@berayksl said in Starling 2 Max Crashes in Position Hold Mode After Disabling Magnetometer for Indoor Flight:

@Cliff-Wong I applied the param file you provided and did some test flights recently. Before the flight, I checked the VIO accuracy by moving the drone around in my hand while monitoring the trajectory in the VIO tab on the portal, and it seemed to be working fine.

During the first flight, I put the drone in “Position Hold” mode. It was holding its position quite well initially. I moved it around and rotated it, and it continued to hold position accurately when I released the sticks.

However, after landing and taking it for another test flight a short while later (same area), it wasn’t able to hold its position well in the z-axis. The drone kept ascending and didn’t respond to RC inputs, so I had to trigger the kill switch for safety.

I noticed that VIO performance seems to vary even when flying in the same area, making it unreliable at times. Additionally, I occasionally get a “Yaw estimate error” message on the portal, but there are no corresponding errors on the QGroundControl terminal, and it still allows me to arm.

Do you have any suggestions on what might be causing:

• The inconsistent VIO performance between flights
• The drone ignoring RC inputs during the second flight
• The “Yaw estimate error” message (should I be concerned if QGC shows no error)?

I also tried calibrating the cameras (even though I haven’t changed their locations since delivery) by following the link you provided. I was able to calibrate the front camera successfully, but when I try to calibrate the downward-facing camera, the camera feed on the portal becomes extremely laggy, and the calibration app becomes unresponsive after a while, requiring me to reboot the drone each time.

@Eric-Katzfey can you help me with this as @Cliff-Wong was last online 14 days ago?

@Hector-Gutierrez Unfortunately, I have to fly the drone inside the drone cage due to safety reasons. I haven't tried disabling the barometer yet but I've already set the EKF height reference to visual odometry as suggested by the devs. I used this param file.

Starling 2 Max also comes with a downward facing range finder sensor. Maybe I can also use that sensor for altitude reference.

@Hector-Gutierrez The magnetometer was enabled by default but I was getting 'magnetometer interference' error, which prevented arming the drone. One of the devs told me it's okay to disable magnetometer for indoor flights. I guess the interference was caused by the drone cage that I was flying in. What kind of environment are you flying your drone in?

@Hector-Gutierrez Hi Hector,
Thanks for your reply. Yes, I have set the parameter 'SYS_HAS_GPS' to 0 (disable) but still had the same issue. Did yours fly fine consistently after disabling the GPS? Did you do anything else to resolve the issue?

@Cliff-Wong I applied the param file you provided and did some test flights recently. Before the flight, I checked the VIO accuracy by moving the drone around in my hand while monitoring the trajectory in the VIO tab on the portal, and it seemed to be working fine.

During the first flight, I put the drone in “Position Hold” mode. It was holding its position quite well initially. I moved it around and rotated it, and it continued to hold position accurately when I released the sticks.

However, after landing and taking it for another test flight a short while later (same area), it wasn’t able to hold its position well in the z-axis. The drone kept ascending and didn’t respond to RC inputs, so I had to trigger the kill switch for safety.

I noticed that VIO performance seems to vary even when flying in the same area, making it unreliable at times. Additionally, I occasionally get a “Yaw estimate error” message on the portal, but there are no corresponding errors on the QGroundControl terminal, and it still allows me to arm.

Do you have any suggestions on what might be causing:

• The inconsistent VIO performance between flights
• The drone ignoring RC inputs during the second flight
• The “Yaw estimate error” message (should I be concerned if QGC shows no error)?

I also tried calibrating the cameras (even though I haven’t changed their locations since delivery) by following the link you provided. I was able to calibrate the front camera successfully, but when I try to calibrate the downward-facing camera, the camera feed on the portal becomes extremely laggy, and the calibration app becomes unresponsive after a while, requiring me to reboot the drone each time.

@Cliff-Wong Thanks for your response. How can I enable only one camera at a time? If the camera calibration is bad, how can I recalibrate them? Lastly, is there a way to test the VIO setup in a HITL simulation before performing an actual flight, just to verify that everything works as expected?

@Cliff-Wong @Eric-Katzfey Any updates?

@Cliff-Wong said in Starling 2 Max Crashes in Position Hold Mode After Disabling Magnetometer for Indoor Flight:

8000000

Hi Cliff,

Thank you for your response. I checked the config file and "en_vio" was set to 'true'.

Also I tried moving the drone inside the drone cage and was able to get a trajectory similar to yours initially:

However, the results are inconsistent. Sometimes the trajectory is inaccurate, and the drone drifts away in the portal view:

Could this be related to calibration issues, or is VIO inherently unreliable in some cases? Could the drift be due to a lack of visual features in the environment?

Also, do you think it's safe to fly indoors without the magnetometer? (I had to disable it because I was getting an interference error that prevented arming)

Are there any other PX4 parameters I should adjust to ensure safe indoor flight? I want to double-check that everything is set up correctly before attempting another test because I don't want to crash the drone like last time.

Lastly, is there a way to test the VIO setup in a HITL simulation before performing an actual flight, just to verify that everything works as expected?

Thanks again for your help!

@Eric-Katzfey here is the log of the flight: https://review.px4.io/plot_app?log=a2686aeb-913d-49aa-8f21-b9802b28ec02

@Eric-Katzfey I'm running SDK version 1.4.3.

Where can I find the log file of the flight?

The drone didn't respond to stick input, which it should have in the position hold mode.