ROS2 and serial communication with OrangeCube+

Hi all,

We’re in the process of transitioning from Pixhawk and PX4 to the OrangeCube+ for a number of UAV projects, but we’ve encountered persistent issues with XRCE-DDS communication and are hoping to get some insight from the community.

Specifically, we’re unable to get XRCE-DDS agent/client communication working with ArduPilot on the OrangeCube+. We’ve also seen intermittent issues with XRCE-DDS under PX4 on the same hardware. These issues manifest as either no connection at all or unstable communication.

We suspect there may be noise on the signal lines as a potential root cause, but unfortunately we don’t currently have the facilities to confirm this with proper signal integrity testing.

An additional clue: we’re also experiencing similar communication problems with the GPS module, which is connected via the same Telem port. This seems to support the theory of a hardware-level or electrical interference issue.

Has anyone else encountered similar issues when using XRCE-DDS on the OrangeCube+? Any recommendations for debugging or possible workarounds would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Max (on behalf of the City, University of London UAV Team)