Plane with single UAVCAN ESC (motor)

aokholm · October 20, 2020, 12:56pm

I’m making a tethered plane with a single actuator. This actuator is a UAVCAN motor (thrust). I might add more motors or servos down the line.

I’m wondering what’s the best way to attack the problem? Should I create a multicopter mixer with a single output? or can I use airplane Main or aux mixers?

I have been looking looking around the source code and documentation and it’s not clear what’s the best way to go about it. Seems most use UAVCAN ESC in a multicopter setup.

BR
Andreas

AlexandreBorowczyk · October 20, 2020, 1:04pm

Most likely the best way is to update UAVCAN ESC driver to handle simple mixers

roman-dvorak · October 21, 2020, 5:12pm

Hi, we have the same problem. We needed UAVCAN ESC because it provides telemetry data and these data are logged in autopilot.

We set the autopilot so that it only uses CAN for sensor (only reading data from CAN). And the signal is sent via PPM output. But this is not an ideal case. Such a workaround.

What ESC are you using? We have experience VESC and now, we wont to try this thing with Zubax’s ESC.

@AlexandreBorowczyk Your idea is not clear to me, could you please describe this in more detail?

AlexandreBorowczyk · October 21, 2020, 7:29pm

It all boils down to this:

github.com

PX4/Firmware/blob/master/src/drivers/uavcan/uavcan_main.cpp#L916


	_mixing_output.update();
	_mixing_output.updateSubscriptions(false);
	pthread_mutex_unlock(&_node_mutex);
}

void UavcanMixingInterface::mixerChanged()
{
	int rotor_count = 0;

	if (_mixing_output.mixers()) {
		rotor_count = _mixing_output.mixers()->get_multirotor_count();
	}

	_esc_controller.set_rotor_count(rotor_count);
}

void
UavcanNode::print_info()
{
	(void)pthread_mutex_lock(&_node_mutex);