Controlling Motors with Application

1

Introduction
I am new to PX4 and a novice with C so please bear with me!

Background
I am using a “custom built” px4 cube based drone. ESC calibration with QT ground control and motor test works fine in ground control.

Task
I have been tasked with creating an application that runs the motors and logs data when the drone boots.

Issue
After pouring through the “Creating your first application” tutorial and others, I have been able to publish and subscribe to topics and do things such as control leds, poll sensors, etc. no problem.

The issue is no matter what I do, I cannot get the ESCs or motors to do anything. I tried the tutorials from HoverGames: GitHub - NXPHoverGames/PX4Tutorials: Starter tutorials for PX4 programming on RDDRONE-FMUK66 FMU from NXP

I was able to get every tutorial working fine except the motortest tutorial and hg_motortest tutorial. It builds correctly with no errors and no errors are thrown during running the application yet there are no sounds from the ESC, and the motors do not turn.

I will continue to update and post if I get anywhere, but I’ve been stuck for over two weeks so hopefully someone can point me in the right direction.

2

Hi and welcome. It’s a bit tricky because there are mixer and actuator output groups at play.

I suggest to read through this one if you haven’t already:
https://dev.px4.io/master/en/concept/mixing.html

3

Hey @wstefan20 , Did you find a way to control the motors? I’ve been working with PX4 and JMAVSim and I started with the first application here, but I can’t seem to be able to get the quad in JMAVSim to fly. Can you help me out?

P.S I’ve tried using the vehicle_attitude_setpoint and actuator_controls messages but with no effect.