I am having an unusual problem. I have a TF Mini Plus rangefinder, 3 of them. One works fine and is installed on a drone in a serial UART (Telem 2) cube orange plus port. The other two, despite being configured the exact same will not work on a new cube orange plus.
I have hooked up a new, out of the box TF Mini Plus to my laptop via a TTL to USB converter and was able to successfully connect. I can also see that the TFM Plus does have power as I can see the red light. Everything is talking and is fine EXCEPT there is no data transfer, Mission Planner reports “No Data” on the HUD, sonar reports as zero (status tab).
I have tried I2C and Serial connections as well as many combinations of parameters.
My OLD TF Mini Plus works, my two NEW ones do not.
The TFM Plus’s company, Benewake, own software also reports None where it should be reporting a range. Anyone else figured this out?
Set LOG_DISARMED = 1 and send a link to the .bin log.
I suspect we’ll see a power status indicating overload, well that’s my first suspicion anyway.
I’d imagine you have to run it off it’s own BEC.
The Cube Telem1 port has a high current +5v supply of it’s own (1A or 1.5A), and everything else has another +5v supply limited to about 1A (from memory).
So the Telem2 +5v is shared with every other accessory and external device you connect, except for Telem1.
To check what kind of data is coming from the LiDAR or if there is any data on data lines, you can connect Logic Analyzer to TX wire of the sensor. If you don’t have LA, you can use a general purpose Serial Port Utility tool, maybe there is data but its not 59 59 header format, so that you cant see the data neither through Benewake GUI nor MP.
The TF Mini Plus is correctly wired as in Red, White, Green, skips two, Black reading that from right to left if you are looking at the front of the Cube Orange Plus with the servo rail in the rear. I got the information from a detailed schematic of the pinouts of the Cube Orange.
I can see that the TF Mini Plus has power because if you look at the lenses you can see the red glow in one of them. I have also verified via a multimeter that it is getting 5.01V.
If you go to parameter SERIAL1_PROTOCOL and look at the description it says “…Telem 1 port…”
If you go to parameter SERIAL2_PROTOCOL and look at the description it says “…Telem 2 port…”
Here is what I am seeing by using the Benewake’s GUI that is connected to a 5V TTL to USB converter (wire colors are correct and connections are secure). The Green None should be a number that it is detecting. The red in the lens of the TF Mini Plus verifies that it was power. According to Benewake if the Green None is showing then it means the incorrect baud rate is selected. 115600 IS THE SPECIFIED buad rate according to their instructions AND works on my other “working TF Mini Plus”. Selecting any other baud rates results in a Not Connected error. If you look close you can see “successful connection” in the lower left of the screen.
Did you swap around the serial port settings when you physically swapped the devices?
In that log the power flags is 3 the whole time, which means:
1 MAV_POWER_STATUS_BRICK_VALID // main brick power supply valid
2 MAV_POWER_STATUS_SERVO_VALID // main servo power supply valid for FMU
No sign of over-current there.
I would still try powering the rangefinder from a BEC to see if that helps. Where does your Vservo come from? An external BEC - that could power the rangefinder at least temporarily for testing.
Otherwise I cant see anything wrong with your parameters for the rangefinder in Telem2.
The voltage that is supplied to the servo rail is being tapped off the 5V output of a maytek power distribution board. I just edited the post above to show a new out of the box TF Mini Plus interfacing with Benewake’s GUI which has a power supply of 5V so I don’t think it’s a power issue from the Cube Orange.
I’m seriously thinking Benewake has this incorrectly configured.
I have shot off 3 emails to Benewake with no reply on this issue.
I took out the working TF Mini Plus and plugged it in to the Cube Orange Plus that had the non-working TF Mini Plus.
IT WORKS.
SO: Old TF Mini Plus works, two brand new ones DO NOT WORK.
Benewake has changed something and I suspect it began when they tried to make it I2C capable as I’ve never been able to get any TF Mini Plus to work via I2C.
In the manual it mentions changing modes, and also some “pixhawk” setting which didnt offer any info on what that means or does.
Unfortunately I dont have one to test here.
I don’t think this change is required. I have tried all the TELEM ports out of the box by connecting Benewake sensors. They all work normally because current requirement is not that high.
Not benewake, but you should also confirm with reseller. The product is usually sold as standard product. Sometimes reseller will ask for some changes especially the interface. If you didn’t buy it from Benewake directly (which I suppose you didn’t), so there is possibility that interface may be changed from default (UART). They reseller don’t mention it clearly. If you have Arduino or Raspi board, try to scan IIC slave devices on bus, and see if its detected by the bus.
Just a quick trick: try the tool I shared and see if there is any data from the sensor. You could also send restore to factory settings command 5A 04 10 6E (but it can not restore interface). In this kind of situations, checking raw (if there is any) using Serial Port Tools is always a good choice.
pixmode was only for Ardupilot firmware versions older than 3.6.2. If you set this mode with later firmware versions, you will get error.
