Hello,

I'm not sure how precision landing is supposed to work.
Usually, I would have an aruco pattern drawn right on my landing pad. The drone now would have a downward facing camera that constantly monitors the pattern and sends corrective commands to the flight controller while slowly descending. All the m500 seems to have is three front facing cameras and a 45 degrees downward facing tracking sensor, but no camera on the bottom. How would precision landing be possible with this setup?
I'm currently thinking of mounting a USB camera to the bottom, connecting it to the Cellular LTE and USB hub add-on and doing precision landing with python, OpenCV and MavSDK commands, but is this really the best way?

Thanks and regards

Hi @modaltb ,

so I can connect it to the telemetry port (J5 on this page), configure it in QGroundControl like e.g. on a normal Pixhawk and access it via Pathon-DroneKit or MavSDK? That would be great.

I never used one of these gimbal controllers at all, so no experiences here.

Hello Alex,

and thanks for the answer.
The drone will do surveillance on feature rich areas with a downward facing camera. However, the front cameras will problably be looking a at very boring horizon all the time. I guess I'd really need these cameras facing downwards instead of frontal. That wouldn't be doable, would it?
Also, would your flight core support the addition of a bottom range finder as outlined on this page (I need to do precision landing and therefore need exact height values)?

Thanks and regards

Hello,

and sorry. I know there are a lot of threads on this topic, but they're not clear enough for me, especially since I currently have limited experience with MAVLink.
My problem is that I'm about to spend a lot of money on these drones and I need to make absolutely sure beforehand that the required setup is even possible.

I need to mount a 2-axis gimbal on an m500. The tilt angle of this gimbal should be autonomously controlled by providing an angle to a software (e.g. a python script) which sets it accordingly. The gimbal will be custom made using a standard gimbal controller, e.g. a Storm32 or an AlexMos.

Are there any experiences in integrating such a controllers with the VOXL hardware? Also, since your drones seem to be precisely calibrated, will an attached gimbal have a strong negative influence on stability?

Thanks and best regards

Hello,

under https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2lub_OCbok, you can see a video of an m500 (it's an m500, isn't it?) hovering highly stable, almost without sway. Most self build drones equipped with only GPS introduce a sway of around 1-2 metres in every direction when hovering, at least to my knowledge.
How is this precision achieved (optical flow analysis with the tracking sensor, maybe)? And would this precision also be given outside in a height between 10 and 30 metres, when the tracking sensor has no close orientation points (I assume it sits in the front of the drone)?
If not, is it possible to mount optical flow and range finder modules (e.g. PX4Flow) to improve stability?

The VOXL-CAM offers a socket that looks like it could hold a Flir thermal camera of type Lepton. I do understand that you don't ship them with thermal sensors right now, but if I would buy a lepton core myself, would it be supported by the firmware and made available in Linux as a video device?