@h3robotics , the clearance is indeed very tight between the small capacitor and the beige 12-pin JST GH connector. However, in fully seated position of the add-on board into VOXL2, the JST GH connector does not touch the capacitor - your image shows the fully seated connection with slight clearance.
Alex
@KnightHawk06 , use voxl-calibrare-camera tracking_down_misp_grey <remaining options>
@Jskim , can you please run voxl-streamer in foreground and paste the whole output (the full error description is cut off by the screen shot).
Also please check which version of voxl-streamer you are using (voxl-version | grep voxl-streamer)
Thanks!
Hello @KnightHawk06,
This can happen because of lens shading on the AR0144 camera lens causing the thresholding (in camera calibration app) to not work as expected.
Depending on the version of VOXL2 SDK you are using, there may be also tracking_down_misp_grey camera stream available, which is the lens shading compensated output for this camera. I believe it should work better for calibration purposes.
Can you please try? If that does not help, I can suggest a few other tweaks, but those will require rebuilding the voxl-camera-calibration app.
Alex
Hello @dan64,
The px4-esc-cal-tool does not apply to ModalAI uart-based ESCs. That tool was used for calibrating ESC response to PWM control signal for old-style ESCs.
There is no need to re-calibrate the ModalAI ESC if you use a stock configuration, such as the motor + propeller that comes with Starling 2 MAX.
The ESC parameters for this motor + propeller are located here : https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/utilities/voxl-esc/-/blob/master/voxl-esc-params/D0012_Starling_MAX/esc_params_m0129_f2203_5_1500kv_7x3.7x3.xml
You could use voxl-esc tools to verify this. Since you already ran the spin test using voxl-esc tools, this should be somewhat familiar.
./voxl-esc-verify-params.py
This should query all the params on your ESC and they should match the same param file (which is also stored in /usr/share/modalai/voxl-esc-params/ folder.
From the test spin results, it does appear that a motor may be faulty. I am assuming this behavior happens every time you run the test. However, you can never know for sure that the motor is at fault - it could be an ESC issue. In such case, the best thing to do is to do a similar test with another motor attached to the ESC channel in question. The ESC with the correct params is tuned for this motor + propeller and has been thoroughly tested, so I do not recommend trying to fix this by modifying ESC parameters (this will most likely result in a wasted effort).
You can purchase the Starling 2 Max replacement motor here : https://www.modalai.com/products/starling-2-max-replacement-parts?variant=49704826896688 . It looks like the image for the motor has the wrong kV (2850), but the actual motor kV will be 1500.
The motor used on Starling 2 Max very similar to Tmotor 2203.5 1500kv, you could also replace it with this one without changing any parameters.
Testing a replacement motor should be relatively easy if you cut the motor leads on the motor arm and not disassemble the drone to get access to the ESC. Remove the old motor and solder and heat shrink the connections for the new motor and repeat the spin test (in order to make sure that the spin direction of the new motor matches the old motor, you can mark the wires before cutting and solder the new motor in the same wire order). If you wanted to not cut the motor wires along the arm, then you would need to do some disassembly to gain access to the ESC solder pads. (instructions outlined here : https://forum.modalai.com/topic/4023/motor-replacement-instructions-starling-2-max).
I am curious what the motor spinning actually looks / sounds like, so if you are able to record a short video of the motor spinning, starting from the spin-up (just the faulty ID), that could be helpful:
./voxl-esc-spin.py --id 1 --power 15
Alex
Hello @Jskim,
the parameter in voxl-streamer.conf should be h265, not h.265, i think behavior is undefined otherwise. The two options are h264 and h265. There should probably be a check for this.. I will add...
Please try h265 and let me know if that fixes the issue.
Alex
Hello @ROBERT-JUDD ,
Apologies for the delay. I have been out of office and did not quite perform the testing I wanted last week. I am returning to testing this on Monday, will provide an update then.
Alex
@nekolny , you should use a linux PC to run voxl-esc tools in order to connect to the ESC and check / update the ESC firmware. VOXL1 does not have support for voxl-esc python tools to communicate directly with the ESC.
Alex
Hi @Kory4Drone ,
Starling 2 MAX uses two 2S Li-Ion batteries. When connected to the drone, they are connected in series, creating a single 4S battery. The - and + terminals of the combined battery are connected directly to the ESC.
You could tap off the power at the ESC main power pads. If the current for your aux functionality is low (up to a few Amps), then you could use the "Battery Input Test Points" on the opposite side from the main pads. These pads are via-stitched to the opposite side using many vias and should be solid.
https://docs.modalai.com/voxl-mini-esc-datasheet/#hardware-overview
I do not think we have the power wiring diagram for the drone posted.. will check.
Alex
@ROBERT-JUDD , the behavior of the RC receiver on the drone as is as follows:
However, the GPS signal degradation seems to be related with proximity of the RC TX when the TX is on. The RC RX antenna is already located at the bottom of the drone and it should be OK, but there could also be some sort of interference, so possibly moving the RC RX antenna to the landing gear could resolve that (if it's an issue, TBD).
I don't personally have a spektrum analyzer for EMI scanning, but our team does and this work is also happening in parallel.
Will keep you posted!
Alex
Hello @Kiran , the only TOF sensor that we currently sell is the following:
https://www.modalai.com/products/m0178?variant=48528287793456
https://docs.modalai.com/M0178/
In terms of identifying unique features of individuals, you will have you decide whether this works for you. Here is a typical output of the this TOF sensor looking at a person. This is a depth image, but a point cloud output (for each frame) is also available. In order to build a map, you would need to use some mapper software (we provide a reference such as https://docs.modalai.com/voxl-mapper/). However you would need to be familiar with mapping algorithm(s) and learn how the software components work in order to get mapping to work well and tune it for your application.
Alex
@AidanGallagher , I have updated the IMX412 drivers to support stable 4040x3040 60FPS.
Just for full disclosure, the camera in this mode is slightly overclocked from 2.1Gbps / lane to 2.2Gbps MIPI bit rate (voxl2 supports up to 2.5Gbps) in order to allow sufficient time between EOF and SOF. This is within 5% of the camera spec and seems to work fine.. If you do not feel comfortable using this mode, don't :). (only the specific 4040x3040 60fps mode has been changed).
We are going to continue testing this mode because it allows doing things like EIS at 4K60 without losing any vertical stabilization margin. If there are any issues with it, I will report back.
By the way, for best image quality, even if you don't need 4K output, but lets say 1080p, in the case of unstabilized video (no EIS), you should select 3840x2160 input and 1920x1080 output. The debayering process loses sharpness, so going from 1920x1080 RAW -> 1920x1080 RGB is going to be worse quality than 3840x2160 RAW -> 1920x1080 RGB. For unstabilized video you do not need the full frame because the top and bottom will be cropped out anyway, so reduce the waste and not select the full frame resolution (4040x3040). You can experiment using the different input resolutions to see what output quality (sharpness) you get. There is currently no option to do output sharpening when using MISP, but we will look into in the future. The down side of using higher resolution input is increased GPU usage (should not be an issue) and longer readout time (the rolling shutter artifacts will be more pronounced).
- 4056x3040 @ 30 16.5ms readout time
- 4040x3040 @ 30, 60 16.5ms readout time
- 3840x2160 @ 30, 60, 80 11.8ms readout time
- 1996x1520 @ 30, 60, 120 5.5ms readout time
- 1936x1080 @ 30, 60, 90, 120, 240 4.0ms readout time
- 1996x480 @ 30, 480 1.8ms readout time
- 1996x240 @ 30, 800 0.9 - 1.0 ms readout time
@Dronodev , if you are using QVIO, which only supports a single camera, then you would address that use case by providing illumination for the single camera.
Our latest work with open-vins has shown results with triple camera vio using Starling 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12DWDV7XCiE , so providing 360 degree illumination should help with that.
The images are normalized to help extract features in dark regions. However, illuminating the environment should help. Please keep in mind several points:
Our AR0144 tracking cameras have lens option with or without IR filter : https://www.modalai.com/products/msu-m0166
Alex
@AidanGallagher , the sync signal is used to synchronize multiple cameras to take the images at the same time - it is not related to the quality of the images. Some algorithms like DFS (Depth From Stere) require the images to be synchronized because the assumption of DFS requires that, otherwise disparity search can produce incorrect results.
For other applications like multi-camera VIO, it may or may not be required to use synchronized images -- unsync'ed camera images will have their own timestamps, which should be handled by the VIO algorithm.
The choice depends on the application.
Alex
Yes the old TOF (V1) is EOL and we only have the TOF V2 available now, but due to increase power requirements, the connector had to change. The Starling Front End board (M0173) provides the connector to plug in the M0178 tof assembly (look at https://docs.modalai.com/voxl2-coax-camera-bundles/ C26, or C27).
The Starling camera front end is only compatible with VOXL2, not VOXL2 mini. However, if you just wanted to plug in TOF V2 directly into VOX2 Mini, we now have M0172, which you can find a pictured here : https://forum.modalai.com/topic/4125/indoor-navigation-using-4-depth-sensors . M0172 splits the VOXL2 dual camera connector into a TOF-compatible 40-pin molex connector and the uCoax connector for the cameras that use uCoax.
We don't have M0172 officially available, but if you want to try it we can make it available in the shop. So you would need (M0172 adapter + MSU-M0178-1-01 (the whole TOF sensor assembly) ).
The connection order would look like this:
VOXL2 (mini) <-> M0172 <-> M0177 <-> M0178 <-> actual TOF sensor
(everything to the right of M0172 is sold in this kit : https://www.modalai.com/products/m0178?variant=48528287793456)
This would work for either VOXL2 or VOXL2 mini. The only down side i see is that M0177 is pretty short. I am not sure if we have an extension available, but will check.
EDIT: Here is the extension that can go between M0172 and M0177 : https://www.modalai.com/products/msu-m0170
Alex
@AidanGallagher , thanks for clarifying.
I will give you some background information that should help you understand what has happened before.
Since the camera itself can only output a single resolution and FPS at a time, the camera pipeline has to select one of several available modes / resolutions for the camera to operate. Since there are possibly multiple output streams when using Qualcomm ISP (yuv preview, small encoded, large encoded), there is some logic that looks at the resolutions of enabled streams and figures out what resolution should be picked for the requested FPS.
For example, if you request to streams : small encoded and large encoded, with resolutions 1280x720 and 1920x1080 respectively, and lets say fps is 30, the camera pipeline will try to pick resolution at least 1920x1080 in order to satisfy the largest requested output resolution. If the camera has both 1920x1080 and 3840x2160 available at 30fps, it will actually pick the larger one because the output quality will be a bit better and the ISP will do a good job downscaling from 4K to 1080p.
Now, if you then proceed to increase the FPS to 60, it is possible that the mode that was selected for 30fps is not actually available at 60FPS. Then the pipeline will try to find the best mode that the camera can provide, which can achieve 60FPS. It is sometimes the case that lower resolution / higher FPS modes are also cropped (in camera), so that is possibly why you were losing some FOV. If you needed to know exactly what is happening, then i need to know the specific resolutions and fps, etc and show you how to figur out which mode is selected, etc.
If you are using MISP and disable the Qualcomm ISP outputs, such as non-raw preview, small and large encoded, then the only stream that the camera pipeline is concerned about is the RAW stream, so the MISP input should be exactly the resolution and fps that you request using preview_width and preview_height. Then depending on the output of MISP, the MISP processing will downscale and crop (but crop only if needed). If the input and output are the same aspect ration, only down-scaling will be done.
I will also share with you that we recently added a feature to MISP that supports 3 additional output channels, individually enabled. In your IMX412 camera configuration, you can add the following entry (within the specific camera config) to enable up to 3 more channels with different resolutions, encoding type and bitrate. There are some limitations as the output channel fps cannot exceed the maximum fps specified by the top of the config for that camera.
So, together with the original misp output, this allows up to 4 output streams for the single camera (we kept the original misp output for backwards compatibility). The use case is that you can have different resolution streams and switch between them in real time (if there are no clients for the streams, they won't use cpu / gpu resources). The camera FPS is also adjusted based on the highest FPS of an active stream.
For each enabled output stream, you will have a new output "pipe" just like what you are already using.
Also when picking the output resolutions and fps, pay attention to the preview width and height you are selecting together with the FPS to make sure that is supported by the IMX412 driver. Also, MISP can automatically upscale to a larger resolution, but i don't know why you would want to do that.
This is an experimental feature, but feel free to check it out. the osd feature is not enabled, just a placeholder for now. You should use the latest camera server, which you can find in the dev package repository : http://voxl-packages.modalai.com/dists/qrb5165/dev/binary-arm64//
"misp_channels": [
{
"enable": 1,
"name": "low_latency",
"width": 960,
"height": 540,
"fps": 120,
"mbps": 1.5,
"codec": "h265",
"nPframes": 119,
"osd": 0
},
{
"enable": 1,
"name": "long_range",
"width": 1280,
"height": 720,
"fps": 30,
"mbps": 2.5,
"codec": "h265",
"nPframes": 29,
"osd": 0
},
{
"enable": 1,
"name": "high_quality",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1080,
"fps": 60,
"mbps": 5.0,
"codec": "h265",
"nPframes": 59,
"osd": 0
}
@yardy , can you please clarify how exactly you are testing the communication using HS2 and HS3?
@nekolny , you are using a very old SDK (2+ years old), please consider upgrading. https://docs.modalai.com/voxl-suite/
Also, please check the following page : https://docs.modalai.com/qgc-wifi/
Alex
@voxl-phoenix , this may be a hardware issue because VOXL2 will boot just fine without M0173 camera front end plugged in (if the hardware is OK). It is possible that one of the camera connectors (where M0173 plugs in) has broken off or is loose, causing a hardware failure. If you would like a better diagnosis, please share a video of the voxl2 not booting, so we can see the LEDs (i realize there are green leds on top and bottom, but the way your image shows, you can see both of them. Also, in this non-booting state, does the VOXL2 show up as any USB device when plugged into a linux machine using the main USB C connector?
Alex
@astro_phil , unfortunately if the device is not automatically being detected by VOXL2, you may be on your own in terms of building the kernel module for it. Please search the forum for building kernel modules, as some users have tried this. Specifically, this one : https://forum.modalai.com/topic/3841/voxl2-kernel-version/ and maybe a few others as well.
Alex