Any way to use the DC motor ports on the BeagleBone Blue as extra ESC drivers?

Hardware Linux
21

Welll you dont start easy… we generally recommend starting with a well proven vehicle before getting iln uncharted territory:-)

22

Yeah, I’d probably better start with just a quad or basic plane and move up to get the hang of things. It’s less fun though. I had plans for the quadplane to be able to do some cool stuff. Steep flat climbs and things like that.

If I have to start with just one, would you advise a quad or a basic taildragger monoplane, given what I want to work up to?

23

An alternative to increase the pwm ports is use uavcan
I’m using in servo and motors in some prototypes and is working pretty fine

24

Do you have any suggested hardware for UAVCAN? Maybe something that goes to Dshot? I’m trying and failing to write working PRU code to do it, and that doesn’t gain me any ports anyways.

25

Hi,

I’m using the UAVCan for hobbist project from Olliw, and is working pretty fine.

http://www.olliw.eu/2017/uavcan-for-hobbyists/

26

So I’d be looking at ordering pre-assembled PCBs from a fab somewhere? Is that what you did? I can’t find any retail sources for the pre-made board(s) I’d need (at least 1 4x dshot motor board).

27

Oliw UAVCan are made with BluePills … another shade of Blue :slight_smile: !!!

28

So I should be looking at getting a BluePill board (well really 2 because I’m sure I’ll find a way to mess one up :slight_smile:) and then using either his pre-compiled code or modifying my own copy to do what I need? Any recommended sources for the boards?

Also, given my current problems with my BeagleBone (see "EKF3 IMU0 forced reset" error immediately & bad Baro health. Any ideas?), should I just give up on it entirely and get a Pixhawk or Cube-series board, then return to the BeagleBone later when I’ve got more ArduPilot experience?

29

Well, If you want to fly this summer, then you could go with the easy path and get back to the nonsense later this fall :smiley:

30

Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Any recommendations for a beginner’s first dedicated flight controller? What’s going to do a good-enough job running the latest version of copter/plane without breaking the bank like an H7 board will?

31

I’m using the PixRacer R15 I believe is a good option, or a PocketBeagle :slight_smile:

2 Likes
32

Nice. I was about to buy one of the R15s, but I found a deal on a Durandal for the same price with free shipping, so I will try to snap that up.

33

But if I was in your shoes, I would make 2 things.

  1. Testing the sensors with the examples/samples program.
  2. Do a checkout in the version 3.X - to see if the errors still happening.
34

Will do. I’ll switch to 3.x tonight just to see if that fixes it.

Where do I find these sample test programs? I’ve looked and can’t find them.

35

first you need to run ./waf samples or examples ( I really dont remember what is the correct option).
After the compilation, the programs will be in build/blue/examples or buid/blue/samples - I believe will have an INS something for IMU a Compass something for compass and Baro something for Baro.

36

Will it still be configured from when I compiled ArduPilot, or do I have to reconfigure back to then?

37

In true,

if you already compiled the ardupilot, the libs are done. If not, will compile all libs again.

38

In the result folder from compiling I’ve got “aphw” as an executable. Is that it? That’s the only thing I see.

39

No, there is something wrong. What is the complete path ?

40

If wanna chat, access the gitter channel: https://gitter.im/mirkix/BBBMINI

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