Not entirely sure what category this belongs but may possibly post this to QGC as well.
I am using the Ark CANnode which is has an onboard IMU. Currently this publishes the raw IMU data but I want to have the attitude of the node calculated prior to being published to the can bus (rather than calculated on the pixhawk). To achieve this I have included the ekf2 module in the build firmware of the node which outputs the nodes attitude. However after doing this I lose the ability to change any of the parameters of the node in QGC as they completely disappear.
Is there a way to get the parameters back, or is there another way to achieve the attitude of the node without using ekf2 and not remove the parameters in the first place.
A separate question, when exporting parameters, are the node parameters included in this? And if so, if the node ID was to then change, would the params be associated with the ID or the node itself? e.g. if I have 2 nodes with different IDs, if they swapped ID would they also swap params if I uploaded the exported params?
Any help is great
Owen
I don’t consider QGC a reliable way to manage CANnode parameters, mostly because there are some bugs which makes me distrust it as a whole. For example the node parameters won’t make it down unless you restart QGC (QGC requests params on connection, triggering the node param request). As far as param file upload goes… I have no idea. If the CAN node IDs swap then I would assume that if QGC does indeed trigger updating the node params on a param list upload, it would swap those params on the nodes.
I would recommend using the dronecan_gui_tool for managing the nodes.
If you can share a link to your code changes to add the EKF I can test on hardware here.
That’s fair, normally I do use the gui tool, for my setup its just far more practical to be able upload set params if its possible, particularly as the nodes are “hot-swappable” so will potentially be changing positions/IDs and therefore changing params, but I might just have to suck it up and deal with it if its just untrusted/unreliable.
To add the ekf I simply just added the following to the ark cannode default.px4board file
CONFIG_MODULES_EKF2=y
and this to the rc.board_defaults file in ark–>cannode–>init
ekf2 start
Then I just wrote my own message to send the attitude from the uORB topic ekf creates, I can share that aswell but not sure it will actually be relevant for the params
Adding ekf does add 100 odd more parameters to the node, so I think that might be a first idea as to why QGC might not like it
So…
kinda didn’t realise I was being stupid and turns out you can save and load a full set of parameters on the GUI, don’t know how I missed it. It is still a slightly longer process than one click with QGC but ultimately not a big deal and a more secure way of doing it.
So ultimately this issue isn’t a huge immediate problem anymore but it would still be very useful to have access to the parameters in QGC again.
