Pre-Flashed Cyclops Box
Use this setup tutorial to setup your pre-configured Cyclops hardware box.
If you are on this page, you have received a pre-configured cyclops box and an ArduCam USB camera module! The following steps will have you set up everything required to use the VPS on your drone.
Hardware
The 2 things you have receieved are a pre-flashed cyclops box, with an XT30 connector & BEC and JST GH 6 pin UART connector, and an ArduCam USB camera module.
Prerequisites
A computer running either Windows or Linux
An Ethernet cable
An internet connection
Theseus Account
You should have created a Theseus account by providing one of our team members with an email to use during device hand-off. If you have not set this up yet, contact a team member to get started.
Download Vozilla Software
We have made set up of the Cyclops device very simple with the Vozilla tool. To get more information on everything within the Vozilla app, refer to the Vozilla page here.
Once downloaded you will sign in with your Theseus Account.
Cyclops Setup
Because you have purchased the pre-flashed cyclops box, you have 2 trial licenses to test integration with your UAV. This means that all of the software is pre-flashed, and all you must do is configure a few parts specific for your CONOP.
We have uploaded a camera calibration with your pre-flashed box which is good for the provided ArduCam module. If you use a different camera, you will need to do your own camera calibration. Steps for calibrating the camera can be found here.
Step 1 — Power device & connect over Ethernet
Power the Pi by either using the XT30 connector, or opening the case and powering with USB-C. Then connect the Ethernet cable from the Pi to your laptop running Vozilla. The LED on the Pi will change to green when the Pi has booted, and you will see green lights on Ethernet connector while plugged in.
It can take up to 45 seconds for the Pi to come online and ready for Ethernet connection. Vozilla will auto-detect and connect to the pi over Ethernet.
You can verify the connection by seeing the "Disconnected" message change to "Cyclops Stopped" message in the top right corner of Vozilla.
Step 2 — Activate License
You will notice the diagnostics tab at the bottom of the screen says to activate your license. The best way to do this is within the Settings -> Device tab, where you can access all of the licenses on your account, and upload a license to Cyclops.
We ship these boxes with the username, password, and adress preconfigured. We recommend to leave the pi address as a static IP.
There is a known bug where this feature is not working currently! Please ssh into the pi, default configuration of the pi is the following command:
ssh pi@192.168.218.100
then activate the license with this command:
cyclops_exe --activate-license
Step 3 — Create a Map
After successful activation of your device license, you will need to add a map. This step can take up to an hour depending on the size of your map, and will require internet to start the map generation and to download the map For an in depth tutorial on map creation and generation, look here.
It will take about 1 hour to generate a 1000 km^2 map. This will take about 30 minutes to download with a fast internet connection, and even longer if the internet connection is slow or spotty.
You must have a map large enough for the mission. Cyclops will fail if outside of the map bounds.
Step 4 — Create a Vehicle Config
Now you must create a vehicle configuration based on your camera location relative to your flight controller. For an in depth tutorial on creating a vehicle config, look here.
Step 5 — Connect to FCU
After the setup, you can connect the provided 6 pin JST GH connector to a serial port on your flight controller. There are a few parameters you must change to ensure the system works properly. For an in depth tutorial on MAVLink and Autopilot setup, look here.
The SysID for your FCU must match the SysID on the Pi. Navigate to the MAV settings section in Vozilla to configure the SysID, if your FCU has a SysID other than 1.
Step 6 — Cyclops Options
By default cyclops is shipped with VIO + Map Matching for planes. You can edit the platform and settings within the Vozilla Settings -> Lab.
Step 7 — Ready for Flight
Once you have set up the parameters, have the system connected to the FCU, and everything powered on, you should see the status change from Cyclops Stopped to Cyclops Running.
There is a 60s MAVLink heartbeat timeout. If you see a message within the diagnostics tab that says "Failed to find MAVLink heartbeat" refer to the step above to properly configure your FCU.
Determining the Status of Cyclops
We send multiple messages over MAV to GCS software so that determining the status and performance of Cyclops is easy. The main messages to look for are:
SRC=1/191:CYCLOPS: TS/CLK 1:1 SYNCING
SRC=1/191:CYCLOPS: HOME POSITION LOADED
SRC=1/191:CYCLOPS: TS/CLK 1:1 SYNCED
After these messages appear, you can initialize the EKF via a spoof, or your preferred bootstrapping method. For more information, look here.
Cyclops will initialize at 20m AGL after takeoff. The VIO initial velocity is defaulting to 12 m/s. Both of these can be configured within Vozilla.
You can verify it has loaded by seeing the following messages:
SRC=1/191:CYCLOPS: READY FOR ARMING
SRC=1/191:CYCLOPS: VISUAL NAVIGATION ONLINE
SRC=1/191:CYCLOPS: MAP MATCH CONV (x), NEXT FIX IN (x)M
These messages will appear periodically, with the map match messages appearing every 5 seconds. Understanding the meaning behind these messages can be found here. Standard configuration applies map matches when convergence is below 50, and the distance between matches is greater than 500m.
Over the course of the flight, you will see the following message:
SRC=1/191:CYCLOPS: MAP MATCH APPLIED +(x)M CONV (x)
This message is self explanatory, but shows when a map match has been applied and corrected the position.
Occasionally, you may see EKF LANE SWITCH, DCM ACTIVE, EKF3 ACTIVE messages. This happens when there is a map match that corrects the position over a large distance. This is healthy and means that the position has been corrected.
Troubleshooting
Please contact a Theseus team member if you are having problems with integration, or have any questions. We are happy to help your integration needs as needed.
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