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Quick tutorial for using roscopter, the ROS interface to Arducopter.

Building

• first checkout and build mavlink in the source folder
• then build roscopter using rosmake

Running

nodes/roscopter.py --device=/dev/ttyUSB1 --rate=115200

this will start publishing the following topics:

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

currently only way of controlling the arducopter is by publishing to /send_rc topic. It takes raw RC channel values (between 1000-2000), and overrides the rc controller. To give control back to RC, publish 0 for the corresponding channel.

Channels:

0 - return to RC

1 - roll

2 - pitch

3 - throttle

4 - yaw

5 - flight mode

6 - null

7 - low/high pwm