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  4. ToF v2 keeps crashing because of high temperature

ToF v2 keeps crashing because of high temperature

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  • M msberk

    @Alex-Kushleyev Ah, right, sorry. 5V going to the power wires of the two ToF sensors.

    Alex KushleyevA Offline
    Alex KushleyevA Offline
    Alex Kushleyev
    ModalAI Team
    wrote on last edited by
    #10

    @msberk , thanks. Also, can you please clarify what adapter board you have plugged into the TOF2 sensor. Is it in this configuration ? https://docs.modalai.com/M0171/

    M 1 Reply Last reply
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    • Alex KushleyevA Alex Kushleyev

      @msberk , thanks. Also, can you please clarify what adapter board you have plugged into the TOF2 sensor. Is it in this configuration ? https://docs.modalai.com/M0171/

      M Offline
      M Offline
      msberk
      Contributor
      wrote on last edited by
      #11

      @Alex-Kushleyev It is M0169, we have yet to see M0171 go up for sale on the store or beta store, but would love some since the wire interface is clunky.

      Alex KushleyevA 1 Reply Last reply
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      • M msberk

        @Alex-Kushleyev It is M0169, we have yet to see M0171 go up for sale on the store or beta store, but would love some since the wire interface is clunky.

        Alex KushleyevA Offline
        Alex KushleyevA Offline
        Alex Kushleyev
        ModalAI Team
        wrote on last edited by
        #12

        @msberk, OK, M0169 is fine and 5V input there is ok too.

        So, after you were able to lower the exposure value, did you feel a noticeable temperature drop of the sensor? what if you set the limit to 1000us, does it overheat (that should be very unlikely).

        Printing out the temperature should be helpful, if you want to change that debug print to regular print, so that you don't have all the other debug messages scrolling, that will be easy to see..

        Alex

        M 1 Reply Last reply
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        • Alex KushleyevA Alex Kushleyev

          @msberk, OK, M0169 is fine and 5V input there is ok too.

          So, after you were able to lower the exposure value, did you feel a noticeable temperature drop of the sensor? what if you set the limit to 1000us, does it overheat (that should be very unlikely).

          Printing out the temperature should be helpful, if you want to change that debug print to regular print, so that you don't have all the other debug messages scrolling, that will be easy to see..

          Alex

          M Offline
          M Offline
          msberk
          Contributor
          wrote on last edited by msberk
          #13

          @Alex-Kushleyev It seems to be behaving at present. I picked 2000us since it seemed to give similar performance to the previous sensor. I'm going to try installing the "regular" 1.9.4 with the updated ae_msv setting and run that debug/grep again and make sure the setting is being respected. If so I may be ok, and just had something weird happen earlier since it was running on the bench for a while. What do y'all run on the starling 2 for max exposure? 6000 seemed practically unusable unless very actively cooled and we toasted a couple of these seemingly irrecoverably at that setting when we had them in the enclosure like the old sensors.

          Edit: running with default 1.9.4 and the correct settings in conf and it seems to respect 2000us limit. Also, to answer your temp question yes going from 6000 to 2000 made a huge difference in qualitative temperatures.

          Alex KushleyevA 1 Reply Last reply
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          • M msberk

            @Alex-Kushleyev It seems to be behaving at present. I picked 2000us since it seemed to give similar performance to the previous sensor. I'm going to try installing the "regular" 1.9.4 with the updated ae_msv setting and run that debug/grep again and make sure the setting is being respected. If so I may be ok, and just had something weird happen earlier since it was running on the bench for a while. What do y'all run on the starling 2 for max exposure? 6000 seemed practically unusable unless very actively cooled and we toasted a couple of these seemingly irrecoverably at that setting when we had them in the enclosure like the old sensors.

            Edit: running with default 1.9.4 and the correct settings in conf and it seems to respect 2000us limit. Also, to answer your temp question yes going from 6000 to 2000 made a huge difference in qualitative temperatures.

            Alex KushleyevA Offline
            Alex KushleyevA Offline
            Alex Kushleyev
            ModalAI Team
            wrote on last edited by
            #14

            @msberk , OK, please do more testing at 2000us and keep an eye on the temperature. By the way, the TOF v1 had max phase exposure of 1.2ms, so even 2ms for TOF V2 will give you better performance than TOF V1.

            On Starling 2 there is a heat spreader that helps dissipate the heat.

            I believe there is a limit of 95C, if the sensor gets to that point, it will turn itself off.

            Alex

            M 1 Reply Last reply
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            • Alex KushleyevA Alex Kushleyev

              @msberk , OK, please do more testing at 2000us and keep an eye on the temperature. By the way, the TOF v1 had max phase exposure of 1.2ms, so even 2ms for TOF V2 will give you better performance than TOF V1.

              On Starling 2 there is a heat spreader that helps dissipate the heat.

              I believe there is a limit of 95C, if the sensor gets to that point, it will turn itself off.

              Alex

              M Offline
              M Offline
              msberk
              Contributor
              wrote on last edited by
              #15

              @Alex-Kushleyev Thanks so much for your help. If 1200us was the V1 level we may just set it to that and move forward, making something that works at the previous level with minimal surgery to the drone is our shortest path to success at the moment.

              M 1 Reply Last reply
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              • M msberk

                @Alex-Kushleyev Thanks so much for your help. If 1200us was the V1 level we may just set it to that and move forward, making something that works at the previous level with minimal surgery to the drone is our shortest path to success at the moment.

                M Offline
                M Offline
                msberk
                Contributor
                wrote on last edited by
                #16

                @Alex-Kushleyev just learned you cannot set the exposure max to 1200. 1000 and 1500 work. If you set it to 1200 you get a vague IO error

                ERROR:   [ERROR] in _sensor_ioctl, ioctl failed: Connection timed out
                ERROR:   [ERROR] in voxl_cci_read, Failed ioctl call
                ERROR:   Failed CCI read
                

                Just posting this here as an FYI to other wrestling with these new sensors.

                Alex KushleyevA 1 Reply Last reply
                1
                • M msberk

                  @Alex-Kushleyev just learned you cannot set the exposure max to 1200. 1000 and 1500 work. If you set it to 1200 you get a vague IO error

                  ERROR:   [ERROR] in _sensor_ioctl, ioctl failed: Connection timed out
                  ERROR:   [ERROR] in voxl_cci_read, Failed ioctl call
                  ERROR:   Failed CCI read
                  

                  Just posting this here as an FYI to other wrestling with these new sensors.

                  Alex KushleyevA Offline
                  Alex KushleyevA Offline
                  Alex Kushleyev
                  ModalAI Team
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #17

                  @msberk , one more thing, there was a recent change that bumped the default fps from 5 to 10, so if you were testing that and reduce the exposure time to 2000us, but the FPS was at 10hz instead of 5Hz, the power dissipation was double of what you intended. The exposure (up to 6000us) is specified per illuminated phase. There are 8 illuminated phases per frame in medium and long range TOF V2 modes. Perhaps this caused your overheating issues after you changed exposure to 2000 us but did not notice that the FPS increased to 10Hz.

                  I am going to share some more information about how the different modes, exposures and FPS relate to the power usage, but long story short, here is the take-away:

                  • if you have 5fps with 2000us exposure per phase (total 16ms exposure per frame), so that is 80ms of total exposure (active IR) time per second
                  • then for 10fps, 2000us exposure per phase ... 160ms of total exposure time (active IR) per second, double the power consumption / dissipation.

                  here is the commit with the change 5fps to 10
                  https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/services/voxl-camera-server/-/commit/919c24bef21cbea2eb7be33853884f5f606a0763

                  another commit that removes the need for setting lme_msv for TOF to use the exposure_max_us
                  https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/services/voxl-camera-server/-/commit/0f195e2cbbe9cd4329d178ff42aa6f5fdf5e9307

                  Alex

                  Alex KushleyevA 1 Reply Last reply
                  1
                  • Alex KushleyevA Alex Kushleyev

                    @msberk , one more thing, there was a recent change that bumped the default fps from 5 to 10, so if you were testing that and reduce the exposure time to 2000us, but the FPS was at 10hz instead of 5Hz, the power dissipation was double of what you intended. The exposure (up to 6000us) is specified per illuminated phase. There are 8 illuminated phases per frame in medium and long range TOF V2 modes. Perhaps this caused your overheating issues after you changed exposure to 2000 us but did not notice that the FPS increased to 10Hz.

                    I am going to share some more information about how the different modes, exposures and FPS relate to the power usage, but long story short, here is the take-away:

                    • if you have 5fps with 2000us exposure per phase (total 16ms exposure per frame), so that is 80ms of total exposure (active IR) time per second
                    • then for 10fps, 2000us exposure per phase ... 160ms of total exposure time (active IR) per second, double the power consumption / dissipation.

                    here is the commit with the change 5fps to 10
                    https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/services/voxl-camera-server/-/commit/919c24bef21cbea2eb7be33853884f5f606a0763

                    another commit that removes the need for setting lme_msv for TOF to use the exposure_max_us
                    https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/services/voxl-camera-server/-/commit/0f195e2cbbe9cd4329d178ff42aa6f5fdf5e9307

                    Alex

                    Alex KushleyevA Offline
                    Alex KushleyevA Offline
                    Alex Kushleyev
                    ModalAI Team
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #18

                    @msberk ,

                    We added a section to documentation that explains the power consumption of the TOF V2 sensor. As you will see, it depends on the operating conditions. Please review the details and you can use this to experiment with parameters and find something that works well for you.

                    Link Preview Image
                    Page not found

                    ModalAI technical documentation for VOXL and VOXL 2 Companion Computers for PX4 and ArduPilot Obstacle Avoidance and GPS-denied navigation, assembled in the USA

                    favicon

                    ModalAI Technical Docs (docs.modalai.com)

                    If something is not clear in that documentation, please let me know.

                    Alex

                    M 1 Reply Last reply
                    0
                    • Alex KushleyevA Alex Kushleyev

                      @msberk ,

                      We added a section to documentation that explains the power consumption of the TOF V2 sensor. As you will see, it depends on the operating conditions. Please review the details and you can use this to experiment with parameters and find something that works well for you.

                      Link Preview Image
                      Page not found

                      ModalAI technical documentation for VOXL and VOXL 2 Companion Computers for PX4 and ArduPilot Obstacle Avoidance and GPS-denied navigation, assembled in the USA

                      favicon

                      ModalAI Technical Docs (docs.modalai.com)

                      If something is not clear in that documentation, please let me know.

                      Alex

                      M Offline
                      M Offline
                      msberk
                      Contributor
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #19

                      @Alex-Kushleyev Thanks! This is helpful. Definitely easier to overheat these than the last gen so good to have the specs on it.

                      1 Reply Last reply
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