Pixhawk Mini and PX4 Flow

Hello,
I am working with the PX4 Flow and trying to connect it to a pixhawk mini. For some reason, I can’t find a scrap of documentation for anything related to the pixhawk mini. So, I come to y’all! The issue is that the Pixhawk mini is unable to the PX4 Flow camera being plugged into it’s I2C port. My setup/issues are as follows:

  1. The 4 pin pixhawk mini breakout cables for I2C did not fit the same 4 pin I2C connection on the PX4Flow, so I had to cut and sodder until we had a working set. I do not believe this is the problem because I soddered everything 1 at a time.
  2. Is the pixhawk mini incapable of having a PX4 Flow camera attached to it? Even if it is an I2C device?
  3. In Mission Planner, the box that one would click on to enable an Optical Flow sensor is greyed out. How do I make that not grey-ed out essentially? In addition, the value “FLOW_ENABLE” is not avaliable on the full parameter list.

I am following this documentation for the PX4 Flow: http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-px4flow-overview.html . The PX4 Flow is powered and has the most recent firmware. Any help would be appreciated. Also any pages related to the PX4 Flow and Pixhawk mini would be helpful as well!
Thanks

Hi Robert,

I don’t have a Pixhawk Mini or any documentation or schematics for it, so helping is a bit hard. Given your description I think the first step is to understand why you don’t have the FLOW_ENABLE parameter, without it there’s no point in looking anywhere else. Are you using Mission Planner?

Thanks for answering. Yes, I’m pretty familiar with Mission Planner. I’m not sure what to do to bring that parameter back.

Ok, make sure you are running latest version. Also, what ArduCopter version have you installed? 3.5 beta?

I tried flashing new firmware onto the board yesterday and it didn’t change the results. When I flashed this firmware in Mission Planner, it told me I had “check BRD_TYPE: no lsm303d found”, which after reading this post (http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/pixhawk-error-check-brd-type-no-lsm303d-found) told me to try flashing the firmware with Qgroundcontrol. That problem is with the Pixhawk mini and mission planner, I believe.

Anyways, I flashed new firmware onto the Pixhawk mini yesterday with Qgroundcontrol. I’m not sure what version that was or how to check. I am using Mission Planner 1.3.45 build 1.1.6286.16738 and Qgroundcontrol v3.1.3. I’m not sure why flashing with Qgroundcontrol doesn’t have errors whereas Mission Planner does.

That is indeed interesting. Pixhawk Mini is only officially supported with 3.5, but that is still in beta. Both in MP and QGC you should get a message saying the version when you connect to the vehicle. Also, in the screens where you can flash firmware the version should be shown.

I had similar issues. That is, the firmware that came preinstalled on the pixhawk mini worked fine until I upgraded it with QGroundControll. After the upgrade the switch button would never go solid red and arm the motors. All sensors are calibrated and nothing in the logs to indicate where to start troubleshooting. In my opinion its not ready for prime time. Im still trying to figure out how to down rev back to stock firmware.

Hi - did you ever find a solution to this, I’m sure I have a similar problem.