@tom Thank you very much for all your help on this. I ended up getting it to work, not sure why it wasnt on Ubuntu earlier. Probably user error! 
Honestly, got to our wits end with it and a colleague ended up blasting the PX4 firmware and putting Arducopter on it. Seems to be working fine now, with VOXL apparently just handling sending packets to the microhard. I really appreciate your support and answering my questions, they were most helpful.
@jbhines929 I was able to do a test flight, however in Position mode it won't hold gps position (even though I have good # satellites). I wonder if this is something due to the optical flow and VOXL?
@jbhines929 Ok I retract the last post. I just tried again and I am able to connect over Microhard/QGC on windows. Ubuntu wasn't working, but seems like Windows is functional. I'll do some more tests. Otherwise, thank you very much for your assistance!
@jbhines929 (I should also specifiy that this is on a personal, fully open laptop, tried on Windows 11 and on Ubuntu) So there shouldn't be any security settings in the way re: ports.
@tom I tried that just now. I am able to ping across the microhard network. I can ping the laptop -> VOXL. I can ping VOXL -> laptop, I can even ping each microhard device from either the VOXL or the laptop. It just seems to not be making that final link to QGC. I ran and reran voxl-configure-modem, selecting microhard. I tried with both the default IP and a custom IP. Do I have to do some kind of configureation with teh mavlink server? (I am getting way out of my depth here, lol)
@tom I appear to have been successful in updating that. I still haven't been able to connect to VOXL via microhard on QGC. What is the port to use?
@jbhines929 would following the procedure here: https://docs.modalai.com/flash-system-image/ reset it to factory defaults?
looks like a lot of services aren't running
@tom no worries! It is a very old system by drone terms. I believe it was acquired in 2020. 
@tom Thanks for the reply. It is a VOXL Flight, so far as I can tell. Has the microhard 'hat' on it. I was able to connect USB. I found a tutorial on your website about setting up the microhard. I was able to connect with USB and ADB and able to go through the setup steps. I appear to be able to ping the VOXL from the GCS computer. I wasn't able to connect yet with MP or QGC, but that may have been because I only had a USB boot Ubuntu and not a full install. (USGOVT computer and it's a pain to install non supported OSes) Hope to find out more later.
