@jonathankampia Just to respond to my own post here in case anyone else has the same question: It does work! We hooked up a VL53L0X rangefinder to the QUP3 i2c ports in the J19 connector and were able to start the driver with no issues by adding the start command to the voxl-px4.conf file. Interestingly, you have to modify both the EKF2_HGT_REF parameter and a specific rangefinder priority parameter that controls whether rangefinder sensor fusion is enabled at all times or just conditionally. If it's just enabled conditionally, the rangefinder data does not fuse into the EKF2 local position estimator.

@aashry Follow this link: https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/voxl-sdk/utilities/voxl-mpa-to-ros. Catkin_ws -> src -> msg and you will find AiDetection.msg, which you can use to build a ros custom message package (ROS has a tutorial on it I believe). You can do that in whatever workspace you are working in in your docker container. Once that is built and you source devel/setup.bash, you should be able to echo the topic and if you want to subscribe to it in a node you will need to import the message header similarly to any other message type

I am trying to find the best solution for minimizing altitude drift during low altitude outdoor VIO navigation. I have read this documentation about VL53L1X rangefinders, but I really would prefer not having to set this up as it would require modifying our drones to accommodate the tracking & hires cameras specific to the kits that come with the M0173 board.

Is it possible to connect a VL53L1X rangefinder to port J19 and interact with the sensor through the px4 firmware? Looking through the voxl branched 1.14 firmware there seems to be drivers for the VL53L1X sensor. I know it's not possible to use voxl-rangefinder-server through J19 as the page I linked says, but I see no reason I can't use the port through px4 itself.

Also, would the process (if possible) simply be:

1. Connect the VL53L1X sensor
2. Assuming the sensor connects properly, modify EKF2_HGT_REF to prioritize rangefinder

Or are there any intermediate steps? I am not really sure if these drivers run automatically or if you have to enable them via certain parameters. For example, SENS_EN_VL53L1X, which should enable the driver on boot, is not visible by default.

Thanks!

@Gary-Holmgren Haha your way is a little more robust than mine. I just manually added the qshell start command to the extra commands section of the voxl-px4.conf file.

@Yoshimaru-Tanaka Hey idk if this will solve your problem but to setup my starling I used the parameters from (I believe) the indoor_vio.params file here. You just go to the parameters section of QGroundControl and click upload from file, then select that file - it will show you exactly which parameters are going to change. They are also helpful if you are flip flopping between flying indoors and outside.

@jonathankampia Another strange issue! On a standard VOXL2 with the USB3 expansion board, same SDK version (1.5.0), the VOXL is unable to detect the external SSD's partitions so I can't even mount it. Same SSD plugs into a VOXL2 mini and partitions are detected.

@jonathankampia Oh yeah, also, we tried modding the cable like the documentation I linked said to. All we had on hand were some tiny 220nF caps, not the caps linked in the docs. The modded cable wouldn't even allow the USB slave device to show up on lsusb.

I am trying to log camera data to an external SSD using the voxl-logger utility, with the SSD hooked up to the J3 port of the VOXL2 mini. According to voxl-inspect-cam, the frames I'm trying to save are ~3.11MB, so at 30FPS would require around 93MBps write speed. The external ssd we have hooked up (temporarily) is a 2TB samsung T7 shield, which has an advertised write speed of up to 1000MBps, well over what we need.

The main problem is voxl-logger's output:

voxl-logger -c hires_small_color -d /mnt/ssd
Welcome to voxl-logger
1906214 MB left in /mnt/ssd/
starting new log: /mnt/ssd/log0001/

connected to ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/

ERROR: invalid metadata, magic number=-2055633543, expected 1448040524
most likely client fell behind and pipe overflowed
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/
flushing backed up pipe ch 0 /run/mpa/hires_small_color/

It works for a while, then eventually something backs up and the logger prints this debug message infinitely. It becomes unresponsive and I can't kill it with Ctrl+C. It seems like there's some bottleneck preventing the client (voxl-logger?) from receiving frames at the correct rate from the mpa pipe.

I am aware of the potential issues with the superspeed lines of the connector, but I get this output when taking the diagnostic steps that page details:

voxl2:/$ lsusb -t
/:  Bus 02.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci-hcd/1p, 10000M
    |__ Port 1: Dev 23, If 0, Class=Mass Storage, Driver=usb-storage, 10000M
/:  Bus 01.Port 1: Dev 1, Class=root_hub, Driver=xhci-hcd/1p, 480M

So I don't think datarates on the port/cable are the issue, and unless samsung is lying on their documentation by over 10x, I dont know how the ssd itself could be the issue either.

I was also able to test the data rate to this SSD with dd (linux utility) and saw some weird stuff. When trying to push lumps of data ~2GB, it would push the first 80% extremely fast (like 900MBps) and then lock up on the remaining data and take over 40s to transfer the rest. Seeing that made me think it could also be browning out.

Is there anything I am doing wrong / falsely expecting the VOXL2 to be able to perform? I can try a regular VOXL2 with the USB3 expansion and see if that works better for now, but in the end we need to use the mini anyway so I would like to get this issue figured out.

Thank you!

Hi, what is the order of the pins for the i2c passthrough on the M0201 board? Assuming something like 5V - SCL - SDA - X - X - GND, but would just like to ask to make sure. I don't believe it's documented anywhere either

@Alex-Kushleyev Just gonna bump this

@Alex-Kushleyev Hey, thanks for the response! It fixed the crashing issue, and I can see frames being processed by running 'voxl-inspect-cam -a', but viewing the boson feed on the web portal shows a blank (black) video feed. I copied the config snippet into my file (swapping out the camera for the correct one). Something interesting to note is that even though I configured the camera for 30fps in FLIR software and on VOXL end, it seems to only be streaming about 11-12 fps. Maybe something is wrong on the camera side?

Just to update with some extra information, this is the exact camera: https://www.oemcameras.com/product/22640a032-htm/

Set up is as follows: FLIR Boson+ with M0201 adapter board (red) connected to J1 port M0181 board plugged into J7 port of VOXL2 mini.

Steps taken:

1. Set up Boson+ camera using FLIR software, followed all steps detailed here: https://docs.modalai.com/M0153/

2. Was not able to run voxl-configure-cameras 51 or voxl-configure-cameras 52 as the documentation suggested, so instead added 'boson-fpv' to the J7_LOWER field of the custom config file located at /data/modalai/custom_camera_config.txt
   Then ran voxl-configure-cameras and picked the 'C' option, which generated this camera config file:
   (I also have an imx412 hooked up to the J6 connector on the mini)

	"version":	0.1,
	"fsync_en":	false,
	"fsync_gpio":	109,
	"cameras":	[{
			"type":	"imx412",
			"name":	"hires",
			"enabled":	true,
			"camera_id":	0,
			"fps":	30,
			"en_preview":	false,
			"preview_width":	640,
			"preview_height":	480,
			"en_raw_preview":	false,
			"en_small_video":	true,
			"small_video_width":	1024,
			"small_video_height":	768,
			"small_venc_mode":	"h264",
			"small_venc_br_ctrl":	"cqp",
			"small_venc_Qfixed":	30,
			"small_venc_Qmin":	15,
			"small_venc_Qmax":	40,
			"small_venc_nPframes":	9,
			"small_venc_mbps":	2,
			"small_venc_osd":	false,
			"en_large_video":	true,
			"large_video_width":	4056,
			"large_video_height":	3040,
			"large_venc_mode":	"h264",
			"large_venc_br_ctrl":	"cqp",
			"large_venc_Qfixed":	40,
			"large_venc_Qmin":	15,
			"large_venc_Qmax":	50,
			"large_venc_nPframes":	29,
			"large_venc_mbps":	40,
			"large_venc_osd":	false,
			"en_snapshot":	true,
			"en_snapshot_width":	4056,
			"en_snapshot_height":	3040,
			"exif_focal_length":	3.0999999046325684,
			"exif_focal_length_in_35mm_format":	17,
			"exif_fnumber":	1.2400000095367432,
			"snapshot_jpeg_quality":	75,
			"ae_mode":	"isp",
			"gain_min":	54,
			"gain_max":	8000
		}, {
			"type":	"boson-fpv",
			"name":	"boson",
			"enabled":	true,
			"camera_id":	1,
			"fps":	30,
			"en_rotate":	false,
			"en_preview":	true,
			"preview_width":	640,
			"preview_height":	512,
			"en_raw_preview":	true,
			"en_small_video":	true,
			"small_video_width":	640,
			"small_video_height":	512,
			"small_venc_mode":	"h265",
			"small_venc_br_ctrl":	"cbr",
			"small_venc_Qfixed":	38,
			"small_venc_Qmin":	15,
			"small_venc_Qmax":	50,
			"small_venc_nPframes":	29,
			"small_venc_mbps":	2,
			"small_venc_osd":	false,
			"ae_mode":	"lme_msv",
			"gain_min":	54,
			"gain_max":	8000,
			"ae_desired_msv":	60,
			"exposure_min_us":	20,
			"exposure_max_us":	33000,
			"exposure_soft_min_us":	5000,
			"ae_filter_alpha":	0.600000023841858,
			"ae_ignore_fraction":	0.20000000298023224,
			"ae_slope":	0.05000000074505806,
			"ae_exposure_period":	1,
			"ae_gain_period":	1
		}]
}

3. Restarted camera server & drone etc.

I am able to see the camera listed when running voxl-camera-server -l. However, when I try to view the stream via either voxl-inspect-cam -a or the portal, the VOXL just crashes. I don't know how to get any more verbose debug info, and I believe everything is set up correctly with regards to the camera & the software running on the VOXL.

Looking at the documentation it seems to not be possible (both would have to occupy the j7 camera group but the Boson+ adapter steals the entire thing). I was wondering if you guys could provide any ideas for a workaround (or if it's actually possible to connect the imx412 hires camera to the j6 group).

Thank you!

We need access to an apps proc i2c on the voxl 2 mini, which I can see are exposed on camera group J7. We also need to have a flir boson+ hooked up, which reading the documentation appears to only connect to group J7. Due to the nature of i2c (expandable as long as devices don't share an address) would it be possible to just make a custom interposer board that breaks out one of the i2c bus with the camera simultaneously hooked up?