Custom Gazebo PX4 Model in SITL - Compass Calibration Lost?

QGroundControl
3

Solved this by just digging through the code. TLDR - delete the PX4-Autopilot/build and build again with make px4_sitl gazebo_standard_vtol

Anyway –

  1. The Factory Reset button sends a mavlink command to reset the factory parameters in SensorComponentController.cc in QGroundControl:
    _vehicle->sendMavCommand(compId,
                             MAV_CMD_PREFLIGHT_STORAGE,
                             true,  // showError
                             3,     // Reset factory parameters
                             -1);   // Don't do anything with mission storage
  1. The Commander.cpp in PX4 receives the command and dispatches a job to execute the command
				} else if (((int)(cmd.param1)) == 3) {
					answer_command(cmd, vehicle_command_s::VEHICLE_CMD_RESULT_ACCEPTED);
					_worker_thread.startTask(WorkerThread::Request::ParamResetSensorFactory);
				}
  1. The worker_thread.cpp in PX4 writes the changes to a parameters file kept in the aircraft’s eeprom
	case Request::ParamResetSensorFactory:
		const char *reset_cal[] = { "CAL_ACC*", "CAL_GYRO*", "CAL_MAG*" };
		param_reset_specific(reset_cal, sizeof(reset_cal) / sizeof(reset_cal[0]));
		_ret_value = param_save_default();
#if defined(CONFIG_BOARDCTL_RESET)
		px4_reboot_request(false, 400_ms);
#endif // CONFIG_BOARDCTL_RESET
		break;
	}

It appears that for SITL, this eeprom record is persisted across builds. One can manually locate that file or, simply remove the PX4-Autopilot/build/ directory in PX4-Autopilot repo. Apparently a make clean is not sufficient. Then just build from scratch with make px4_sitl gazebo_standard_vtol.