ROS/MAVROS Installation on RPi

This is a guide on how to install ROS-indigo on a Raspberry Pi 2 serving as a companion computer for Pixhawk.

Prerequisites

• A working Raspberry Pi with monitor, keyboard, or configured SSH connection

• This guide assumes that you have Raspbian "JESSIE" installed on your RPi. If not: install it or upgrade your Raspbian Wheezy to Jessie.

Installation

Follow this guide for the actual installation of ROS Indigo. Note: Install the "ROS-Comm" variant. The Desktop variant is too heavyweight.

Errors when installing packages

If you want to download packages (e.g. sudo apt-get install ros-indigo-ros-tutorials), you might get an error saying: "unable to locate package ros-indigo-ros-tutorials".

If so, proceed as follows: Go to your catkin workspace (e.g. ~/ros_catkin_ws) and change the name of the packages.

$ cd ~/ros_catkin_ws

$ rosinstall_generator ros_tutorials --rosdistro indigo --deps --wet-only --exclude roslisp --tar > indigo-custom_ros.rosinstall

Next, update your workspace with wstool.

$ wstool merge -t src indigo-custom_ros.rosinstall

$ wstool update -t src

Next (still in your workspace folder), source and make your files.

$ source /opt/ros/indigo/setup.bash

$ source devel/setup.bash

$ catkin_make