to the flight controller

In order to program autonomous flights, work with Pixhawk or Pixracer over Wi-Fi, use controller app and access other functions you need to connect your Raspberry Pi to the flight controller.

USB connection

USB connection is the preferred way to connect to the flight controller.

  1. Connect your FCU to the Raspberry Pi using a microUSB to USB cable.

  2. Connect to the Raspberry Pi over SSH.

  3. Make sure the connection is working by running the following command on the Raspberry Pi:

    rostopic echo /mavros/state

    The connected field should have the True value.s

TIP

You need to set the CBRK_USB_CHK parameter to 197848 for the USB connection to work.

UART connection

TIP

In the image version 0.20 clever package and service was renamed to clover. See previous version of the articleopen in new window for older images.

UART connection is another way for the Raspberry Pi and FCU to communicate.

  1. Connect Raspberry Pi to your FCU using a UART cable.

  2. Connect to the Raspberry Pi over SSH.

  3. Change the connection type in ~/catkin_ws/src/clover/clover/launch/clover.launch to UART:

    <arg name="fcu_conn" default="uart"/>

    Be sure to restart the clover service after editing the .launch file:

    sudo systemctl restart clover

TIP

Set the SYS_COMPANION PX4 parameter to 921600 to enable UART on the FCU.

SITL connection

In order to connect to a local or a remote SITL instance set the fcu_conn parameter to udp and fcu_ip to the IP address of the SITL instance (127.0.0.1 if you are running the instance locally):

<arg name="fcu_conn" default="udp"/>
<arg name="fcu_ip" default="127.0.0.1"/>

Next: Using QGroundControl over Wi-Fi