Testing optical flow for 1.14 beta

🧪 Flight Testing & Log Analysis v1.14
1

Hello, after listening to the dev call this morning, I would like to help test the possible optical flow issues in 1.14. I installed the PX4Flow along with a TFMini on my hex and while it appears the PX4Flow is starting up and functioning, I’m not sure how to actually verify it. I updated the firmware and was able to focus the lens, but after mounting it and going for the flight, I don’t know how to verify it’s working. I went through the docs and some of the references don’t seem to apply any longer.

When looking at the QGC Analyze tools->Mavlink Inspector, I don’t see anything referencing optical flow or PX4Flow? When I look at the log of my last flight, HERE, I see it shows up in the console output as “px4flow [1416:100]”, but I don’t know what that means if anything, other than it is connected. Can someone point me in the right direction of how to verify the FC (a Holybro Pixhawk 4) is receiving optical flow data through the I2C port? Once I can get that, I can start running some more test flights. Thanks!

@rroche @junwoo0914

James

2

@AlexKlimaj do you know how to verify this? Asking since I’ve never used optical flow before!

3

The MAVLink inspector, when on low bandwidth radio will not passthrough the odometry message. Could you go to MAVLink Console, and type:

listener optical_flow

And check if the optical flow message is getting published?

4

Thanks for following up during the call @junwoo0914, I really appreciate it. I’ll give that a try today and see if I can get it to work.

1 Like
5

I’m not getting any optical flow messages from the PX4 Flow, and based on what @dagar was saying in the community Q&A, I don’t think I’ll waste any time trying to get it to work. Can anyone give any recommendations on an equally inexpensive option that works relatively well and is easy to set up? I don’t really need optical flow but am willing to buy some hardware to help flight test. I know the docs list options, but I was using the PX4Flow based on that and it didn’t work out so well. Thanks in advance.