Benewake TFmini-S: How to issue commands to change from UART to I2C?

ppoirier · June 18, 2020, 2:09pm

If you have an Arduino , you may try this

snoozer · June 18, 2020, 2:22pm

I am not a coder, I feel way more at home on a Linux CLI than an Arduino. I try the Linux approach 1st and see what happens

Thanks
Jan

pilotltd · June 18, 2020, 11:08pm

Did raise a question in Mission Planner tag - no response. Looking at the app history nothing has happened with it in years.

lucasdemarchi · June 19, 2020, 6:26am

Not sure if people noticed, but when implementing this I also added a script to switch the mode back and forth from UART <-> I2C. See Tools/scripts/tfminiplus.py in ArduPilot’s repo.

ppoirier · June 19, 2020, 9:35am

Thanks Lucas
Here is the link

github.com

ArduPilot/ardupilot/blob/master/Tools/scripts/tfminiplus.py

#!/usr/bin/python3
# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3

import argparse
import fcntl
import os
import serial
import struct
import sys
import time

try:
    import argcomplete
except:
    pass

SYSTEM_RESET  = struct.pack('B' * 4, 0x5A, 0x04, 0x02, 0x60)
MODE_I2C      = struct.pack('B' * 5, 0x5A, 0x05, 0x0A, 0x01, 0x6A)
MODE_UART     = struct.pack('B' * 5, 0x5A, 0x05, 0x0A, 0x00, 0x69)
SAVE_SETTINGS = struct.pack('B' * 4, 0x5A, 0x04, 0x11, 0x6F)

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ppoirier · June 26, 2020, 8:48am

Well finally this whole thing inspired me to push for this

rickyg32 · June 26, 2020, 2:19pm

How are you making out Patrick

ppoirier · June 26, 2020, 4:55pm

Did you read the blog?

rickyg32 · June 26, 2020, 5:30pm

Yes very cool.
You tried very hard to hit your garage door with no luck. lol.
What would be interesting at some point is to design a drone with this hardware taken into account. So the drone looks like its a drone and not a drone wearing a big hat hahaha.

ppoirier · June 26, 2020, 5:35pm

Please add comment on blog and I will answer there

Morgan · July 29, 2020, 12:59am

i fricking love you guys. i was beating my head against the wall trying to make my tfmini plus work on i2c last night. i thought i bricked it so i exchanged it and was about to give up when i found this thread. thank you @ppoirier and @rickyg32

rickyg32 · July 29, 2020, 1:54am

Glad you got to where you needed to go. But it’s all down to @ppoirier. He is the genius here. I just follow what he is doing. Lol

ppoirier · July 29, 2020, 10:32am

lol thanks @rickyg32

Tampa_Drones · July 30, 2020, 3:44pm

@ppoirier I have the tfmini plus and I am using a uart port rather than i2c. I can see it working in the Benewake app, and I know my rx and tx are correct on my flight controller, but I am using a custom firmware. I am running the Omnibus F4 Nano V6 and I was curious is maybe that firmware hasn’t caught up with lidar support? Also, when I check the Pix Mode box in the app, the graph stops and doesnt continue until I uncheck that box. Could that be related?

ppoirier · July 30, 2020, 3:52pm

You can change mode so it outputs clear ascii text and be used as a standard UART rangefinder

Tampa_Drones · July 30, 2020, 3:55pm

I thought I did that by entering 42 57 02 00 00 00 04 06 and sending the command. Is there another command to send to save? It doesnt seem to keep after removing power

Tampa_Drones · July 30, 2020, 4:00pm

@ppoirier This is what my Tera Term looks like after entering 04 06

ppoirier · July 30, 2020, 4:13pm

According to the TFMINI PLUS reference manual

5A 05 05 02 66 to get in PixHawk - Clear text
5A 04 11 6F to save

btw I dont think you can use TeraTerm for this you need something like RealTerm that can send command strings

Tampa_Drones · July 30, 2020, 4:18pm

Is this with or without the Pix Mode box selected? This should be the alternative to selecting the box, correct?

ppoirier · July 30, 2020, 4:20pm

You need to have communication working before sending commands
The mode should change once you issue the save command