I am currently working on a Pixhawk 6C mini FCU. Previously, everything was working smoothly, with Windows Device Manager and QGroundControl being able to detect the unit automatically once plugged in. However, I had attempted to access the MAVLink shell of the device through WSL, which required to bind and attach the device to WSL through the usbipd wsl bind --busid 2-1 force and usbipd wsl attach --busid 2-1 commands in Windows Powershell, after which the device could be detected in WSL as /dev/ttyACM0.
However, after a few times of unplugging and plugging the device back in and repeating the steps above, the FCU’s COM port can no longer be detected in the Device Manager and QGC, but the device can be found when using the command usbipd wsl list in Powershell. The device can also successfully attach to WSL and the MAVLink shell can be accessed. I have tried plugging in the FCU to a Linux computer, it can successfully detect the device as /dev/ttyACM0 and the MAVLink shell can also be accessed but QGroundControl does not detect it.
An update: it was an issue with my Windows device where it detected the FCU as a USBIP shared device, possibly because I had disconnected and reconnected with WSL several times. I found the device and updated the driver and now Windows can detect it as a COM port again.
However, QGC still shows ‘Disconnected’ when I connect the FCU, but MAVLink messages are still being streamed and can be viewed under MAVLink inspector.
But QGC can detect it when Ardupilot firmware is flashed onto the Pixhawk, could it be a firmware issue?
Update: it was the component ID that caused it to be undetected by QGC and show “Disconnected” but still accessible through the MAVLink console. Once the component ID was changed back to 1 it works as usual.
As per the MAVLink documentation, component ID 25 is the “Id for a component on privately managed MAVLink network. Can be used for any purpose but may not be published by components outside of the private network” , so I suppose this means that QGC needs to be explicitly included into the established private network for it to be used with a user-defined vehicle.
But strangely reflashing PX4 firmware (various versions, including the latest stable, previous stable, and custom versions) does not solve the problem, but flashing ArduPilot firmware does cause it to be detected.
