ModalAI Forum

Eric Katzfey

Could you post a log of the drone flip?

Eric Katzfey

A drone immediately flipping over is usually caused by some combination of incorrect motor mapping, incorrect motor spin direction, and / or improper prop direction.

Alex Kushleyev

hi @nostrain ,

Thank you for providing an important detail regarding unloaded motor. I am going to test that condition with a similar motor.

I am a bit hesitant to ask you to go back to the older firmware since we have had a number of improvements since the original firmware, so we will try to figure out how to make this work.

In general, the ESC with unloaded motor should not be doing this, even while running in RPM control mode (which has been tuned for optimal response with a propeller). Ideally, the unloaded performance should not fail (while would behave differently from loaded motor).

Meanwhile, i am not sure how much value it is to do RPM step response tests with unloaded motor, because RPM controller assumes a loaded motor and the RPM controller is using the tuning parameters you provided. However, the motor behavior is extremely different without the propeller. To test realistic conditions, we typically run robustness tests like this with propeller on.

One more request, are you able to repeat the same test with the original firmware (that currently works) and set the demag_timing ESC parameter to 0. This was a feature originally put in for testing to help with low kv motors, but we later decided that this feature was not complete / robust enough to cover general use cases and it was removed. I am curious if it is helping in this case.

Alex

Eric Katzfey

Yes, you can monitor the battery data. What did you want to do with it?

Eric Katzfey

Yes, you can create custom code. Have you looked at our documentation? https://docs.modalai.com/voxl-sdk/

Eric Katzfey

I was finally able to get to a Windows PC and try this. I still cannot recreate the issue. I can restart voxl-ardupilot with systemctl restart or via Mission Planner reboot pixhawk and in both cases I can disconnect and then reconnect Mission Planner to ardupilot. I am connected on VOXL2 to my local WiFi network via station mode. I have disabled all other services other than, essentially, voxl-ardupilot and voxl-mavlink-server. I am using recent VOXL2 SDK, recent ArduPilot build, and Mission Planner 1.3.83

zauberflote1

Please update your VINS to our master branch here: https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/services/voxl-open-vins-server

For epoch-synced cams, tracking AR0144, please use:
https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/services/voxl-open-vins-server/-/tree/synced-timestamp?ref_type=heads

Eric Katzfey

Yes, you can connect to one of the UARTs on J19. However, there are only 3 UARTs so you'll have to choose which one to use. The PWM outputs on the IO expander are mainly intended to be used when you have PWM ESCs instead of a ModalAI UART based ESC. In that case you would connect to the ESC UART. If you want to use the IO expander in addition to a ModalAI UART based ESC then you will have to choose between the RC UART or the GNSS UART.

Eric Katzfey

First of all I would update the SDK to something newer. That's probably not going to solve this issue but it makes it easier for us to support you when you are on the current SDK. To help troubleshoot can you show the output of px4-qshell ghst_rc status. Run that status command a few times.

Vinny

Hi @jetson-nano I'm not sure I am following.
The ADB Debug port is still available on VOXL 2 when you use an M0062 Debug Board with USB Hub.
Our plug-in boards that connect to J3 and J5 do not consume the primary USB.
See here for guidance: https://docs.modalai.com/expansion-design-guide/#usb-expansion-over-j3--j5

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