However, in my electronics course, I had some success uploading ROS onto the Arduino, which is certainly a step forward. I expected it to be a lot more difficult than it actually was, but their were a few tricky elements. I find that the stage of just getting everything installed is FAR more frustrating than actually programming and compiling.
The most confusing thing, which I'll be sure to specify here, is that, in Ubuntu, the Arduino's 'libraries' and 'tools' directories are not in the sketchbook directory like every other OS I can think of. It is instead in
/usr/share/arduinoso don't let that trip you up if you want to add anything to your IDE.
With that out of the way, it's time to set sail for rosserial. Here you'll find a great set of tutorials as well as a good video explanation of why you would want to use ROS on an Arduino project:
In short, it's one of those many "reinventing the wheel" moments that comes as part of being a programmer. Also, if ROS supports whatever else you're working with, just think of ROS as the dinner party both of these members will attend. Now, I have a means of making the Drone communicate with the Arduino, my "sensor stick".
After getting through the installation bores, you can check the first tutorial, a sample publisher. You should find that it's pretty easy. When you finish you should have a new topic, "chatter", that contains a "Hello World" message from the Arduino!
This may not be impressive in itself, but imagine if we modified this a little bit. Imagine a theoretical sensor running from the arduino and writing that data to ROS. You now have valuable, instant information at your fingertips. So now it's time to get the Drone talking and order a sensor. I'll make a separate post about that arduous process.
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