[Solved] How to move just one servo using Mission Planner/QGround Control

Hello everyone, this is my first time posting here. I am working on a fixed wing plane and I am sure I have set up my servo properly (used a voltage regulator and connected it on the servo rail). It even moves when I connect the battery, so I am sure it is getting power. However, I am trying to move the servo from high to low (trying to open a door on the plane during flight) using QGroundControl/Mission Planner.

I have tried everything and a few of the topics mentioned I need to arm my plane, but that did not work. Please shed some light on this topic since I have been stuck on this for a while now.

Two things:

  1. If you are using PX4 Pro firmware you can’t use Mission Planner.
  2. You can’t do this sort of thing with QGC. That is if you are expecting some button in QGC you can click that will then move a servi. You may be able to use parameters to set something up which will trigger from a RC switch. But I’m not sure about that. That is more of a firmware thing.

Its useful to be able to access the system console for performing diagnostics and tests. You can arm the Pixhawk and send signals to channel outputs using the command line to make sure everything is working. There are several ways you can access the console.

See here for accessing the console:
https://dev.px4.io/advanced-system-console.html

See here for testing servos/PWM:
https://pixhawk.org/firmware/apps/pwm

Also Don is correct, you can set up an RC switch to move a servo between two positions. You should be able to define each position in the PX4 parameters by setting the min and max values for a particular PWM channel.

Hope that helps!

@Siytek and @DonLakeFlyer Thank you guys for replying. Both of your methods were helpful. What I finally ended up doing was, I used an xbox controller and mapped the servo to the ‘yaw’. So when I move the joystick up, the servo moves and when I release it, it goes back to it’s original position.

Nice! I didn’t realise you could do that :slight_smile:

@DonLakeFlyer wouldn’t that actually be a very nice feature? Optional configurable buttons in qgc to control servos?

Sure. But a mile down the priority list