Posts made by Aaron Porter

Hello,

I am playing around with VFC on one of the Starlings 1. I am able to takeoff in altitude mode and change over to Offboard mode. I thought that changing to offboard mode from altitude would cause the drone to go into VFC_Altitude mode however, I get a message in QGC that the mode is VFC_Manual and feels similar to manual mode as well. Not sure if I am missing something? Am I wrong in thinking that it should be in VFC_Altitude?

I am using a joystick controller instead of an RC controller.

Thank you for your time,
Aaron Porter

Question about the frame rate on the voxl cameras. Is there a way to get voxl-camera-server to lock the frame rate regardless of the Exposure? We noticed that auto exposure will cause the camera frame rate to lower on cameras that are in darker locations compared to the cameras that are located in brighter areas. Just asking if there is a way to make it so that we can have a consistent frame rate regardless of where the camera is looking and the lighting in those areas?

Thank you,
Aaron Porter

Question about Voxl-logger. Is there a way to get the camera data that is saved in voxl-logger to have a different format or is the the format locked based on the camera's meta data? What I am asking is there a flag that changes a RAW data stream from the camera to PNG or JPEG?

Thank you for you time,
Aaron Porter

Hello all, I was doing a bit of testing with voxl-open-vins-server and noticed an issue where the PX4 flight mode remains in position mode when the quality dropped below the the EKF2_EV_QMIN. I am seeing that QGC is sending a message saying that the system is falling back into altitude mode, but the flight mode never changes. I changed the PX4 parameter for EKF2_EV_QMIN to 90, however it seems to stay in position mode even though when I look at the PX4 logs the VIO quality drops below the QMIN value. I tested qvio to see if this was a voxl-px4 issue, but voxl-qvio-server switches into altitude mode when the quality drops below the the QMIN value. My question is why is it that when Open-vins reports that the quality is less than the QMIN it stays in position mode?

Thank you for your time,
Aaron Porter

Unsure, if you have resolved this so I am going to attempt to help but I am going to need more information if possible. I am unsure how the setup is for the drone seems like you have one camera (Tracking_rear) pointed straight backwards and two cameras (Tracking_front, Tracking_down) facing forward at a 30 degree downward angle?
I am not sure that you are showing with the log output.
Have you tried hand testing using the command voxl-inspect-pose -l and seeing how RPY and translational movement (moving the drone up, right, forward) are behaving for the local frame?

Question, Is it possible to connect a MIPI cable to the top of a Voxl2 using some of the pins in J5 or J3? So we don't have to touch Kernel stuff but can still use a MIPI camera through Linux if we create the driver.

Thank you for your time,
Aaron Porter

@Alex-Kushleyev

I am following this guide: https://docs.modalai.com/voxl2-io-firmware/
I am trying to install the firmware using STLink

as for the bootl oader it is a ModalAI bootloader already installed I assume based on the blue LED light flash, so it is not a legacy board

I am trying to flash the firmware to the VOXL2 IO board but I am getting an issue using OpenOCD. It seems like the version has changed since the documentation was created.

+ FIRMWARE_FILE=/.../Downloads/m0065_firmware.bin
+ sudo openocd -f /usr/share/openocd/scripts/interface/stlink-v2.cfg -f /usr/share/openocd/scripts/target/stm32f1x.cfg -c 'adapter speed 4000' -c init -c 'sleep 100' -c 'reset halt' -c 'sleep 500' -c 'flash write_image erase /.../Downloads/m0065_firmware.bin  0x08001C00' -c 'reset run' -c exit
Open On-Chip Debugger 0.10.0
Licensed under GNU GPL v2
For bug reports, read
	http://openocd.org/doc/doxygen/bugs.html
Info : auto-selecting first available session transport "hla_swd". To override use 'transport select <transport>'.
Info : The selected transport took over low-level target control. The results might differ compared to plain JTAG/SWD
adapter speed: 1000 kHz
adapter_nsrst_delay: 100
none separate
invalid command name "adapter"

I am on a Linux computer and installed OpenOCD using just apt-get install openocd. I have the ST-Link connect like the diagram shows. And the ST-Link is connected to my computer via USB.
So Honestly I am lost to as to what I am doing wrong?

Thanks in advance,

• Aaron

The Problem:
So we recently ran into an issue where the Actuator Tab in QGroundControl wanted us to Identify and assign the motors for the starling. We tried using voxl-configure-mpa with the sku set to starling. Still we were not able to spin the motors.

The Solution:
We were able to resolve the issue my installing a new version of the SDK onto the starling which resolved the issue we were having.

Hope this helps

Hello,

I am trying to get the VIO Quality on the drone below to be higher than 20% when flying. I am using voxl-inspect-qvio to see the quality in real time while I am moving it manually.
In the beginning when the drone first starts up the quality is good at or around 100%, I can move the drone forward and I see x increasing, move left and y decreases, moving up the z value decreases. Once I start moving the drone the quality drops to 20% and will occasionally restart. I was looking at the documentation post here for troubleshooting VIO issues. I checked the IMU_APPS and saw only green values even when I jostled it a bit. I thought that the light from the lidar that I had behind it was causing some lighting issues so I removed it. Still having the same issue.

I tried getting the extrinsic file values as close to the correct offset values that I can for the tracking camera. The only thing that I can see that Might be an issue is that the camera is not pointed completely straight. But if that is not the issue then I don't really know what else to look at to fix the quality drop.

Thanks,
-Aaron

@Aaron-Porter So I made a mistake that the IMU-server was not running during my screen shots. But I figured out the issue. Yo can use the starling file you have to run the command,

voxl-configure-qvio factory_enable_imu_apps

This will tell qvio-server to look for imu_apps instead of imu0.

Hello

I have a question about the VOXL2 mini's extrinsics file and using voxl-qvio-server. I reinstalled the VOXL2 mini SDK 1.0 on to the VOXL2 mini. The extrinsics file has the values for IMU0 and IMU1. When I check voxl-inspect-services, I can see that voxl-imu-server is running.

However voxl-qvio-server is reporting an error when I look at the page using voxl-portal. The error is that IMU_MISSING. I know on the VOXL2 the IMUs are separated as IMU_APP and IMU_PX4. So I tried switching the extrinsics file to the Starling_V2 but then IMU Server is reporting an error.

How can I fix this?

Thank you,
Aaron Porter

@Moderator
Thank you

So this is the correct functionality, and that the Data is updated relative to the IMU and not to the Body of the Drone.

Hello,

Quick Question, if I wanted to connect two USB devices to the VOXL2, would I use the High-Speed pins on the J13 port for one USB device, then use the Super-speed pins for the second USB device would that be possible.

Thank you,
Aaron Porter

Hey,

So I am running into a qvio issue where when I move the drone forwards and backwards the x values are correct. However when I move the drone left to right the Z values are changing and moving the drone up and down causes the y values to change. I have the VOXL2 board attached to the drone at a roll of 90 degrees. I thought that when I edited the extrinsic file to have the voxl-imu rolled 90 from the body that QVIO would adjust the y and z values to match the body movements. I am looking at the qvio values from the qvio-sever page in voxl-portal.

Thank you,
Aaron

So the issue seems to be that VOXL-vision-hub is requesting that QVIO be hard reset. I am not 100% sure why, the extrinsics file should be setup to a voxl that is rotated 90 degrees, VOXL-vision-hub however is asking tor a hard reset.

Hello,
I am having an issue with the QVIO service resetting periodically on my VOXL2. The I am not sure why this issue is occurring. I have the VOXL2 at a 90 degree roll which should explain the rpy_parent_to_child values. The Error can be seen when I run QVIO in the Voxl Terminal as seen below.

voxl2:/$ voxl-qvio-server
loading config file
=================================================================
imu_name:                         imu_apps
cam_name:                         tracking
lens_cal_path:                    /data/modalai/opencv_tracking_intrinsics.yml
cam_extrinsics_name:              tracking
use_second_cam_if_stereo:         0
odr_hz:                           30.000
use_camera_height_bootstrap:      1
camera_height_off_ground_m:        0.085
enable_init_while_moving:         0
cam_imu_timeshift_s:              -0.002
cam_imu_timeshift_s_uncertainty:   0.001
T_cam_wrt_imu_uncertainty:         0.001  0.001  0.001
R_cam_to_imu_uncertainty:          0.005  0.005  0.005
accl_fsr_ms2:                     156.000
gyro_fsr_rad:                     34.000
accl_noise_std_dev:                0.316
gyro_noise_std_dev:                0.010
cam_noise_std_dev:                100.000
min_std_pixel_noise:               0.500
fail_high_pixel_noise_points:      1.665
limited_imu_bw_trigger:           25.000
gps_imu_time_alignment_s:          0.000
T_gps_wrt_imu:                     0.000  0.000  0.000
enable_mapping:                   1
enable_gps_vel:                   0
auto-reset params:
en_auto_reset:                    1
auto_reset_max_velocity:          10.000
auto_reset_max_v_cov_instant:      0.100
auto_reset_max_v_cov:              0.010
auto_reset_max_v_cov_timeout_s:    0.500
auto_reset_min_features:          3
auto_reset_min_feature_timeout_s:  1.000
standby params:
en_standby_mode:                  1
standby_skip_frames:              1
=================================================================
existing instance of qvio-server found, attempting to stop it
setting scheduler
INFO: set FIFO priority successfully!
loading extrinsics config file
#0:
    parent:                imu_apps
    child:                 tracking
    T_child_wrt_parent:    0.063   0.022  -0.020 
    RPY_parent_to_child:  45.0    90.0   180.0  
    R_child_to_parent:    -0.000  -0.000   1.000 
                          -0.707  -0.707  -0.000 
                           0.707  -0.707   0.000 
tbc:   0.063  0.022 -0.020
ombc:  2.504 -1.037  2.504 (axis angle)
ombc: 45.000 90.000 180.000 (RPY deg)
loading /data/modalai/opencv_tracking_intrinsics.yml
using fisheye camera intrinsics:
distortion: -0.018669 0.006158 0.000000 0.000000
focal lengths: 286.505106 287.452901
principle points: 318.695777 231.862595
waiting for imu
waiting for cam
connected to imu server
waiting for cpu_monitor
connected to camera server
Camera processing thread is now locked to the following cores: 7
client "voxl-portal0" connected to overlay
Client requested hard reset
Client requested hard reset
Client requested hard reset
Client requested hard reset
Client requested hard reset

Thank you for your time,
Aaron

Hello Modal AI,

I am having a difficult time setting up the VOXL2 in VIO mode. My first Question is does VOXL2 support VIO and is it ready in VOXL SDK 1.0.0? I am also getting a message that the Height estimate not stable, so I am not sure what I am missing there is also an error with the AHRS when I click the "Not Ready" in QGC. I still tried to arm the drone in QGC with the drone in Position mode and manual but no success obviously.

What has been done so far:
I have a tracking camera attached to the VOXL2 board.
Realized the Tracking Camera was upside down so fixed that still no luck
I am also connecting to the VOXL's PX4 instance via WiFi.
I tried connecting a GPS module to the VOXL2 and enabling SYS_HAS_MAG then recalibrating through QGC.
I tried to Disable the COM_ARM_EKF_HGT
Enabled the Following Service:
voxl-portal
voxl-qvio_server
voxl-cpu-monitor
voxl-px4
voxl-camera-server
voxl-mavlink-server
voxl-imu-server (Started voxl-px4-imu-server at the same time)

Thank you for your help