PX4 Dev Call: March 02, 2022

[rroche]

March 02, 2022

Join us

Jitsi Meet

Agenda

• Community Q&A
• Project Updates
• High priority queue
• Release
• In-Depth discussions

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Community Q&A and Discussions

Upcoming release of the ATL Mantis Edu Drone

@potaito

• Will be the first ‘ready to fly’ drone running on PX4.
• Release expected around March - April
• Early Adopters will get around 50 units in public

Current Issues

• Currently having issue in “Preflight checks” issue (sometimes pre-flight checks disappearing from QGC)
• Imbalanced Propeller issue → to be tuned
• Optical Flow Measurements are a bit inconsistent (scaling is wrong?)
• Range Sensors are having error of 1 ~ meters, which is a big difference. Error could be from the Terrain Estimator output of EKF2.
• Still logging through MAVLink Streaming, through the camera processor.

Discussions

• @dagar : High rate logging should be fixed, or else, estimator analysis would be hard.
• Issue created on Github for tracking Mantis Edu issues.

SBF (Septentrio Binary Format), GPS Message format integration into PX4

• By Seppe
• INS in GPS module for current application
• Info website about the SBF, for interested readers
• Buffer size issue.

Release schedule?

• dagar : How about doing the Beta Release?
• NuttX → @david_s5 : There’s been a lot of revisions (e.g. Task switching, stack management, etc.). Not a lot of driver developments.

Reboot / EKF2 reset via RC command

Hi All, Is there a way to assign one of the radio channels to perform a full system reboot or EKF2 restart ?

• Existing topic by @Ahmed_Elsafy

System Reboot Switch

Hi All, Is there anyway to assign a switch on the RC to do a full system reboot? there are many cases I have found that we needed to reboot through QGC to clear some precheck alarms and restart the EKF estimator. Would be nicer to be able to do it when we do not have QGC

• Currently in testing setup, because of high accelerometer bias, etc, the EKF2 needs reset. But needs QGC, which is cumbersome.
• dagar : Shouldn’t existing logic handle the ‘picked up by user and moved by hand’ covariance error?
• @Ahmed_Elsafy : Without alarms, etc, it’s hard to figure out in the field whether the system needs a restart or not.
• @rroche & dagar : Would be better to figure out what happend, via observing the logs. Can be fixable without this new RC control feature.
• dagar : Home position is reset when changing from landing mode to airmode?

Speed Limiter via RC Switch activation

Hey Hi I’m jorge and I’m relatively new to the world of px4.
I am planning to implement a speed limiter, activating a switc of the rc transmitter. maybe you could give me some tips to start with this task and which would be the best way to start.

• By Jorge
• Thomas : Currently performed max speed setting tests.
• dagar : Question is, how to expose that setting to MAVLink? / to the User?
• Currently interested in : 1 m/s maximum speed mode &
• potaito : Maybe program a module, where it changes the vehicle’s “Parameter” to constrain the velocity.
• Discuss with @MaEtUgR later about the parameter settings

Runway takeoff logic on the fixed wing

• @tstastny : Wheel control / Rudder.
• dagar : Should be separate. What about checking the ‘albatrass’ airframe?

Coordinated Turn logic

• Fixed Wing control. Efficiency control, e.g. Rudder control.
• It’s in the ‘Fixed Wing Attitude controller’
• Brought up, because this is involved in position control → attitude control pipeline, for fixed wing takeoff case.

Flap control

• dagar : Flap control in control allocation?
• tstastny : System Identification and modeling the lifting wing is an idea.
• Roll control torque and etc, more discussion by @sfuhrer
• tstastny : Put a wheel controller in the attitude control of a fixed wing?
• dagar : We should check which vehicles people are using.
• Fixed Wing steer control & rover control, all related.
• Taxi-ing feature could be a nice feature to *add
• dagar : Want to get into landing (fixed wing) as well

QGC Crashing issue

• By David
• Fix PR has been pushed today

Project Updates

Updates from the team

High priority queue

Discussion based on board : High-Priority Queue · GitHub

MAV_CMD_NAV_TAKEOFF drone weird behavior issue

Sending MAV_CMD_NAV_TAKEOFF while flying in other flight modes pushes the drone towards vec = (1, 1, 0)

• @mcsauder : Can’t figure out where take-off altitude is being translated into position setpoint triplet

Release

In-Depth discussions

• HolyBro CAN GPS

For smaller groups expanding technical discussions, stay until the end and follow up.

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If you have any feedback or corrections please comment on this post.