Dev Call Feb 5, 2018 2300 UTC

Copter

  • Leonard’s new loiter
  • Follow/chase

Rover

  • Update

Plane

  • First Flight on ChibiOS

Issues

  • Revo Mini
  • RadioLink

Canberra Un-conference

Swag Shop

Strategy

Probably wont be able to listen in , not sure how, but the original point of the topic was how do we get more involved on the hobby FPV side. A lot of fixed wing FPV flyers use something other than Arduplane. When asked, most either don’t know about it, or think it is too difficult to set up. And most of the “too difficult” is coming word of mouth. How can we change that?

Have the minutes been stopped? They’re really good for the community to keep up with the developments and direction of ardupilot - they’re pretty much the only window we have into the inner workings of Ardupilot.

@fnoop minutes come normally in a second email later in the week!

Have the minutes been stopped? They’re really good for the community to
keep up with the developments and direction of ardupilot - they’re pretty
much the only window we have into the inner workings of Ardupilot.

I’ve discussed with Craig and I’ll start to send them out directly.

Thanks @peterbarker, they’re a good read for those of us in .eu who can’t attend the meetings :slight_smile:

Just to clarify- so the minutes will no longer be published here?

I’d be interested in the answer too :slight_smile:

ArduPilot Dev Call 2018-02-06

Attendee count (max): 23

Pre-Meeting

UTC2301 - Randy and Copter

  • New version of Leonard’s loiter
    • https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/7659
    • Incorporates EKF reset changes
    • Needs testing on this thing!
    • tridge needs to approve due to quadplane changes
      • Could use RealFlight
    • Leonard may already have tested on a quadplane
      • Need to test it on tailsitters etc
    • Now passing lean angles rather than -4500/4500 signal
    • Smoothing gain changes
      • High number == crisp
      • Used to have two numbers
      • Now have single crispness number
      • ATC_INPUT_TC
    • Should be more responsive
      • Uses more ffs
    • Will allow us to stop cutting corners in waypoints
  • Follow / chase
    • Smarts in drone itself
    • New PR for this
    • Distance max
      • Sysid parameter
        • If 0 will grab onto first one that it sees
    • Offset parameters
      • In other vehicle body frame
        • Or can be fixed for yaw (NED)
      • If 0 they will grab offsets from original distance
      • Type can be relative to heading
      • Has yaw behaviour
      • There’s a TODO list on the PR
    • Amilcar has some extrapolation code he can apply on top of this PR
      • They use RTK GPSs
      • Compensate for variable latency

UTC2311 - Randy and Rover

  • No release in last week
  • Bunch of people testing
  • Boat station keeping (see video)
    • Weather-vaning desired
    • Current estimation desired
      • EKF wind estimation?
        • Paul says no
      • Some sort of higher-level estimation
        • Start measuring velocity when we first quiesce because we’re within the waypoint radius
        • Learn current this way
        • Continuous update required
    • Maybe a less-complex approach?
      • Maybe position-hold-in-autotune approach?
      • Always point inwards
      • Push engine up (instead of leaning)
    • Might require different strategies for different engine types
    • Servo function for “drop anchor”?
    • Separate mode, position hold
  • Fixing pivot turns has come up
    • Gunning one of the engines is unsubtle
  • Vectored thrusters?
    • How many users,’though?

UTC2324 - tridge and Chibios

  • Sid’s UAVCAN stuff!
    • Works well
    • Tridge has flown on his Ranger
      • With Zubax GPS
    • In the pr-chibios branch
  • Mark’s buzzer support
    • Play tunes now!
    • Unmerged as yet
  • Mark’s soak testing uncovered a locking issue and other important bugs
    • Still on elusive issue being chased
    • MdB: I’ve had master chibios + lua running for ~36 hours total (mostly 12 hour increments) without any major issues so far
  • Revo Mini on Chibios is running
    • But requires weird hacks
    • Disable initialisation of GPS UART
      • Otherwise USB disconnects/reconnects at 1Hz
  • Mindpx-v2 is getting closer
    • No buzzer
    • Logging doesn’t work to SD card
      • Probably wrong pin definitions
    • Gyro unhealthy messages
      • SPI definitions probably wrong
  • Luca from vrbrain has cleaned up all vrbrain for NuttX build
    • Vrbrain hwdef.dat file coming!
    • Should we merge patches that merge vrbrain into px4?
      • If we’re moving to ChibiOS anyway?
      • Risk to HAL_PX4
      • Would need to see the patches before knowing!
    • Vrbrain should work on master
      • The maintainer thinks so!
      • Tridge hasn’t tested, just ensured it wouldn’t negatively impact on other HALs
      • Add to CI
        • Francisco will do
        • Luca to specify
  • Kevin from Drotek
    • P4 Pro support on ChibiOS?
      • Yep, they’re working on it
  • Px4-v1 still needs to be done
    • Pretty much a dead platform anyway
  • USB identifiers are different for each board now
  • ArduPilot_fmuv4_3E0031000B51353233343932-if00
  • Usb ids settable in apj tool?
    • Yep
  • Channel) JW: is there any way to burn the mfg’s serial into this?
  • [10:38 AM] (Channel) JW(apache405): ex: HX4-06001-7801277
  • [10:38 AM] (Channel) MdB: Jeff: that would be nice…
  • [10:38 AM] (Channel) JW: agreed
  • [10:38 AM] (Channel) MdB: But is that anywhere in the hardware level for us?
  • [10:38 AM] (Channel) JW: it can be burned at the jig
  • [10:39 AM] (Channel) MdB: I keep forgetting that bootloaders are being flashed already which means you have the chance to burn that sorta thing :stuck_out_tongue:
  • [10:39 AM] (Channel) JW: i think there’s a standard for this actually
  • [10:39 AM] (Channel) JW: i have to see what ASTM, et al have put out

UTC2340 - singletons and panics

UTC2344 - Revo Mini PR

  • By Night-ghost over a long period of time
  • Current PR is getting an awful lot better
  • Loyal following in Russion and in RCGroups
  • Light, fast boards with OSDs attached
  • Kind of a low-level mini-RTOS
  • Many useful drivers and driver fixes!
  • Some concerns about maintainership
    • When some PR breaks it, will he review code to fix it
    • He is responsive on problems with his code
  • Tridge has been fixing things up to coding standards and the like
  • RevoMini does run under ChibiOS
    • Doesn’t have all the features that the raw port does
    • Or the usage of it
  • AP_HAL_Lite?
  • Stm32lite?
    • He’s thought about avr, at least
  • Can we break out integrated OSD support too?
    • LV: And ys. He redid the old MinimOSD code
  • LV: translation issues
  • Tridge is getting an F7 with onboard OSD support
  • Makefile build :frowning:
  • Parameter system
    • Tridge has been fixing this up
  • OB: Has anyone been following this? https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?2784349-Ardupilot-on-OpenPilot-Revolution
    • 137 pages
    • More of discussion on Russian forums
  • [10:52 AM] (Channel) OB: Looks like that’s where most of the testing is happening
  • CI?
    • probably
  • Binary builds?
    • Probably not
  • E.g. event-based system in HAL
    • Tridge could do this for all HALs
      • Except for this new one!
    • Add it to CI, see if it breaks stuff?
  • Completions stuff?
    • Tridge prefers thread-per-bus
    • But it works for him….
  • General support for it going in if tridge is happy

UTC0005 - RadioLink

  • Peter and tridge have been working with an engineer
    • Conversations are going really well, they’re starting to open up a lot

UTC0024 - Patrick is a team member

  • Vote passed!
  • Congrats PP!
  • PocketBB / cape coming!
  • Would like moderator access on forums

UTC0025 - Canberra Unconference

  • Anyone coming not in Skype group - let tridge know!
  • Bunch of people arriving early
  • Will create a google doc for arrival time and contact numbers
  • 27 people
  • Full room!
  • Any bigger and we’ll need a larger venue!
  • CMAC
    • Small donation from tridge to CMAC
      • $300 to help cover some costs
        • e.g. pumping toilets
  • BIGLY SWARM
    • SkyViper only
      • NO!
    • Just need to do more work on other vehicles
  • Need to line up speakers some more
  • MdB will talk on Lua
  • Recording will happen
    • Streaming maybe not so much

UTC0033 - swag vote

  • 10 in favour
  • 5 for zazzle
  • 1 none
  • Called in favour of Jani starting swag shop for AP
  • So now we need to work out for how long he looks after it
    • No, we’ll bring up an explicit thing if required
  • Reports will be made to marketing committee on sales etc
  • Will be open within 24 hours!
  • Next week many more items will go in
  • Blog post coming

UTC0039 - Who are we attracting?

  • Roadmap?
  • Who is our user base?
    • Identify groups
      • Find low-hanging-fruit for these groups
        • E.g. researchers => ROS
        • E.g. aerial photographers => ???
      • Conversion strategies?
        • E.g. howto convert DJI vehicle to AP
      • Parner on-lining pipeline coming
  • Don’t count on Unconference solving all problems!
    • But there will be a discussion at UC for it
  • Please try to solve new problems with new resources rather than existing resources
  • Need more emphasis on the CoC
  • Lots of ideas, not enough directable resources
  • James will raise his document again at the unconference
    • Might make it easier to have a consistent message
      • And starting point for marketing group
1 Like

Sorry all. Life has been very busy for the last few weeks and I have not been able to get the minutes out as fast as normal

I think you rather can read this positively, i.e., that there are indeed folks which read your minutes and appreciate the service you provide
:slight_smile:

Thanks. That is good to hear.

And @olliw42, if you’re up so late, next week you’re invited to be at the dev call :slight_smile:

I am not a Dev, but I look forward to the minutes from each call, shortly after reading the agenda for each call. Please keep up the good work!

Kelly