The BMM150 magnetometer featured on the Flight Core V2 has reached EOL and is not recommended for new designs. The recommended replacement BMM350 is not a drop-in replacement as it has a different pinout. Will Modal AI be able to produce this board going forward with a redesign to replace the BMM150? Or is this board limited to the current stock because of this?

@Vinny @Moderator Thank you for the response.

The reason why we suspected a power issue is that the Flight Core PX4 logs have gaps in data. My apologies as I should have included that info initially. Here is an example from manual setpoint data.

Here is a scatterplot for throttle manual setpoint data to show that those straight lines on the line graph are indeed gaps in data and not inhumanly smooth setpoint changes.

These gaps are consistent across all the data in the log, which led us to hypothesize that power was lost during these instances. We are using a custom controller that employs SBUS joystick protocol through QGC. Let me know if this info sparks any other ideas or is reminiscent of another issue.

TLDR: Is a 5V/6A rail (ex: Power Module v3) able to power both the Flight Core V2 and VOXL2 without manual control dropouts? Or is there a specific setup required for this configuration to run reliably?

We are attempting to fly with the Flight Core V2 as the flight controller and VOXL2 as the companion computer. We are consistently experiencing manual control loss when connecting to and arming the craft. According to the logs, there are significant periods (hundreds of ms) where manual control drops out.

Our first setup was to power the Flight Core V2 via USB from the Microhard Modem Add-On's USB port. The Microhard Add-On is in turn mounted and powered by the VOXL2 which is in turn powered by the Power Module v3. Our theory was that the Flight Core V2 was struggling to be powered via USB, so we changed to a second setup: VOXL2 and Flight Core V2 powered by the same 5V/6A rail from a custom power board that has a very similar 5V rail to the Power Module v3. We still saw the manual control lost issue.

Notably, we are already suspicious of the Power Module v3 and its capabilities. We had a pre-flight check issue that claimed "Avionics power low" that was fixed by swapping out the Power Module v3 for another, suggesting that their power capability may be marginal for this use case or perhaps inconsistent for some other reason.

Alternatively, if there are other suggestions as to why we are losing manual control, please feel free to comment on that as well.

I am attempting to calibrate ESCs using the procedure outlined here: Flight Core PWM ESC Calibration.

The procedure fails with the following text:

Using portname /dev/serial/by-id/usb-ModalAI_PX4_FMU_ModalAI_FCv1_0-if00
connecting...
Error: Unable to open port

I have mostly been running it with a USB connection, but the UDP method failed similarly.

I have also tried to do it through QGroundControl, but to my understanding, since FCv1 did not support power through USB, it is not possible to use the QGroundControl calibration on the VOXL Flight/FCv1.

Thanks in advance.

@Moderator Great, thanks!

Is the VOXL2 Green UAS (AUVSI) and/or Blue UAS (DoD) compliant? If not, is there a roadmap for compliance in the future?

Thanks.

@Vinny ,

Thanks for the speedy response and for the recommendations. I will discuss the options with my team. That dongle sounds like a good alternative for this use case.

Jacob

We are implementing a VOXL2 into our system and wish to use the Microhard Add-On board while also utilizing the High Speed Board to Board (HSB2B) connector (J5). However, since the Microhard Add-On was developed before the VOXL2, it covers the J5 connector and we are completely cut off from the HSB2B connector when using the Microhard Add-On. The documentation mentions that ModalAI is in the process of developing a breakout board for J3 (Microhard Add-On connection) and J5. How soon will this board be available? Alternatively, are there any current solutions to this issue beyond stacking a custom breakout board between the VOXL2 and Microhard Add-On?

Thanks