"Adopted" drone, help setting up

jbhines929

@tom no worries! It is a very old system by drone terms. I believe it was acquired in 2020.

jbhines929

looks like a lot of services aren't running

jbhines929

@jbhines929 would following the procedure here: https://docs.modalai.com/flash-system-image/ reset it to factory defaults?

tom

@jbhines929 I would recommend loading the latest VOXL 1 SDK: 1.2.0 which can be downloaded from downloads.modalai.com

You'll want to follow the steps here: https://docs.modalai.com/flash-system-image/#flashing-a-voxl-sdk-release

jbhines929

@tom I appear to have been successful in updating that. I still haven't been able to connect to VOXL via microhard on QGC. What is the port to use?

tom

@jbhines929 You'll want to establish a connection like this, where "Server Address" is the IP of the VOXL on the microhard network

You can check this with ifconfig on VOXL

tom

@tom On VOXL make sure you've run voxl-configure-modem and selected microhard in the menu

jbhines929

@tom I tried that just now. I am able to ping across the microhard network. I can ping the laptop -> VOXL. I can ping VOXL -> laptop, I can even ping each microhard device from either the VOXL or the laptop. It just seems to not be making that final link to QGC. I ran and reran voxl-configure-modem, selecting microhard. I tried with both the default IP and a custom IP. Do I have to do some kind of configureation with teh mavlink server? (I am getting way out of my depth here, lol)

jbhines929

@jbhines929 (I should also specifiy that this is on a personal, fully open laptop, tried on Windows 11 and on Ubuntu) So there shouldn't be any security settings in the way re: ports.

jbhines929

@jbhines929 Ok I retract the last post. I just tried again and I am able to connect over Microhard/QGC on windows. Ubuntu wasn't working, but seems like Windows is functional. I'll do some more tests. Otherwise, thank you very much for your assistance!

tom

@jbhines929 Interesting I wonder if that port is being blocked on your Ubuntu machine for some reason

jbhines929

@jbhines929 I was able to do a test flight, however in Position mode it won't hold gps position (even though I have good # satellites). I wonder if this is something due to the optical flow and VOXL?

tom

@jbhines929 Hmm I would make sure you have the correct px4 parameter set loaded on your flight core, i.e. "outdoor_gps.params" from https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/utilities/voxl-px4-params/-/blob/master/params/v1.14/EKF2_helpers/outdoor_gps.params?ref_type=heads

jbhines929

@tom Thank you very much for all your help on this. I ended up getting it to work, not sure why it wasnt on Ubuntu earlier. Probably user error!

Honestly, got to our wits end with it and a colleague ended up blasting the PX4 firmware and putting Arducopter on it. Seems to be working fine now, with VOXL apparently just handling sending packets to the microhard. I really appreciate your support and answering my questions, they were most helpful.

tom

@jbhines929 No problem, thanks for the patience!