Guide for getting up and running with BYU AUVSI

auvsi_guide.md

This is a quick write up of how to get going with the AUVSI software. By no means is this complete, but these notes will help (hopefully).

Computer Set Up

These are the necessary steps for getting your computer ready to run the AUVSI software.

• Install Ubuntu 18.04 as a dual-boot system along with your other operating system(s). I highly recommend dual booting rather than trying to use a Virtual Machine. I used a VM for the first few months of AUVSI but I started running into weird network and device issues, so I had to switch over to a dual boot system and essentially start over. I have a bootable USB with 18.04 on it, anyone who wants to use it is welcome to get it from me in the MAGICC lab. See https://howtoubuntu.org/how-to-install-ubuntu-18-04-bionic-beaver for more instructions. Note: Don't install any version besides 18.04 - ROS Melodic only officially supports 18.04 and all of the MAGICC lab code you'll be using is meant to run on Melodic.
• On your Ubuntu 18.04 installation:
• Install ROS Melodic (http://wiki.ros.org/melodic/Installation/Ubuntu)
• Install git (sudo apt install git)
• Install python3, either by using the following, or by installing Anaconda (which can make switching between Python2 and Python3 easier)

sudo apt install python3 python3-pip
pip3 install numpy matplotlib 

• I would also recommend that you get a github.com account and be added to the byu-auvsi organization (github.com/byu-auvsi)

Creating your workspace

All of the autopilot code that is used for AUVSI uses ROS. ROS provides a great set of tools and a system for allowing multiple "nodes" to communicate with each other, regardless of the computer that they are on as long as the computers are networked with each other.

Here's the steps to get a simulation environment up and running:

1. Set up a ROS catkin workspace

mkdir -p auvsi_ws/src
cd auvsi_ws
catkin_make
cd src

2. Clone the AUVSI repositories into src There's a bunch of these and honestly this process could probably be automated somehow.

git clone https://github.com/byu-auvsi/metis
git clone https://github.com/byu-auvsi/uav_msgs
git clone https://github.com/byu-auvsi/interop_pkg
git clone https://github.com/byu-auvsi/inertial_sense_ros
git clone https://github.com/byu-magicc/rosflight_plugins
git clone https://github.com/byu-auvsi/rosflight
git clone https://github.com/byu-magicc/rosplane

Note: you may also need to install eigen-stl-containers sudo apt install ros-melodic-eigen-stl-containers

3. Make the workspace and source the setup.bash

cd ../
catkin_make
source devel/setup.bash

4. Run metis

roslaunch metis fake_interop.launch

it should be catkin_make! It needs underscore