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Eric Katzfey

Regarding RC receiver, yes you can fly without it. You can use a joystick via QGC instead. Or, you can just fly missions that don't require any RC input. You should be able to swap in a 2.4 GHz receiver. VOXL2 has no support for S.BUS so make sure it has a standard 4 wire UART. Just use the same port that the current ELRS receiver is connected to. You shouldn't have to change any parameters.

Eric Katzfey

There's some documentation here: https://docs.px4.io/main/en/flight_modes/offboard#ros-2-offboard-control. I would review that to make sure you are following the correct procedures.

Vinny

Resolving this over email.
Thanks!

Vinny

Hi @jeremyrbrown5
There are about 45 components missing on your board to enable ToF support, it is not standard practice for us to provide variant transition instructions for numerous reasons.
I'll talk to the team and see if we should reach out over email to guide you further if you are willing to take the risk..

tom

Hi @james-garito it's likely easiest if you dump your questions here so our whole team can get eyes on and address.

tom

@simiken1234 Thanks for the detailed report and logs.

The images are correct. Your saved mach.var of 1.0.1 means M0054-1 hardware running the var00.1 (M0173) kernel, so the SDK 1.8.0 installer picked the right kernel and M0054(154)-1.zip is the right flat build. See VOXL 2 HW Versions.
The firehose reset timeout is expected and not a problem. See the note in Flash Flat Build.
A full factory flat build that still shows no USB device on a bare, cold-booted board, plus USB 3 resetting on two different hosts, points to a hardware problem on this board rather than SDK 1.8.0 or the -1 revision. Please do one more clean QDL flash of M0054(154)-1.zip over the USB 2 connection that worked. If it still does not come up as 05c6:901d, follow this section and request an RMA with the board serial (3f621d35), a link to this thread, and your support zip. Please hold off on further flash-system-image.sh or fastboot boot attempts in the meantime.

Vinny

Hi @jeremyrbrown5
We have found our site incorrectly lists the Mini-ToF support on the SKUs that are available to buy.

The board in your hands cannot be updated to support the ToF modules. If we were able to provide you with a corrected unit with Mini-ToF support, it would require ModalAI ToF modules, not ones from Adafruit or other 3rd parties.
Please bear with us on this, we are figuring out the best approach internally to handle this, but curious what your flexibilities are on this?
Was this bought as part of a drone, or individual PCBs? Can you please share your order #?

Thanks!

Eric Katzfey

Trying to line up the correct engineer to help out with this. As a side note regarding HITL, you can also now use SIH for simulation. This is much easier to setup and in many cases just as effective as HITL. https://docs.modalai.com/px4-sih/

wilkinsaf

@juancho248

Hello,

Which onboard localization and navigation capabilities are available for autonomous flight without GNSS? -> The starling 2 max uses openvins for localization, and we would encourage you to use april tag relocalization in order to navigate around indoor environments as openvins can drift over time.
How reliable is visual-inertial localization in repetitive greenhouse rows with limited visual features? -> This is tough to be deterministic BUT, cant expect 2% error over distance. Greenhouse rows reminds us of the SAVLoc from Micheal Baldwin (presented at the PX4 dev summit): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wk9_TNN1DA. This is not something that is present natively on the VOXL but presents an interesting localization technique indoors that you can utilize.
Can the platform execute predefined and repeatable trajectories without GPS? -> yes, but again we would recommend utilizing the april tags for relocalization as there is some error over distance. you can also utilize mavsdk in order to put the drone in offboard mode and control trajectories. You can find that documentation here: https://docs.modalai.com/mavsdk/
What software components, SDKs, or additional development are required to implement those trajectories? -> refer to answer in last question
Which onboard sensors are used for obstacle detection and avoidance, and what limitations should we consider around thin wires, foliage, and greenhouse structures? -> TOF module as well as tflite and opencv for computer vision. There is a collision prevention module inside PX4 that will prevent the drone from flying into something in position flight mode. You obviously have already used voxl-mapper. Anything higher level you can program in yourself in our ROS 2 plugin
Does ModalAI have documentation or examples for autonomous indoor waypoint navigation using Starling 2 Max? -> currently mainly the voxl-mapper. There are some custom projects that Ascend Engineering has worked on to do this
What safety measures and fallback behaviors are recommended if localization becomes unreliable? -> Would recommend flying in a netted & controlled area that is separate from humans. Also, have a remote control that you can switch back into manual control in order to take manual control of the drone if you feel localization is becoming unstable

Zachary Lowell 0

@김진혁

Yes when the drone "takes off" that is monitered as the jerk occuring that kicks off ovins
Yes - if there is no ovins algorithm occuring due to you sitting on the ground, you need the healthy packets to allow px4 to take off to begin with even if there are no features occuring in the frame.

Zach

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