Dev Call Apr 15 2019 2300 UTC

Development Team
1

Issues & Pull Requests












GSOC

Plane

  • Flyaway
  • Update

Copter

Rover

2

Attendee count (max): 18

UTC2303 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11113

  • Merged

UTC2304 - fly-away

  • Mini-pix plane

  • Flew a long way away

  • Mini-pix froze completely

  • Constant throttle, constant control surfaces

  • Major investigation

  • Remediations into ArduPilot

  • Barometer was obviously misbehaving

    • Failed on ground

    • GCS operator didn’t note the height was incorrect

    • No arming check for gps/baro consistency

  • Can’t have been under autonomous control because of faulty barometer (height-holding would have made for a wild ride)

  • Theory is error on barometer spread to IMU and it failed

    • Main loop stopped

    • Timers continue with normal PWM, so constant throttle and constant control surfaces

    • Perfectly trimmed aircraft

  • Proposal is that we enable to hw watchdog functionality on stm32

    • Reboot in flight after 1 second of no patting

    • Fast boot

    • Will be disarmed

    • Motor will be off

  • New BRD_OPTIONS

    • Bit to enable the watchdog

    • Once started it can’t be stopped without a reboot

    • Must be patted once/second

  • Default on for Plane

    • Not sure for other vehicles

  • Massive scheduler outage means reboot

    • Functions in code to say expect a delay of some time

      • Compass calibration

      • Opening logs

      • 1kHz timer takes over dog-patting duty

    • Send statustext on reboot and a sys_status bit

  • Will be going into Plane stable

  • New pre-arm checks for baro

  • Some devteam members have concerns over the continued support of the board

    • Multiple failures

    • If we stop support then users won’t get any fixes for ArduPilot

      • E.g. the watchdog thing

    • Does MO think it worth adding a warning to MP?

    • Add a note to the Wiki?

    • Random problems on discuss and facebook

    • [9:22 AM] (Channel) buzz_mobile: I think we should do mitigations first, push them, and make sure the latest version of firmware available to this board has the watchdog fix, and then give warnings to user in wiki, etc.

    • PK: Banning is a waste of time, they will just update the bootloader to mimic any other supported board.

  • Can’t currently attempt to reproduce due to restrictions in place

  • Safety switch state?

    • BRD_SAFTY_ENABLE often on

      • No outputs at all

      • State after reboot?

        • Last-safety-state parameter?

        • Backup register?

  • Copter will simply plummet on reboot

    • No attempt at recovery for the time being

  • Helicopters?

    • Autorotations?

    • Disarmed but with servos active

    • Need torque on the servos?

    • MdB: Re servos: that depends entirely on brand

    • [9:35 AM] (Channel) MdB: IE I use servos that either hold last, or go to a failsafe position

  • 1 second a reasonable timeout?

    • Well beyond normal scheduling errors?

    • Too long == no control for longer

    • Too short == false positives

    • JW: What about user configurable with a hard coded floor?

      • Bench-testing with this parameter at smaller values?

  • Needs a new bootloader to be flashed so the bootloader doesn’t wait for 5 seconds on boot

    • Looks at watchdog flags

  • Deviations of 25-30ms we sometimes see

  • buzz_mobile: I don’t think a vehicle that is flying should ever disarm itself,

  • Separate radio-inputs-in-failsafe PR

UTC2345 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11111

  • Merged

  • Fixes actual bugs

UTC2348 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11102

  • Implies nav_pitch_cd is incorrect

  • Tridge wants to root-cause the problem rather than patching over it

    • Mark is good with that

UTC2349 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11095

  • Change is probably harmless

  • Should be flight-tested on ms5611

  • Why aren’t we using floats here?!

  • Pressure-sensor for depth?

  • Need to get Jacob to test it

  • Either change to floats

    • Or test the int64 change

  • Tridge would prefer to change to float

  • Makes the code more similar to others

UTC2353 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11094

  • Which CI

  • Need to broaden travis build to build all vehicles

    • Can be merged once build_ci.sh builds everything

UTC2359 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11093

  • Merged!

UTC0000 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11092/files

  • Kill the rotate thing

  • Can merge the remaining small patch

UTC0008 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11085

  • Tridge will look at the code more carefully

  • Tridge is convinced

UTC0011 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11078

  • Rangefinder arming checks

  • Existential check

  • Make sure we can actually create a backend and disallow arming if we can’t

  • Had to do param conversion because we ran out of arming bits

  • Not converting parameters on Sub - need tridge’s help

  • Pre-arm check for being within some distance of ground before arming

  • Forward-facing rangefinders could screw up prearm heck

  • Returning true if no singleton?

    • EKF requires rangefinder to be passed in

      • Need to fix that

    • Shouldn’t being called if no rangefinder

  • Tridge: Always shift with 1U rather than 1

  • Will remove the silly range-of-movement rangefinder check

UTC0017 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11073

  • Needs to pass CI

UTC0026 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11067

  • Needs a test

  • Current_loc always has to be altitude-above-home

UTC0029 - GSoC update

  • 42 submissions

  • Student application window closed

  • Quite a few have been reviewed

  • Got 20 in the last 24 hours of the submission window

  • During the devcall next week is the deadline, pretty much

  • https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/how-it-works/#timeline

  • Doubtless more good applications than we have

UTC0030 - Plane update

  • New release coming RSN

  • Nice RealFlight8 model

    • Ideal for tailsitter simulations

    • Convergence tilt-tricopter quadplane model

  • CAN servos from HiTec working for first time with a patch

    • A few errors in the firmware which have been worked around

    • Will probably need a flag in uavcan as to whether to send separate frames

UTC0032 - Copter update

  • New beta coming soon

  • New board support

  • Cxof

  • Septentrino patch too

  • Pixhawk6 change

  • Same as pixhawk4pro

    • Just a name change

  • Pull-up fixes thanks to cuav

    • Solves Pixhack v3 SD card reliability issues

  • Copter 3.7

    • Better object avoidance

    • New OF sensor from

UTC0038 - Rover

  • No plans on release issues

  • Vision projects channel

    • People are having luck with the realsense vision stuff

    • Good position estimation up to 30m

    • Object avoidance in althold mode

  • Want to move navigation to library

UTC0045 - neopixel

  • Would like input from tridge on this

UTC0046 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11059

  • Restoring throttle-min in Plane

  • Enumeration doesn’t seem to have correct effect

    • Can’t fix it as it might cause bad things to happen…

  • Tridge wants to think about this some more

UTC0048 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11053

  • Tridge needs to look at

UTC0050 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11042/files

  • Maybe rename to is_disarmed_or_landed?

UTC0054 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/11027

  • Can be merged after some whitespace fixes

UTC0055 - HEX/ProfiCNC flow sensor

UTC0102 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/10996

  • Throttle mid-point

  • Should there be two sets of acro-rate parameters?

    • PeterH and MdB thinks “yes”

UTC0104 - Close