RB5 can't leave the ground properly when flying in manual flight mode

[vjuliani]

Hi,

When I tried a few outdoor flights with manual flight mode without GPS (EKF2_GPS_CHECK=1 && COM_ARM_WO_GPS=1), one of the drone's rotors seemed to not be working properly. You can see it in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7ug6u2W8Yw

It happened after upgrading from VOXL SDK 0.9.5 to 1.1.2 and during testing flights to the https://forum.modalai.com/topic/3612/outdoor-navigation-gps-problem/ problem.

Here are the logs of two of the outdoor flight attempts with manual flight mode: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/qhidipn0n1xng/RB5-outdoor-flight-logs

Is there any PX4 parameter I could change in order to try to fix it?

Thanks!

[Alex Kushleyev]

@vjuliani , from the video, i can hear that one of the motors has trouble spinning up.

Can you please confirm that the vehicle was flying fine at some point before?

Have you use our voxl-esc tool before? it can be used to check the ESC firmware version and parameters.

Can you please try the following:

• verify that you have voxl-esc tools package installed in /usr/share/modalai/voxl-esc-tools
• disable px4 (systemctl disable voxl-px4)
• reboot the board just in case
• go to the voxl-esc tools folder and run ./voxl-esc-scan.py and also ./voxl-esc-verify-params.py
• let me know what the output of the scan and params verification is.
• (to re-enable px4, you can run systemctl enable voxl-px4 and reboot)

Thanks!

Alex

[vjuliani]

Hi @Alex-Kushleyev

Here are the outputs of the voxl-esc-scan and voxl-esc-verify-params

---

voxl-esc-scan:

Detected Python version : 3.6.9 (default, Mar 10 2023, 16:46:00)
[GCC 8.4.0]
Found voxl-esc tools bin version: 1.4
VOXL Platform: M0052
Detected RB5 Flight, VOXL2 M0054 or M0104!
INFO: Scanning for ESC firmware: /dev/slpi-uart-2, baud: 2000000
Sending library name request: libslpi_qrb5165_io.so
Received standard error event 2
Sending initialization request
INFO: ESC(s) detected on port: /dev/slpi-uart-2, baud rate: 2000000, protocol: firmware
INFO: Verifying ESC Params..
INFO: ESC Information:
INFO:
ID : 0
Board : version 34: ModalAi 4-in-1 ESC (M0117-1)
UID : 0x203034305743570C00440044
Firmware : version 39, hash d4fe8e3d
Bootloader : version 183, hash 25317f42
Params : ../voxl-esc-params/Sentinel_V1/Sentinel_V1.xml
ID : 1
Board : version 34: ModalAi 4-in-1 ESC (M0117-1)
UID : 0x203034305743570C0037003C
Firmware : version 39, hash d4fe8e3d
Bootloader : version 183, hash 25317f42
Params : ../voxl-esc-params/Sentinel_V1/Sentinel_V1.xml
ID : 2
Board : version 34: ModalAi 4-in-1 ESC (M0117-1)
UID : 0x203034305743570C0044003D
Firmware : version 39, hash d4fe8e3d
Bootloader : version 183, hash 25317f42
Params : ../voxl-esc-params/Sentinel_V1/Sentinel_V1.xml
ID : 3
Board : version 34: ModalAi 4-in-1 ESC (M0117-1)
UID : 0x203034305743570C0037003B
Firmware : version 39, hash d4fe8e3d
Bootloader : version 183, hash 25317f42
Params : ../voxl-esc-params/Sentinel_V1/Sentinel_V1.xml

---

---

voxl-esc-verify-params:

Detected Python version : 3.6.9 (default, Mar 10 2023, 16:46:00)
[GCC 8.4.0]
Found voxl-esc tools bin version: 1.4
VOXL Platform: M0052
Detected RB5 Flight, VOXL2 M0054 or M0104!
INFO: Scanning for ESC firmware: /dev/slpi-uart-2, baud: 2000000
Sending library name request: libslpi_qrb5165_io.so
Received standard error event 2
Sending initialization request
INFO: ESC(s) detected on port: /dev/slpi-uart-2, baud rate: 2000000
INFO: Params from ID 0 match ../voxl-esc-params/Sentinel_V1/Sentinel_V1.xml
INFO: Params from ID 1 match ../voxl-esc-params/Sentinel_V1/Sentinel_V1.xml
INFO: Params from ID 2 match ../voxl-esc-params/Sentinel_V1/Sentinel_V1.xml
INFO: Params from ID 3 match ../voxl-esc-params/Sentinel_V1/Sentinel_V1.xml
INFO: Success! Params in all ESCs are valid and identical.

---

No, I had never used the voxl-esc tool before.

The vehicle was running with VOXL SDK 0.9.5 (not sure if it had the voxl-esc tool) and PX4 1.12beta and we did have a few successful flights, so the motors were working properly.

After upgrading to VOXL SDK 1.1.2 and PX4 1.14 the issue started happening and we could not flight fine yet.

Thanks!

[Alex Kushleyev]

@vjuliani ,

It looks like you have the reasonably new version of the ESC firmware (V39 RC9), which is good, and params also look good.

Since you also just used voxl-esc tools, you can use them to test the motors as well. Please remove the propellers for safety, disable px4 and run the following command from the voxl-esc package directory:

./voxl-esc-spin.py --power 10 --timeout 5 --id 0

This should spin ESC id 0 at low power (10%) for 5 seconds and then stop. You can repeat for IDs 1,2 and 3. Does the motor that is currently struggling during flight also struggle during the spin test without propellers? Which ID is it? can you try to spin up a few times, does it ever succeed?

Thanks!

Alex

[vjuliani]

Hi @Alex-Kushleyev

I used the voxl esc spin tool a few times to each motor and all of them worked fine.

Here are one of the outputs: https://www.mediafire.com/file/bw31xds0j2ohlod/motors-spin-test.txt/file

I tried some flights using Position Flight Mode and had the same problem showed in the youtube video above. Here are the logs: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/jbuu2or25tjdr/position-flight-mode-logs

I don't know if the problem really is with the motors or if it could be related to the accelerometer or magnetometer due to the https://forum.modalai.com/topic/3612/outdoor-navigation-gps-problem/11?_=1720094809242 problem, for example, or it might be a misconfiguration of any of the PX4 parameters due to the SDK upgrade...

What are your suggestions?

Thanks!

[vjuliani]

@Alex-Kushleyev

After running "voxl-configure-px4-params --platform MRB-D0006" to configure RB5 PX4 parameters, I could perform an outdoors flight with RB5 using Position Flight Mode without GPS or motor problems: https://youtu.be/D8zP0hOx8wc

It seems that the issue was RB5 running with Sentinel PX4 parameters after SDK upgrade.

Thank you for your help