Building for NAVIO2 on RPi3

Overview

These instructions clarify how to build ArduPilot for the Navio2 board on the Navio2’s RPi3 board itself using Waf build system. These instructions assume the RPi3 has already been setup according to the manufacturer’s (i.e. Emlid’s) instructions here.

Alternatively you can follow Emlid’s instructions on how to build from source found here.

Setup

Use an ssh terminal program such as Putty to log into the Navio2 board’s RPI3.

Note

On Raspbian Stretch, one of the Python requirements might be missing, so please install future by

pip install future

Get git

Git is a free and open source distributed version control system that is used to manage ArduPilot codebase. Git is available on all major OS platforms, and a variety of tools exist to make it easier to get started.

Git command line

Ubuntu

Linux/Ubuntu users can install with apt :

  • sudo apt-get update

  • sudo apt-get install git

  • sudo apt-get install gitk git-gui

Windows and other Systems

Clone ArduPilot repository

“Cloning” is git’s term for making a local copy of a remote repository (i.e. one held on the GitHub servers).

Developers should clone the main ArduPilot repository (if they simply want to download and compile the latest code) or their own fork (if they want to make changes to the source code and potentially submit changes back).

Instructions for commonly used tools are below but whichever tool is used, the URL for the source repo will be required. This can be found on the right side of the screen on each Github repository home page but in general the URL is:

  • https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot.git for the main ardupilot repo

  • https://github.com/your-github-account/ardupilot for your fork of the ardupilot repo

../_images/APM-Git-Github-Clone.jpg

Cloning with the command line

  • open a terminal and navigate to the directory where you would like the clone to be stored

  • clone your fork:

    git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/your-github-userid/ardupilot
cd ardupilot

Note

in case some firewalls do not allow ssh access which can cause the above submodule updates to fail, in this instance you can tell git to unilaterally use https through the following command:

git config --global url."https://".insteadOf git://

to use https protocols instead of the default git:// prefix.

Install some required packages

If you are on a debian based system (such as Ubuntu or Mint), we provide a script that will do it for you. From ardupilot directory :

Tools/environment_install/install-prereqs-ubuntu.sh -y

Reload the path (log-out and log-in to make permanent):

. ~/.profile

Now you should be able to build with waf as described in BUILD.md.

Note

At this point you have already installed the MAVProxy Ground Control Station (MAVProxy GCS) and are also ready to do Software In the Loop (SITL) simulations of the vehicle code. See SITL Simulator (Software in the Loop) and Setting up SITL on Linux. You are ready to not only build the code, but run your build in the ArduPilot SITL simulator.

Cleaning

If there have been updates to some git submodules you may need to do a full clean build. To do that use:

./waf clean

that will remove the build artifacts so you can do a build from scratch

Note

Waf should always be called from the ardupilot’s root directory.

To keep access to Waf convenient, use the following alias from the root ardupilot directory:

alias waf="$PWD/modules/waf/waf-light"

Configure

Choose the board to be used:

waf configure --board=navio2

Build

Now you can build arducopter. For copter use the following command:

waf --targets bin/arducopter

To build a helicopter, specify “arducopter-heli”. The following frame types are specified in the “Frame Type” item of the Mission Planner menu “INITIAL SETUP”.

Quad Hexa Octa Octa-Quad Y6  Heli Tri

In the end of compilation binary file with the name arducopter will be placed in ardupilot/build/navio2/bin/ directory.