Craziefly P2P communication with peripheral MCUs

[avibrown]

Hi folks! I would appreciate some info regarding the current state of P2P communication between MCUs running micro-ROS nodes, and whether my (theoretical) setup would be achievable:

Setup (theoretical)

• Craziefly 2.1 with FreeRTOS connected over UART 1 & 2 to two separate Arduino rp2040 Connect dev boards with the micro-ROS Arduino library (as done here).
• Ideally the Craziefly would also be able to communicate with a "ground control" Linux computer (with the PA module).

The rp2040 boards would be running distinct neural networks and publishing the inference results as per my micro-ROS + Edge Impulse project.

The reason I'm skeptical this is possible is because as far as I understand my options are to either:

• Use a P2P Agent configuration as mentioned here but as they point out, this makes DDS access impossible
• Use the (more updated) brokerless P2P implementation as per this post, in which case I think an agent is not even existant!

Thanks in advance for any guidance :)
Avi

[pablogs9]

Hi @avielbr, I guess that this is gonna be kind of hard to achieve with the current status of micro-ROS' Crazyflie port.

In any case, we were talking with the folks at Bitcraze about their new radio system for Crazyflie and they have very cool ideas: https://www.bitcraze.io/2022/11/new-crazyradio-and-new-communication-architecture/

When they have this new architecture ready, maybe we can iterate a bit on communicating P2P using micro-ROS APIs.

CC: @knmcguire

[avibrown]

Huh, that new design seems like it will be cool!

So my best bet for this setup would be:

2 Arduinos communicating over UART through a custom interface to the drone, and the drone connected over micro-ROS to the main computer. I think. Will update as this moves forward -- I just placed the order for the Crazyflie 2.1 :)

[knmcguire]

I'll also attach @ataffanel to this discussion too as he has the idea better in his head :) but great to hear that there is more p2p interest!

[knmcguire]

Btw, for anybody interested, we will have this Wednesday an townhall meeting about the Crazyradio 2.0 and ideas about the new comstack! please join for comments, discussions and questions!

https://github.com/orgs/bitcraze/discussions/426