GettingTheGCSRunningonAGumstixBoard

Intro

Please take note that the page is in work at the moment and that I am doing my best to have it updated as soon as possible.

Would it not be great to have your small UAS in your backpack, throw it in the air and monitor and even adjust the flight via a small device in your pocket? If you think this would be awesome, read on, since that is what this page is all about. It is the first attempt and will not be about iPad, Android Phones, Amazon Kindles or the likes as a ground station. For this we have other wiki pages. No, we will use a thrusted solution; A Gumstix with Linux on it.

Outcome

Have the Paparazzi GCS monitoring and adjusting a UA via an small Gumstix based device.

Hardware

What do you need to get this working:

1. A gumstix board
2. Camera
3. 3.5" screen (such as the LCD panel with the Chestnut) or 4.3"

Software

Needed softwares to run this application:

1. Paparazzi software
2. Kivy library
3. Ubuntu kernel on your Gumstix
4. Driver for the camera in order to be used with the Gumstix

How to start

Well, we have some tutorials on this wiki about how to install Paparazzi. If you need any help to install Kivy, please look at their website, you will find there a good tutorial about how to get started.

Create an OS

Pre-requisites

   4GB SD card or larger
   Download the pre-built image from [vexpress-ics-gcc47-armlt-staging-alt-open.img.gz]

Installation Steps

   unzip the downloaded pre-build image
   Insert SD card and note the assigned '/dev/sdX'

    $ dmesg
    $ SDCARD=/dev/sdX   (sdcard found from dmesg above)
    $ sudo dd bs=64k if=vexpress-ics-gcc47-armlt-staging-alt-open.img of=$SDCARD     

   Continue with the instructions below to Configure your TC2 board to boot the image [link].

Once you have the image written on your sd card you can insert it in the Gumstix and boot up. Then type the following in the CuteCom command prompt:

   printenv
   setenv defaultdisplay lcd43
   saveenv
   run mmcboot

After that you can reboot your system.

Connecting peripherals

When you have a Linux version running on your Gumstix, you can add a LCD, or a mouse, or a keyboard.

To set up your LCD you must follow these steps:

Connect trough CuteCom to the Gumstix Restart the board and hit a key within 5 seconds:

   Hit any key to stop autoboot: 5

Then type the following in the CuteCom command prompt:

   setenv defaultdisplay lcd43

Or, if you are using a 3.5" screen (such as the LCD panel with the Palo35):

   setenv defaultdisplay lcd35

You can save this setting for future boots by saving it:

   saveenv

Finally, continue with the boot process by typing in CuteCom command prompt:

   boot 

Connect to the Gumstix trought the network

If you want to send files to the Gumstix, you can do it via a ssh connection. In order to do this, both devices, your computer and the Gumstix must be connected to the same same network. Once you did this, you can start setting up the connection. Fistly, you need to know the IP address of the Gumstix. Start by opening CuteCom and connect to the device. When the system loaded, type into CuteCom command prompt:

ifconfig -a (if you can't use this command from any reason you can get a list with all the ips on the network using 'arp -a')

Among the data returned, you will see something like this:

   eth0      
    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:15:c9:28:c9:ff  
    inet addr:169.16.29.3

Now enter into the command prompt:

   sudo dhclient eth1 169.16.29.3

When this is done, install on the Gumstix openssh write into the command prompt:

   sudo apt-get install openssh-server

Set a password:

   sudo passwd username
   password  (replace password with any string you want as password)
   password  (retype the password you chose)

Now you should be able to connect using:

   ssh root@169.16.29.3 

Remove the login prompt

You may want to set your OS to auto-login. Why? Because you may not have at any time a keyboard for the Gumstix around. It is explained here very well how to do it. You have to write in your command prompt:

   sudo vi /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

and then modify the lines as indicated on the webpage above.

There is a chance to get an error like this "Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.". To solve this write into your command prompt:

   sudo locale-gen en_US.UTF-8 

or the right locale for your keyboard. If this didn't solve your problem, you may want to read here more about it.

Remove the Lightdm GUI for freeing memory

   sudo apt-get remove lightdm

After this step you must reboot.

Install paparazzi on the gumstix

Errors: W: Failed to fetch http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~lpw25/ocaml-rpi/dists/wheezy/main/binary-armel/Packages 404 Not Found

W: Failed to fetch http://paparazzi.enac.fr/debian/dists/wheezy/main/binary-armel/Packages 404 Not Found

E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead. E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem. root@linaro-ubuntu-desktop:~# sudo dpkg --configure -a

   apt-get install ocaml-findlib
   apt-get install libpcre3-dev

Attempt 10

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:paparazzi-uav/ppa
   (press enter as you will be asked)
   sudo apt-get install ocaml-findlib libxml-light-ocaml-dev liblablgtk2-ocaml-dev liblablgtk2-gnome-ocaml-dev libocamlnet-ocaml-dev libsdl-ocaml-dev libpcre-ocaml-dev gtk2-engines-pixbuf make gcc g++ libgsl0-dev gnuplot libgnomecanvas2-dev bzip2 git libusb-dev speech-dispatcher glade imagemagick libpcre3-dev
   (type Y to continue)
   

Experimental steps

1. Remove LightDM GUI to preserver Gumstix memory

{TODO: Describe STEPS}

{install python} {install ivy python} {install kivy}

Compile example

Source of Example

X11 server to display on LCD

Next

The next step will be to make onboard video work in the GCS.

Links

• OMAP
• https://www.gumstix.com/
• Dev/Caspa