Storm32 and px4 flight stack

hi @dagar, at this time nothing. I fligh with one drone setup with Ardupilot with a Tarot 3D gimbal, and now setting up a new drone with Px4 and a Storm32 gimbal. I use a Pixracer, this is why I want to use Px4 firmware now, gave up trying to configure compass with Ardupilot… so better results with Px4!

Okay, please get setup and we can work through getting it fully support.
I’ve only used these briefly, but it seems to me the best connection is serial and sending mavlink commands, but I think that’ll depend on the exact controller you have. Otherwise you could pass through a PWM for each axis you want to manually control. It really depends how you want to use the thing.
I’m dagar on PX4 slack if you’d like to discuss in real time (http://px4.slack.com).

thanks, good news, I will do that.

it’s nice news and is there any documentation about process of gimbal setup?

Gimbal setup - https://dev.px4.io/en/advanced/gimbal_control.html

Hi @dagar i have tried the same but with no luck
I am using raspberrypi on pixhawk telem 2 port and serial4/5 is connected to serial of storm 32 gimbal
mnt_in is set to 2 and mnt_out is set to 1
gimbal is not rotating as per the script.
please help us out.

@dagar thanks, I’ve just configurated to latest firmware 0.96. Set Mavlink config to Emit Heartbit and will try your configuration. Anyway, thanks for the time. Will give you my feedback asap.

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I am using 0.90 to emit heartbeat ,setup is working in ardupilot but no luck with px4
could anyone help?

@Mridul_Babbar did you try SYS_COMPANION with the baudrate configured to match? To use serial4/5 you’ll need to manually start mavlink.

i used 921600 companion link with 57600 i got timeout error
how to start mavlink manually? @dagar

Did you connect it to telem 2? What’s the storm32 baudrate?

i have connected to serial4/5 port and storm32 baud rate is 115200.

raspberry pi is connected to telem 2.

@Mridul_Babbar

serial 4/5 has no mavlink instance running and is occupied by frSky telemtry in pixracer . Try to disable frsky process in startup script, and start another mavlink instance for it.

Thanks @rolandash for reverting!
i am using normal pixhawk fmuv2 version.
I tried connecting raspberry pi to telem 1 and and gimbal through serial on telem 2.
but mavlink commands are not working still.
gimbal emitting heartbeat @57600.
telem 2 is set to normal telemetry 57600

I did open a new topic a few days ago and today I found this one. My general question: are you able to control your gimbal manualy using UART gimbal to serial4/5 connection ? Is the someone who can control manualy gimbal using qground control and px4 firmware?
I know topic is old but maybe someone can help me.

@dagar I am interested to use Storm32 with PX4. Is it compatible or not yet?

@others,

Any luck with the Storm32 setup with PX4?

Yes, I have managed to make it work with px4. My setup is Storm32 v1.3 with I2c IMU and using px4.

I have found this setup of px4 parameters:

  • “MNT_MAV_COMPID” change it to the specified Mavlink ComponentID from Expert tools inside Storm32 GUI (e.g. in my case 67)
  • “MNT_MAV_SYSID” change it to the specified Mavlink SystemID from Expert tools inside Storm32 GUI (e.g. in my case 71)
  • “MNT_MODE_IN” change it to “AUTO” or “MAVLINK_DO_MOUNT (protoco v1)” both of them works
  • “MNT_MODE_OUT” change it to “MAVLink gimbal protocol v1”
  • “MAV_1_CONFIG” change it to “TELEM2” or it depends on the port the connection of the gimbal is attached to
  • “MAV_1_MODE” change it to “NORMAL”
  • “MAV_1_FORWARD” change it to “1”
  • “MAV_1_RATE” change it to “11520B/s”

“SER_TEL2_BAUD” or according to the port you specified in “MAV_1_CONFIG” (e.g. if you specified in “MAV_1_CONFIG”: “TELEM/SERIAL 4” then you need to change parameter “SER_TEL4_BAUD” instead) change it to “115200” or the exact baudrate from the gimbal device from Expert tools

For full document for setup connection, updating firmware and connecting with px4 and testing, you can check here: Open Access for Storm32 Gimbal Documentation - Google Docs

@hany606 thanks for your feedback. I will test and provide feedback.

Some comments that I have recently found. For some reasons (I am not sure 100%), if you used v0.96 with flight controller via Mavlink and try to use mavros, you will not be able to get any messages from orientation topic, which means no feedback from there. I am not sure about the reason, but the current thoughts/findings (I might be wrong) that the firmware was not supporting to give orientation readings via mavlink that’s what I see from mavlink_strom32.xml file from the firmware and because of the firmware is closed(Designing a standard, open source gimbal controller - #2 by hamishwillee), you will not be able to edit the firmware and change the xml file unfortunately. Also, I am not sure if it is the case for the newer firmware versions or not.

However, if you want to get orientation within ROS, you can use this: GitHub - mcgill-robotics/ros-storm32-gimbal: 📸 STorM32 gimbal controller ROS driver I have tested that package, it worked good for control and returning the orientation relatively to the initialization pose!

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