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Connecting an External sensor to the VOXL2

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  • Aaron PorterA Offline
    Aaron PorterA Offline
    Aaron Porter
    Contributor
    wrote on last edited by
    #1

    So we are trying to sync the time between the VOXL2 and an external lidar that are connected via ethernet. We can collect the data from the Lidar however due to the timestamps between the Lidar's real time clock and the VOXL2's monotonic time stamp there is Skewing occurring because the Lidar does not have a IMU to use. The question here is how would someone solve this issue?

    PTP was attempted of but the problem is that the VOXL2's Linux Kernel does not support software-transmit when inspected using ethtool. If there is a way to get around this that would be ideal. Then it would just be working with getting the Monotonic clock to work with the Real Time Clock.

    The thought of collecting the time of the lidar and then setting an offset to match up with with the monotonic clock was purposed but due to the query-response nature of the setup. There is an unknown round trip delay from the VOXL2 query to the the Lidar's response back to the VOXL2.

    Also alternative suggestions are welcomed if there is a far simple way then sure, but the request is to avoid adding additional hardware.

    Thank you for your time,
    Aaron Porter

    Aaron PorterA 1 Reply Last reply
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    • Aaron PorterA Aaron Porter

      So we are trying to sync the time between the VOXL2 and an external lidar that are connected via ethernet. We can collect the data from the Lidar however due to the timestamps between the Lidar's real time clock and the VOXL2's monotonic time stamp there is Skewing occurring because the Lidar does not have a IMU to use. The question here is how would someone solve this issue?

      PTP was attempted of but the problem is that the VOXL2's Linux Kernel does not support software-transmit when inspected using ethtool. If there is a way to get around this that would be ideal. Then it would just be working with getting the Monotonic clock to work with the Real Time Clock.

      The thought of collecting the time of the lidar and then setting an offset to match up with with the monotonic clock was purposed but due to the query-response nature of the setup. There is an unknown round trip delay from the VOXL2 query to the the Lidar's response back to the VOXL2.

      Also alternative suggestions are welcomed if there is a far simple way then sure, but the request is to avoid adding additional hardware.

      Thank you for your time,
      Aaron Porter

      Aaron PorterA Offline
      Aaron PorterA Offline
      Aaron Porter
      Contributor
      wrote on last edited by
      #2

      The overall goal is just to get time synced between the Lidar and the VOXL2's IMU. Oddly enough, I was looking through the voxl-kernel for qrb5165 and the driver for PTP is there. Is the physical layer chip not able to support PTP?

      Where I see the driver in the Kernel:
      https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/system-image-build/qrb5165-kernel/-/tree/qrb5165-ubun1.0-14.1a/drivers/ptp?ref_type=heads

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