DEV call 23-Feb-2015 5pm PST = 24-Feb-2015 0100 UTC

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Craig J. Elder

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Feb 23, 2015, 7:38:47 PM2/23/15
to drones-discuss
Copter 3.2.1 release

storm32 gimbal in master
leonard's current limiting and voltage scaling is nearly ready for master
working on precision landing
autotune for yaw 

APM:Plane 3.2.3 and 3.3.0beta1 released
"is the plane flying" test
Lidar PWM


apm-rover-release-2-48

Pixhawk bad accel health monitoring 

Craig J. Elder

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Feb 24, 2015, 7:23:26 PM2/24/15
to drones-discuss
SToRM32 Gimbal
==============
Code is in.  Randy can only test using a 2 axis gimbal - its all he has.
LuisVale has been testing and will produce a video once its working.
Going to ask the gimbal its values.
Currently hardcoded to be telemetry 2.  This needs to be changed.
The gimbal knows which way is up and we think it also knows its yaw angle.  
It uses 2 IMUs to perform a basic AHRS attitude calculation.  It would like to have
the AHRS parameters sent to the gimbal.  This means it has the GPS
data and this would improve its attitude calculation.
A gimbal plugged into any mavlink enabled port it will work
automatically.  When gimbal sends report message it looks at source system and
component ID and it knows which channel the message came in on so the
library is able to reply on that channel.  No configuration required.
The mavlink message order is
    Vehicle sends heartbeat out
    Gimbal adopts system id from heartbeat
    The gimbal sends its status message back to vehicle using the
    "gimbal" as component ID.
    MAV_TYPE_GIMBAL
    MAV_COMP_ID_GIMBAL


MAVLink
=======
To generate bindings in a bunch of different languages look at this script.
https://github.com/diydrones/ardupilot/blob/master/libraries/GCS_MAVLink/generate.sh


Leonard
=======
Copter Current Limiting - new parameter in motors library - you provide a
maximum current.  If it sees current going over that  it starts
reducing down the throttle but no lower then 10% above the hover throttle.
Might add a current limiter to the core vehicle code but this is still
being thought about.
Voltage Scaling - Jonathan and Leonard discussed.  It tries to get the resting
voltage (on the ground) of the vehicle.  Once the throttle goes over
the hover level it starts grabbing the batteries current and voltage
and uses all those to calculate the battery resistance.  It uses that to
apply a gain to controllers.  It doesn't affect the throttle.  We need
this function for planes too.
We need a mavlink message for this.


Autotune Yaw
============
Next week more progress and report.
It tunes P and I however it doesn't tune the D term but instead tunes the filter input.


Precision Landing
===============
Previously always had the companion computer providing the velocity
targets.  Instead we should move those calculations into a library.
PREC_LAND library has been created for this.  The sensor will just
provide an angle and the internal library will convert that to earth
frame angles and from that calculate positional velocity changes.
Randy will as Daniel/IRLock guys to help with the maths for the
conversion calculations.


Plane
=====
Stable release has only a small number of high priority fixes:
       Altitude Issue
       Take off throttle delay - for bungee launches
3.3.0 will be a large release.  Beta is available as we start the 
Lots of pull requests coming in.  Would be great if we could have more
developers review the pull requests.
It would be good if developers who are submitting pull requests could
take a little more time to ensure its as good as possible.  Make sure
you have rebased with master and then it works preferably in SITL
before submitting.


LIDAR PWM
=========
Issues with I2C support on PulseLight LIDAR 
    1. It tends to lock up over time
    2. After event transfer there is a 1.6usec glitch on the bus
    caused by an internal reset
PulsedLight are working on fixing those.  In the mean time it has an
alternative PWM interface and Tridge has added this interface to the
PX4 firmware.
Its generic and can be used for anything with a PWM interface.
Also implemented was a power control pin.  This can be used to turn
the LIDAR on/off during flight.  It works for PWM and I2C interfaces.
The lockup can be potentially solved by cycling the power on the LIDAR power pin.


Tom isflying()
===========
Tom wants to detect if the plane has crashed/not flying anymore.
Tom's method is to check for crashing on landing approach and cut the
throttle if possible.


Tiltrotor from Trevor
================
Things are progressing nicely.  Currently using a FireFly Y6 for testing
Currently the code is in the Copter library and following the model of bicopter and tradheli - need to give some thought to moving it to it's own VTOL folder


Sim TradHeli
===========
Tridge and Rob to spend a morning to try and implement a model of a
TradHeli.
We would also like a sim model of a tilt rotor.


MinimOSD
========
Is still being worked on?
https://github.com/diydrones/MinimOSD-Extra
Still supporting the low resolution OSD.  No plan to move to a higher
resolution OSD.

jolyboy

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Feb 28, 2015, 7:04:44 PM2/28/15
to drones-...@googlegroups.com
Just a thought:
If we can calculate internal resistance of the battery automatically, could it be worth logging the numbers so users can track the health of their batteries?

Randy Mackay

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Feb 28, 2015, 7:33:32 PM2/28/15
to drones-...@googlegroups.com
Joly,

Yes, that came up (although it may not have made the minute) so plan is to also log the info as well..

-Randy
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