Flight Core V2 - VOXL ESC 4in1 Integration

Alex Kushleyev

I checked with my colleague and they said that the current way will not work for forwarding the Neopixel LED packet to the FC V2. Here is roughly how the LED packet is created and sent to the ESC:

voxl-send-neopixle-cmd creates a data packet (using the specific format for ESC) and sends it to a special process modal-io-bridge via mpa pipe that is also called modal-io-bridge.
The modal-io-bridge is a PX4 module that is specific to VOXL2 and it runs on the CPU (not DSP). It receives the data from the mpa pipe and sends out the data using ORB_ID(modal_io_data) using data type modal_io_data_s.
then voxl_esc driver that runs on the DSP gets this data and forwards it to the ESC directly, as shown here: https://github.com/modalai/px4-firmware/blob/70d986f08acbf90e3752ef832151d8f993e18697/src/drivers/actuators/voxl_esc/voxl_esc.cpp#L1346
this approach has no option to forward the message to external FC.

However, actually this week we are making changes to use mavlink tunnel messages instead of this custom io bridge. I will find out how to get this to work for FC V2.

Alex

Jetson Nano

@Alex-Kushleyev ,
Thanks for the clarity, I also went through the same process and was not able to find any way to forward the message to ESC through external FC.
If you could help with a work around this approach it will be really helpful. I can test it out and get back to you.

Jetson Nano

@Alex-Kushleyev
just a thought, the data from Voxl2 is transfered to FC. so you can convert them to specific msg type and forward it to external FC and External FC already has modal-io-bridge, it can forward the data to ESC. There will be need of conversion of msg types multiple places, for handling and forwarding.
the External Fc has turtle mode running on it, will it setup affect it.

Alex Kushleyev

@Jetson-Nano , there is probably more than one way of getting this to work, but I have been told that with the new approach that we have just implemented (being tested now), the mavlink tunnel should take care of routing the LED data from VOXL2 to FC V2 to ESC.

I asked my colleague to help describing how to test this.

Alex

Jetson Nano

@Alex-Kushleyev Thanks for the help. I will also test it out and get back with the results as soon as the approach is shared.
Can you also help me with finding clarity whether turtle mode will be affected by this setup.

Alex Kushleyev

@Jetson-Nano , As far as I know, turtle mode should work the same when running PX4 on VOXL2 and FC V2. Have you tested it? The LED command should not interfere with the turtle mode.

I have not actually tested the turtle mode on FC myself, but the code that is running in voxl-esc px4 driver is the same, so as long as you are entering the turtle mode correctly, it should work.

Alex

Jetson Nano

@Alex-Kushleyev I have not tested turtle mode with Voxl2 - FCV2 setup. I have tested with the Voxl2, internal PX4 server.
I will test it out and get back to you.

Jetson Nano

@Alex-Kushleyev , I tested the turtle mode out and it is working fine.

Once the approach for LEDs are shared, I will test it out .

I had an additional query, while we are using Telem for FCV2 and ESC communication. Will the PWM output (8 pinout) still be transmission and can we access the data.

Eric Katzfey

@Jetson-Nano The updated voxl-io-server version is here: http://voxl-packages.modalai.com/dists/qrb5165/dev/binary-arm64/voxl-io-server_0.0.5-202502191136_arm64.deb. The updated FC v2 image is here: http://voxl-packages.modalai.com/dists/fc-v2/dev/modalai_fc-v2_1.14.0-2.0.95.px4. I have only tested with PX4 running on VOXL 2 but it should also work with external FC v2.

Jetson Nano

@Eric-Katzfey thank you for sharing the data.
I tried flashing the voxl-io-server you mentioned, but I got the following error.

t@t-MS-7B29:~/git/voxl-io-server-master$ ./deploy_to_voxl.sh
searching for ADB device
checking VOXL for dpkg/opkg
dpkg detected
voxl-io-server_0.0.5-202502191136_arm64.deb: 1 file pushed. 2.1 MB/s (25928 bytes in 0.012s)
dpkg: considering removing voxl-neopixel-manager in favour of voxl-io-server ...
dpkg: warning: ignoring dependency problem with removal of voxl-neopixel-manager:
 voxl-suite depends on voxl-neopixel-manager (>= 0.0.3)
  voxl-neopixel-manager is to be removed.

dpkg: yes, will remove voxl-neopixel-manager in favour of voxl-io-server
dpkg: regarding .../voxl-io-server_0.0.5-202502191136_arm64.deb containing voxl-io-server:
 voxl-io-server conflicts with voxl-mpa-tools (<= 1.2.3)
  voxl-mpa-tools (version 1.2.3) is present and installed.

dpkg: error processing archive /data/voxl-io-server_0.0.5-202502191136_arm64.deb (--install):
 conflicting packages - not installing voxl-io-server
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /data/voxl-io-server_0.0.5-202502191136_arm64.deb
DONE