Need Help Troubleshooting Failed First Flight Attempt

jmltt

I was attempting a first flight with a Sentinel using a microhard modem for telemetry and a spektrum rc controller. I don't know if there have been any hardware updates to the Sentinel platform since this one was originally purchased (sometime in 2022? system image 1.3.1 was installed). It had just been flashed with the latest sdk v1.1.2. I've maintained the original camera calibration files but have recalibrated the other sensors whenever I've done a system update.

I haven't changed much on the software side. I pushed a few simple services to it that weren't running at the time of testing (mocap server and a timesync service for the mocap server). I replaced the latest voxl-vision-hub with a version that has an additional offboard mode modeled after the figure-eight offboard mode. That also wasn't active at the time of testing.

I was attempting to perform baseline testing to compare qvio performance and mocap, but I couldn't get the vehicle off the ground. It wasn't responsive to RC inputs when offboard mode was enabled while the rc was set to position/manual mode. After disabling offboard mode in the vvh config file and rebooting, the vehicle would respond to rc input but I could only get it off the ground momentarily before it would become unstable. Every time this happened the system would crash and reboot and I'd lose connection to QGC.

I noticed the camera-server consistently had a really high CPU usage (up to and exceeding 100% at times). So I turned the camera-server and qvio-server off and tried to just get the vehicle in the air with gps control for the ekf. Same issue, no sustained flight and system is constantly crashing and rebooting.

Can someone help me figure out how to start troubleshooting this? I followed all of the documentation you've provided on your website and the only modifications I've made are minor so I'm not really sure where to start.

Thanks

Alex Kushleyev

@jmltt can you please try a simple hover test without gps or altitude hold. Just use manual RC control for attitude and thrust. Are you able to share a px4 log from such test?

Lets also double check ESC firmware and params:

#update voxl-esc tools
apt-get update
apt-get install voxl-esc

systemctl stop voxl-px4 #stop px4

cd /usr/share/modalai/voxl-esc-tools/
./voxl-esc-scan.py
./voxl-esc-verify-params.py

jmltt

@Alex-Kushleyev Thanks for getting back to me

I can't fly again until tomorrow but I will upload the log after we attempt a hover test. We were actually able to fly on Monday and we could achieve stable flight in acro mode off a fresh battery but only for about 30 seconds. We're getting new batteries to see if that's contributing. Don't know why it would cause the system (or at-least PX4) to continuously crash/reboot though.

Here are the results of the esc checks:

voxl2:/usr/share/modalai/voxl-esc-tools$ ./voxl-esc-scan.py
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: M0054
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 31: ModalAi 4-in-1 ESC V2 RevB (M0049)
UID : 0x2033393953435708003A0048
Firmware : version 39, hash d4fe8e3d
Bootloader : version 183, hash 0a80a32a
Params : ../voxl-esc-params/Sentinel_V1/Sentinel_V1.xml

ID         : 1
Board      : version 31: ModalAi 4-in-1 ESC V2 RevB (M0049)
UID        : 0x203339395343570800340041
Firmware   : version   39, hash d4fe8e3d
Bootloader : version  183, hash 0a80a32a
Params     : ../voxl-esc-params/Sentinel_V1/Sentinel_V1.xml 

ID         : 2
Board      : version 31: ModalAi 4-in-1 ESC V2 RevB (M0049)
UID        : 0x2033393953435708003A004F
Firmware   : version   39, hash d4fe8e3d
Bootloader : version  183, hash 0a80a32a
Params     : ../voxl-esc-params/Sentinel_V1/Sentinel_V1.xml 

ID         : 3
Board      : version 31: ModalAi 4-in-1 ESC V2 RevB (M0049)
UID        : 0x2033393953435708003A0056
Firmware   : version   39, hash d4fe8e3d
Bootloader : version  183, hash 0a80a32a
Params     : ../voxl-esc-params/Sentinel_V1/Sentinel_V1.xml

voxl2:/usr/share/modalai/voxl-esc-tools$ ./voxl-esc-verify-params.py
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: M0054
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.

Let me know if you'd like me to look at anything specifically in the flight logs from our previous attempts. Otherwise I'll follow up tomorrow after our next attempt. Thanks!