Posts made by taiwohazeez

Hello support,
We have five starling 2 drones in our research lab, among which two of the drones has been sent in for RMA, another two drones has been giving issues. In summary, we haven't been able to use the drones for research purposes (we have had the drones for a year). At this point, my advisor wants to get on a call with the technical team so as to know what really the issues are, and how they can be solved once and for all.

Can we get on a call sometime early in December?

Looking forward to your swift response.

Regards,
Taiwo

Hello.

This is a new starling 2 drone. I am trying to calibrate the cameras, but it seems difficult. When chess board is placed inside rectangle, the rectangles doesn't fill most times, sometimes, i get detections, sometimes i don't. It took several minutes to get a 40% collection rate. Is the calibration supposed to be this difficult? or is there a technique to this? I have seen the video on the documentation website for this, and it was seamlessly easy. Please let me know if I am doing it wrongly?

Expecting your response soon. Thanks.

Hello Support,

Can anyone kindly look into this please?

I tried it accessing the cameras today from the voxl portal, it showed live footage at first, then it crashed. Can you kindly assist.

Thanks

@Alex-Kushleyev Thank you for your response. Sorry I have been away for exams. I took the drone outside to be sure it was not because of lightning. After refocusing the tracking front camera lens, i realized that when the checkerboard was moved to the sides, and also towards the top and bottom of the camera, the images were sharp, but when it was moved directly in front of the camera, it became blurry. I inspected the Lens physically and cant seem to find any damage. I have attached the images so that you can better grasp what I mean. Thanks.

HI, I am trying to calibrate my starling 2 drone cameras, but I realized I cant access my cameras from the voxl-portal. On voxl portal, I can see the list of camera pipes, but if I select any one if them, I dont get a footage. I have attached screenshots to make you understand what I mean better. I dont know mcuh about this, could you please point me in the right direction? How can I get it working


Hi modal AI support,

I am trying to calibrate my starling 2 drone camera using openCV 6x8 chessboard (I used this command " voxl-calibrate-camera tracking_front -f -s 6x8 -l 0.038". I think my camera lens might be dull, I have a starling 2 Lens Focus Tool, but I can't find any resource to help me adjust the focus. I have attached an image of me me trying to calibrate the camera so that you clearly understand what I am trying to say. From the first image, you can see how blurry the chessboard is, In the second image, you can see that the chessboard is barely showing when the chessboard was moved inside the rectangle. The third image are what I saw in the starling 2 Lens Focus Tool.

Kindly assist.

Thanks,
Taiwo

Hi support,

I am a PhD student, and I am very new to robotics. We have 4 starling 2 drones in the lab, and right now, I have two of those drones being prepared for RMA. The drones keeps getting damaged because I don't have the right knowledge about drones. I looked up the technical documentations online, but there are still so many things I don't know. For instance, one of my drone crashed when i toggled the switch to hold mode (and it hasn't done that ever since I got it),it shot straight up very fast. I keep getting height estimate not stable (I don't even know what to do to fix that error). Also, the last working drone also drifts around when you toggle the controller to hold (the middle position). At this point, I cant even fly the drones because I might crash them again. And eventually I will get in trouble with these. Can you help with documentations that will make a beginner get all the necessary knowledge. Right now, I am just working on the drone blindly. I will be grateful if you can help with the situation.

Thanks,
Taiwo

@Eric-Katzfey No, the propellers are well positioned (that was the first thing i checked). I compared the drone with another starling 2 drone during arming, the drone not flying (the one i am trying to get fixed) makes more noise, as if the propellers are spinning with higher power while the other drone (the good one) doesnt make as much noise. Also, a point to note, the drone has been working fine since may 2025, up until two weeks ago, so I don't know what might have caused this.

@Eric-Katzfey this is the link https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Freview.px4.io%2Fplot_app%3Flog%3D279179dd-82e9-40f9-a09d-59d793ac34e0&data=05|02|thazeez2024%40fau.edu|3bfe3b5f99cc4a819a7708de21fe6020|63c3c9c1e824413fb4352f0cabb2828f|0|0|638985573747064624|Unknown|TWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D|60000|||&sdata=CBUPqljeTJLLDWFBug33%2BjhanXLhKVMV0GVnCfanLF0%3D&reserved=0

@Eric-Katzfey HI, I have attached a flight log.

Thanks!

@Zachary-Lowell-0 Hi, let me explain what i meant by hovering mode. There is a 3-way toggle switch beside the kill switch in the transmitter (toggling down switches to position mode, toggling up switches to the autonomous mode, while toggling to the middle maintains the drone flight positioning. I have another drone that when the button is switched to the middle, it maintains the drone position (thats what i meant by hover mode). My other starling 2 drones maintains their positions when the switch is toggled to the middle position, but this particular starling 2 drone doesnt.

Hi,

My starling 2 drone was working perfectly up until two weeks ago, I wasn't in the lab last week (so i cant say if anyone tampered with it or not), but right now my propeller spins, but the drone isn't moving from the ground (it sounds like its forcefully trying to lift). Can you help with what might be the cause?

Thanks,
Taiwo

Hi Support,

Kindly assist. I have a starling 2 drone that keeps moving towards the left, sometimes right and sometimes it keeps moving up when i switch the controller to hover mode (for a very few time, it hovered at a spot), but most times, it keeps moving. What could be wrong ? It has been like this ever since it was purchased. Kindly put me through what i need to do to run diagnostics.

Thanks,
Taiwo

@taiwohazeez @Zachary-Lowell-0 , please i am still waiting for a response, an advice on how to go about Apriltag detection on starling 2 would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

@Zachary-Lowell-0 yes, i copied that directly from the terminal after running this command voxl-inspect-detections -a tag_detections.

Thanks,
Taiwo

Hello support,
I have an issue detecting apriltags with my voxl2 (starling 2), I looked at the documentation online to see how it works.
I ran voxl-tag-detector, and i got this

voxl2:/$ voxl-tag-detector
loading tag-detector config file
loading apriltag config file
=================================================================
detector #0
enable: 1
input_pipe: tracking_front
en_fast_mode: 1
n_threads: 1
en_undistortion: 1
undistort_scale: 0.60
overlay_name: tracking_tag_overlay
lens_cal_file: /data/modalai/opencv_tracking_intrinsics.yml
skip_n_frames: 5
detector #1
enable: 0
input_pipe: stereo
en_fast_mode: 1
n_threads: 1
en_undistortion: 1
undistort_scale: 0.90
overlay_name: stereo_tag_overlay
lens_cal_file: /data/modalai/opencv_stereo_intrinsics.yml
skip_n_frames: 5
detector #2
enable: 0
input_pipe: extra
en_fast_mode: 1
n_threads: 1
en_undistortion: 0
undistort_scale: 1.00
overlay_name: extra_tag_overlay
lens_cal_file: /data/modalai/opencv_extra_intrinsics.yml
skip_n_frames: 5
=================================================================
default_size_m: 0.160
#0:
id: 0
name: default_name
loc_type: unknown
size_m: 0.400
T_tag_wrt_fixed: 0.0 0.0 0.0
R_tag_to_fixed: 0.0 -1.0 0.0
1.0 0.0 0.0
0.0 0.0 1.0
found cam matrix with name 'M' for detector #0
detector #0 is fisheye
waiting for cam pipe tracking_front
detector #0 connected to camera pipe tracking_front
lens #0: fx:460.04 fy:460.58 cx:666.72 cy:382.58
lens #0: fxrect:276.02 fyrect:276.35.

Then on another terminal, i ran voxl-inspect-detections -a tag_detections, but i keep getting unknown, can you help with what i might be doing wrong.

Meanwhile, I have ros2 run voxl_mpa_to_ros2 voxl_mpa_to_ros2_node running.

KIndly assist @tom @teddy-zaremba
Thanks,
Taiwo

HI support,
I have a starling 2 drone with ros2 installed. I ran a ros2 script giving the drone a position command of (0,0,-1.5), i want to believe its NED convention, and i plotted the the commanded Z position vs the actual Z position, I realized my drone (i was using HITL) doesnt climb to the set altitude, it stops at around 0.8m and starts doing a figure eight motion. I believe if i change the offboard_mode from figure eight to off/none, it shouldnt do that anymore(using sudo nano /etc/modalai/voxl-vision-hub.conf). But regarding the drone not climbing to the commanded position, i tried ros2 topic echo/fmu/out/vehicle_local_position, i got;
xy_valid : true
z_valid : true
heading_good_for_control : false

This made me wonder if the issue was because heading_good_for_control is false. Kindly advise.

Best Regards
Taiwo

Hi support,

I Have a starling 2 drone with ROS2 FOXY installed on it, when i run ros2 ropic list, i see the visual odometry as an available topic, but ros2 topic echo /fmu/in/vehicle_visual_odometry
isnt publishing anything, its just stucked. This on the other hand, ros2 topic echo /ov/odom
is working, so I know that my QVIO is running properly.

What can I do.

THanks,
Taiwo

@teddy-zaremba when i did that, it did that, it booted (the esc flashed and went off). I tried connecting the peripherals individually, the LED came up right after I connected this particular 4 pins