Can't start PX4 PCA9685 Driver

[Eric Katzfey]

@cbay That driver is not part of the build nor has it ever been tested on VOXL 2. You would have to add it to the build (e.g. in https://github.com/modalai/px4-firmware/blob/voxl-dev/boards/modalai/voxl2-slpi/default.px4board)

[cbay]

@Eric-Katzfey Sounds good, any tips or steps on how to add to the build and to upload to the board?

[cbay]

@cbay Most of the way through the build process, was able to sort it out including the necessary edits to the PCA driver. Issue I am running into is both the dev and master branches of voxl-px4 require a newer version of libfc-sensor (1.0.9 and 1.0.10 respectively) then what is included in 1.6.2 of the SDK.

I am not sure how to upgrade this library

[cbay]

@cbay Checked out a older tag on voxl-px4 and was able to build and install.

When I run the driver I get an error revolving around its Freq, I understand you dont work with the driver so I doubt yall will have info about it.

What I am looking for is how to get the necessary Px4 parameters to show up, as they dont seem to be included properly

[cbay]

@cbay https://github.com/modalai/px4-firmware/blob/main/src/drivers/pca9685_pwm_out/module.yaml here is where I think the params are

[Alex Kushleyev]

@cbay , you can run voxl-px4 in foreground mode : voxl-px4 -d , -d to disable the daemon mode (which is used in systemd service mode).

Then you will get the px4 console. You can use the console to add new params and save them

Alex

[cbay]

@Alex-Kushleyev My issue is the params arent loaded from the YAML file of the driver, so I can't set and save them. I get errors whenever I try to run param set.

Any help on making sure this drivers module.yaml file gets loaded properly

[Alex Kushleyev]

@cbay , I am not an expert at this, but i think it is probably related to a additional .c param file, which our custom drivers use, for example : https://github.com/modalai/px4-firmware/blob/voxl-dev/src/drivers/actuators/voxl_esc/voxl_esc_params.c

You may need to add one.

Alex

[Alex Kushleyev]

if you need the latest packages (libfc-sensor), you can find them here : http://voxl-packages.modalai.com/dists/qrb5165/dev/binary-arm64/

[cbay]

@Alex-Kushleyev Found the reason why it was skipping. In /px4-firmware/src/lib/parameters/CMakeLists.txt there is a line that skips all modules that match 'pwm_out'. I was able to disable that for PCA9685. Once I disabled the module.yaml file being skipped it worked. No need for the .c file (which makes sense, that is just the old way to do the .yaml)