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leocore_firmware_ros2

The firmware for the LeoCore controller running inside Leo Rover.

The main functionalities include:

  • velocity commands for the robot,
  • velocity and PWM commands for individual wheels,
  • battery voltage feedback,
  • wheel states (position, velocity, torque, PWM duty) feedback,
  • odometry feedback (calculated from wheel encoders),
  • feedback from the IMU sensor.

The project is written for PlatformIO and uses the STM32Cube embedded software libraries. The low-level code is generated by the STM32CubeMX tool.

The firmware also uses rcl+rclc as a client library with Micro XRCE-DDS as a middleware to expose its functionalities on ROS topics, services and parameters. For the documentation of the ROS API, visit leo_fw on the ROS wiki.

Prerequisites

To build the project, all you'll need is Visual Studio Code with the PlatformIO IDE extension.

To change the STM32CubeMX configuration, you will also need the stm32pio tool in order to properly regenerate the code.

Building

Open the project in PlatformIO IDE, then run the PlatformIO: Build task.

Flashing

Using ST-Link programmer

Connect the ST-Link to the pins on the LeoCore debug pin header, then run the PlatformIO: Upload task.

You can also run the GDB debugger by running the PIO Debug launch configuration (or just clicking F5).

Using RPi on Leo Rover

Upload the .pio/build/leocore/firmware.bin to Leo Rover, then, on the robot, run:

ros2 run leo_fw flash firmware.bin

Connecting

To expose the Micro-ROS node to the ROS2 network, you need to run the Micro-ROS Agent on RPi. Build the package using colcon and then run:

ros2 run micro_ros_agent micro_ros_agent serial -D /dev/serial0 -b 460800

Modifying STM32CubeMX configuration\

Open the leocore.ioc project in STM32CubeMX, make the changes and save the project.

Don't click GENERATE CODE. Instead, type:

stm32pio generate

The current configuration assumes that STM32CubeMX is installed under /opt/STM32CubeMX. You can change the path in the stm32pio.ini file.