Invalid local position

DillonAllen

Hi, I think I'm pretty close to getting my drone to fly with VIO using the Flight Deck, the only problem is that I am not getting valid local position data.

nsh> ekf2 status
INFO  [ekf2] local position: invalid
INFO  [ekf2] global position: invalid
INFO  [ekf2] time slip: 0 us
ekf2: update: 9845 events, 56720us elapsed, 5.76us avg, min 1us max 62us 3.990us rms
nsh>

The quickstart says to update the ECL but I'm unsure of how to go about doing that. I'm on the latest system image and I've updated the voxl suite to the latest version.
Thank you for your help!

Hi Dillon,

What services are running? The required ones for flying with VIO are voxl-camera-server, voxl-imu-server, voxl-qvio-server, and voxl-vision-px4. Can you paste the output of voxl-inspect-services here?

DillonAllen

Here are the services that are currently running:

yocto:/$ voxl-inspect-services
 Service Name        |  Enabled  |   Running   |  CPU Usage
--------------------------------------------------------------
 docker-autorun      | Disabled  | Not Running | Not Running
 docker-daemon       | Disabled  | Not Running | Not Running
 modallink-relink    | Disabled  | Not Running | Not Running
 voxl-camera-server  |  Enabled  | Not Running | Not Running
 voxl-cpu-monitor    |  Enabled  |   Running   |   0.0%
 voxl-dfs-server     |  Enabled  |   Running   |   1.7%
 voxl-imu-server     |  Enabled  |   Running   |   1.3%
 voxl-modem          | Disabled  | Not Running | Not Running
 voxl-qvio-server    |  Enabled  |   Running   |   0.0%
 voxl-streamer       | Disabled  | Not Running | Not Running
 voxl-tag-detector   |  Enabled  | Not Running | Not Running
 voxl-tflite-server  |  Enabled  |   Running   |   0.0%
 voxl-time-sync      | Disabled  | Not Running | Not Running
 voxl-vision-px4     |  Enabled  |   Running   |   1.8%

There's the problem, voxl-camera-server is not running. Since it's enabled (and I'm assuming that you didn't stop it yourself) it probably aborted. This is usually due to a hardware issue with one of the camera cables. Can you now paste the output of journalctl -u voxl-camera-server to see what the logs for camera server say.

DillonAllen

Okay, While I was waiting for your reply I went ahead and checked all of the cables and unplugged and re-plugged all of the cameras on the board and now I am getting this from the services:

 Service Name        |  Enabled  |   Running   |  CPU Usage
--------------------------------------------------------------
 docker-autorun      | Disabled  | Not Running | Not Running
 docker-daemon       | Disabled  | Not Running | Not Running
 modallink-relink    | Disabled  | Not Running | Not Running
 voxl-camera-server  |  Enabled  |   Running   |   7.5%
 voxl-cpu-monitor    |  Enabled  |   Running   |   0.0%
 voxl-dfs-server     |  Enabled  |   Running   |  10.0%
 voxl-imu-server     |  Enabled  |   Running   |   1.9%
 voxl-modem          | Disabled  | Not Running | Not Running
 voxl-qvio-server    |  Enabled  |   Running   |   2.2%
 voxl-streamer       | Disabled  | Not Running | Not Running
 voxl-tag-detector   |  Enabled  |   Running   |   4.1%
 voxl-tflite-server  |  Enabled  |   Running   |   0.0%
 voxl-time-sync      | Disabled  | Not Running | Not Running
 voxl-vision-px4     |  Enabled  |   Running   |   2.0%

Are you still not getting localization data?

DillonAllen

Still getting invalid local position data

DillonAllen

Heres the output from QGC:

nsh> ekf2 status
INFO  [ekf2] local position: invalid
INFO  [ekf2] global position: invalid
INFO  [ekf2] time slip: 0 us
ekf2: update: 8677 events, 49546us elapsed, 5.71us avg, min 1us max 94us 4.090us rms
nsh> listener vehicle_visual_odometry

TOPIC: vehicle_visual_odometry
 vehicle_odometry_s
    timestamp: 431364179  (297.960915 seconds ago)
    timestamp_sample: 431346994  (17185 us before timestamp)
    x: -682.8690
    y: -951.3774
    z: -868.9987
    q: [0.9878, -0.0083, 0.0614, -0.1428]
    q_offset: [0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000, 0.0000]
    pose_covariance: [nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan]
    vx: 0.0002
    vy: 0.0009
    vz: -0.0032
    rollspeed: 0.0095
    pitchspeed: 0.0000
    yawspeed: 0.0000
    velocity_covariance: [nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan, nan]
    local_frame: 1
    velocity_frame: 3
nsh>

Do you see data from voxl-inspect-qvio

DillonAllen

Yes, but it is very iffy, when I have it sitting on my desk and move it around all of the data changes like it should, but then when I move it to the floor or vice versa then it will start giving me the LOW_FEATURES error

 T_imu_wrt_vio (m)   |Roll Pitch Yaw (deg)| state| error_code
   -0.02   -0.01   -0.07|   0.2    0.4    0.2| OKAY |

Yeah it'll be unstable when its being moved around like that, it's meant to have the service start at the takeoff location and then track initial features on the floor/wall during takeoff. However, this does show that localization data is coming from the VIO service, so the problem is further down the line.

The two things to look at now are the vvpx4 config file at cat /etc/modalai/voxl-vision-px4.conf and make sure that the QGC stuff is set up properly, and that en_vio and send_vio_to_qgc are both set to true.

If all of that looks good, then you should run voxl-inspect-pose vvpx4_body_wrt_local to see if the voxl-vision-px4 service is getting the localization data peroperly.

DillonAllen

I believe that I have the voxl-vision-px4 setup correctly for QGC, here is the conf file:

yocto:/$ cat /etc/modalai/voxl-vision-px4.conf
/**
 * VOXL Vision PX4 Configuration File
 *
 */
{
	"qgc_ip":	"192.168.8.20",
	"en_localhost_mavlink_udp":	true,
	"en_secondary_qgc":	false,
	"secondary_qgc_ip":	"192.168.1.214",
	"qgc_udp_port_number":	14550,
	"localhost_udp_port_number":	14551,
	"udp_mtu":	512,
	"en_vio":	true,
	"en_voa":	false,
	"en_send_vio_to_qgc":	true,
	"en_send_voa_to_qgc":	false,
	"en_set_clock_from_gps":	true,
	"en_force_onboard_mav1_mode":	true,
	"en_reset_px4_on_error":	true,
	"qvio_auto_reset_quality":	0.00050000002374872565,
	"en_adsb":	false,
	"adsb_uart_bus":	7,
	"adsb_uart_baudrate":	57600,
	"px4_uart_bus":	5,
	"px4_uart_baudrate":	921600,
	"offboard_mode":	"figure_eight",
	"follow_tag_id":	0,
	"en_tag_fixed_frame":	false,
	"fixed_frame_filter_len":	5,
	"en_transform_mavlink_pos_setpoints_from_fixed_frame":	false
}

And here is the output for voxl-inspect-pose vvpx4_body_wrt_local:

timestamp(ms)|     Position (m)     | Roll Pitch Yaw (deg) |    Velocity (m/s)    | angular rate (deg/s) |
      153336 |   0.00  -0.01  -0.09 |   -0.6   11.0   -0.2 |  -0.00   0.00   0.00 |  -0.00  -0.03   0.01

Yeah that all looks fine, but there's no data in the local_position_ned or either of the odometry messages?

DillonAllen

In QGC I only have the ODOMETRY data, but there is no local_position_ned tab if that is what you're referring to.

And what happens if you try to put it in position mode?

DillonAllen

It just tells me "REJECT POSITION CONTROL"

I've asked some of our px4 experts what their thoughts are, can you share your px4 params file so we can see what's going on there since this seems to be a px4-side issue.

DillonAllen

I couldn't figure out how to share the file through here, so I uploaded them to a drop box:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7kxknquutoav00i/PX4_Param_Voxl.params?dl=0

We noticed that your EKF2 Aid mask is different from what we usually run, did you install the voxl px4 parameters file as here or did you create your own? Can you try to run with our default parameters file and see what happens?

DillonAllen

I ran the parameters from the quickstart guide, I also ran the indoor_VIO helper and just changed the aid mask to fit was in the quickstart guide. I reverted it back to its original settings and the drone is still having the same problems.