Connecting voxl2io UART port to voxl ESC V2?

[A Former User]

Hello,
I am using system image 1.4.1 on voxl2. I want to operate VOXL ESC V2 on px4io UART port on J19 instead of J18. Is it possible? I tried to change port name on modalai_esc mixer load command to /dev/px4io, also routed TX,RX and GND pins to J19 pins 12,11 and 10, but it didnt worked. Please help me to get clearity if it is possible since both UART both seems to be going to SLPI processor.

Thank you in advance!

[A Former User]

@Chad-Sweet Please respond back on this. I want to connect ModalAI ESC V2 to J19 instead of J18 since my J18 port got damaged and is beyond recovery but still I want to utilize VOXL2 + ModalAI ESC for further operations. Is it possible to use J19 VOXL2IO UART QUP7 for Modalai ESC V2?

[Vinny]

Hi @Aks
I cannot speak for the SW team, but I am curious how damaged your J18 port is, and if you are willing to share a photo of it, I might be able to help confirm or offer tips/insight for repairs.

Thanks!

[modaltb]

Hi @Aks ,

Out of the box no, but if you are recompiling SW yourself than it's likely doable, but we have not tested this.

voxl-px4 utilizes the DSP for it's IO on VOXL2, do the UARTs aren't exposed to Ubuntu like a normal UART (/dev/ttyHX). Instead it's a little deep in voxl-px4 at this time.

The current production release is a 1.12 based branch, called voxl-dev-1.12.

For example, the QUP2 port is defined here for the ESC:

px4-firmware/src/drivers/uart_esc/modalai_esc/modalai_esc.cpp at voxl-dev-1.12 · modalai/px4-firmware

PX4 Autopilot Software. Contribute to modalai/px4-firmware development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub (github.com)

And QUP7 is defined to be used by px4io here:
https://github.com/modalai/px4-firmware/blob/voxl-dev-1.12/platforms/qurt/src/px4/generic/generic/px4io_serial/px4io_serial.cpp#L67

For reference, I used my own graphic to remember the QUP indicies, here:
https://docs.modalai.com/voxl-px4-developer-guide/
specifically:
https://docs.modalai.com/images/voxl2/m0054-px4-block-diagram-0.4.png

Although we haven't tried this, you may be able to recompile with updates here to the QUP index and get things going that way.