Topics created by Jetson Nano

@Jetson-Nano ,

Thank you for providing detailed description of the tests. I just requested access to the logs.

Please see the following comments:

ESC temperature: the VOXL FPV ESC is rated for pretty high operating temperatures. For example, the MCUs are rated to run at up to 125C MCU temperature. I would not recommend running the ESC above 100C, however I am confident that the ESC will perform fine even above 100C. We typically recommend designing the system such that ESC temperature does not exceed 80C under normal flight conditions - this gives plenty of margin before a failure would occur. Did you take note of the ESC temps of VOXL ESC? VOXL FPV ESC reports two types of temperatures: two of the IDs (ID 0, 3) are measuring the ESC temps from separate temperature sensors located on top and bottom of the ESC. IDs 1 and 2 are reporting the MCU temps (the temperature of the MCU silicon). The MCU temps at steady state are typically a bit higher (5-7 deg C higher) because the MCU itself generates a little heat internally. VOXL ESC not responding after a crash : the likely reason is mechanical damage as a result of the crash. Components can be knocked off during the crash. If the ESC powers on briefly (you see the leds blink initially, but then the ESC turns off), then the likely issue is some kind of short or high load on one of the regulated ESC power rails (5V or 3.3V) -- the high current drain (due to some issue) results in the voltage regulator to turn off due to over-current, resulting in the ESCs shutting down. If only 3 out of 4 LEDs blink, then it is possible that one ESC channel has some sort of a short (due to mechanical damage) and it does not turn on, eventually causing the power rails to be disabled due to over-current. motor suddenly stopping in flight: this is often a result of a mechanical issue related to mounting the motor to the frame. Sometimes the motor mounting screws are too long and they can penetrate the motor windings and cause intermittent failures just like this. We have experienced this ourselves several times when long screws were used and were touching the motor windings. Alternatively, something could be touching the ESC itself and intermittently affecting operation of the ESC once I see the px4 log with the FPV ESC, i can check if one of the motors was operating abnormally before it stopped spinning. There is some additional information in the log that can tell us if a particular motor requires more power to spin (compare to the others).

Questions:

do you have px4 logs of the VOXL ESC with one of the motors shutting down in flight? is it possible that the aluminum enclosure is making contact with the ESC components, causing some kind of short? especially during crash, perhaps the ESC is making contact with the enclosure? did you check if the motor temperature was OK after successful flights? what was the total current draw during flight when the failure occurred? (should see that in the px4 log)

Alex

Hi @Jetson-Nano
Thank you for your request regarding MTTF and reliability data for the listed hardware components.

At this time, we do not publish formal MTTF/MTBF values for these products. The primary reason is that these systems (VOXL2, ESC, Flight Controller V2, Front-End Board, and Camera Modules) are delivered as development platforms intended for user-defined integration, testing, and operation. In the vast majority of use cases, overall system lifetime is dominated by application-specific factors such as mechanical stress, environmental exposure, power integrity, and crash events rather than intrinsic electronic wear-out mechanisms. As a result, standardized MTTF/MTBF metrics are not representative or particularly actionable for these platforms.

That said, the underlying silicon and design heritage for these systems is derived from high-volume mobile and embedded computing applications. These components are built on technologies that are broadly characterized for long operational lifetimes under nominal conditions, consistent with industry expectations for modern semiconductor devices.

Additionally, portions of the broader technology heritage have been evaluated in demanding environments, including public programs associated with NASA JPL (e.g., Mars Helicopter which is our design heritage, and CADRE lunar rover initiatives). However, detailed qualification data and reports from those efforts and other non-public efforts are not available for external distribution.

From a reliability perspective, our hardware is designed and validated using standard industry practices, including:

Functional validation across operating voltage and temperature ranges Environmental and stress testing at the system level (i..e: we and our customers put our drones into very demanding scenarios) Design margining consistent with mobile/embedded electronics standards, oftentimes far exceeding industry norm Production screening and quality control processes and test screening

For applications requiring higher confidence in operational lifetime, we typically recommend system-level validation under the specific mission profile, including environmental testing (thermal cycling, vibration, shock) and power/load characterization representative of the end use case.

Hope this helps.

@Jetson-Nano , since we currently have no plans to do the MIPI integration of this sensor, you always have the option to use USB connection and voxl-uvc-server to publish images via MPA. You would need to check if the sensor supports the standard UVC interface and try it out...

Alex

@Jetson-Nano ,

We have not tried QVIO with Boson, it may work (but we can't really support that). The boson output is usually a bit fuzzy, so i am not sure how the feature detection will work, but it may be ok. Disabling FFC will definitely resolve the gaps in the frame feed, but disabling the FFC will also affect the Boson image quality, which may degrade over time.

If you wanted to use any USB (thermal) camera with VIO, you would just have to use voxl-uvc-server to publish the images to mpa, so that voxl-qvio-server can subscribe to them. The only issue is that the uvc interface does not provide accurate timestamp of the camera, but it may be ok just to use the time of arrival of the frame. QVIO does estimate the time offset between the IMU and camera, so as long as the timestamp is consistently captured, it should be ok..

Alex

@Alex-Kushleyev Could you please share the pinouts of the serial console port. I am not able to find it anywhere.

@Eric-Katzfey

Thank you for reverting back. I am trying to proceed with the same approach.
I am facing some errors while going with this approach , I am trying to debug them.

Another approach :-
I am also thinking to hardcode the joystick based turtle mode to the voxl_esc.cpp.
The manual control values will be monitored and once the value of the assigned button is clicked, the turtle mode will be enabled.
Do you think it is a good approach?

@Eric-Katzfey
hey,
I observed something while the above behaviour still persists.
The modem and the camera server is showing not running while checking through the inspect services command.
I do not know whether this is related to this issue, but the voxl 2 is rebooting after sometime, the reboot is not constant and I am not able to able to find the reason for the reboot. Can everything be related to each other.
I am using the Microhard modem

Screenshot from 2025-11-10 15-27-45.png

Screenshot from 2025-11-10 15-30-27.png

@Jetson-Nano Regarding question #1, Yes, you can attach an external FC over the UART.

Hi @Jetson-Nano
Here is our info for Doodle Labs support:
https://docs.modalai.com/cable-datasheets/#mcbl-00085
Sorry it's buried in a cable page, but it makes the case clear (we think) how to support Doodle 🙂
b1fa4a9a-f883-4566-b3e2-ae9ab14b7264-image.png

regarding probing USB signals, unless you had a USB decoder on the scope, I do not think that will prove anything useful. You may be better off running usbview:
Windows:
USBTreeView by Uwe Sieber — uwe-sieber.de/usbtreeview_e.html
It shows enumeration hierarchy, configuration descriptors, endpoints, VID/PID, power requirements, etc.
Linux equivalent:
Use usbview — it’s essentially the same utility (GTK front-end to lsusb).

Hope that helps!

@Vinny Thank you for your valuable feedback.

I’ll keep the points you mentioned in mind while doing the bench testing.

@tom Thank you for the support.

@Vinny Thank you for reverting back, I will follow the steps you mentioned along with the ESD safe method.

@Eric-Katzfey thank you for reverting back, it was very helpful, i was able to get multiple streams.

@Eric-Katzfey I am using VOXL 2 to Flight Core v2 to VOXL FPV ESC, will this change affect any performance of the flight or any other abilities.

@Eric-Katzfey Thank you for reverting back, I am able to get the turtle mode working now, The error was due to the safety parameters, once i changed it to the FPV setup, it was working.

Once again thank you for the support. It was really helpful.

@Alex-Kushleyev Thank you for reverting back.