Flying
Pre-Flight Checklist
- Ensure that the
inventory.ini
file has all of the hostnames of the drones under[drones]
. This selects the drones that the operators are done on.- Ensure that the
gcs_url
variable in the preflight ansible (/path/to/swarmnxtrepo/ansible/drones_preflight.yml
) is set to the correct hostname or IP address of the ground station.
- Ensure that the
- Run the pre-flight ansible:
cd /path/to/swarmnxtrepo/ansible && ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini drones_preflight.yml -K
. This will start or check:- The position estimation services on each drone
- The mavros service on each drone. This provides information to QGroundControl, and the other services that mavros provides
- Checks if chronyc is tracking. This is currently just a boolean check, but can be expanded later to check latency.
- Open QGroundControl. Ensure every drone is connected.
- Check the EKF Tracking for each drone
- Check the ping between each drone and the ground station, both ways (TODO: Automate)
- Check the batteries are charged (TODO: Automate)
- Check that the rotors are not obstructed by any cables, and all cables are well-connected
Optional: Run an Update
You can run an update by going to the ansible/
directory and running the following command:
ansible-playbook -i inventory.ini drones_update.yml -K
This will update apt repositories, pull the latest version of ros packages, and build them.