Dev Call June 11, 2018 2300 UTC

CraigElder · June 12, 2018, 4:59am

Attendee count (max): 25

UTC2301 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/8601

Detect conflict between compasses on one batch of Here+
- Two compasses same i2c address
- Corrupted magnetic fields
- All sorted out now with these patches
- Should probably be backported
Workaround is to set compass-typemask to disable the icm20498

UTC2307 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/8531

Tom is in another timezone still
This discussion needs Tom

UTC2308 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/8492

Log plane navigation functions
Column name issues have been resolved
Gb-init-ignore was also snuck in
Should be have a sample gdbinit file?
- Template for people if they wanted it

UTC2309 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/8354

Did this get tested in SITL?
- Not yet
Lexton wanted his vehicle to fly slow
Michael wants his vehicle to fly fast
Did that option go in?
- Not yet, but it is required
We haven’t progressed this one…

UTC2312 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/8327

Storm32 native serial mount
Little bit of work since last week
We should jump in and do whatever little cleanups are needed given this is a first-PR
- Nullptr-checking, that sort of thing
- FF is hoping to look at this this week

UTC2314 - simplify radio trimming

https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/8499
Report back to GCS if it failed
Pulling same result from radio is pointless
Why do this rather than setting parameters?
- MP might have a button to just trim parameters
MAVProxy can synthesise packets at the command-line to test this sort of thing
On-board radio trim?
- PR for later
This just needs testing

UTC2319 - https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/8603

Remove F4Light HAL entirely was proposed this-morning
Tridge has been working on F4Light with night-ghost for some time
- Appropriate licensing wasn’t checked on merge
- Tridge found the libertyv2 license recently in the code
  - http://www.st.com/software_license_agreement_liberty_v2
    - Clause5 says it cannot be combined with GPL (and various other) licensed code
Tridge has been working hard to get this mess cleaned up
Night-ghost has made many patches to try to fix the problem
- None of them have been sufficient
  - 50,000+ lines of code to rewrite?!
  - Still likely to be derived work
People MUST take these licensing issues seriously
ChibiOS ST libraries?!
Proposal: remove F4Light HAL
- With very great regret as this was an extremely valuable addition to ArduPilot
- With very talented user-base
ChibiOS port will support most of the hardware
- Will lose some features of some boards
  - Tridge will work on Native-OSD support
    - Will also work on Linux, then
Need to make a public announcement expressing regret and explaining what needs to happen to get it back in
Exemption?
- It would basically be a relicensing of the ST libraries as an exemption just for ArduPilot wouldn’t work (GPL requirements)
License is not a piece of text. It’s a URL!
- They can dynamically change the license?!
  - Hard to tell what license software was licensed under otherwise
Many, many, many other Open Source (inc. GPL) projects include these libraries
OpemCM3 was created (and NuttX HAL-layer was created) in response to the Liberty license!
ST does have a lot of stuff out there with compatible licenses
- Core SPL library isn’t
PR is poking his contacts
Contribution agreement?
- Adds friction
  - Small contributions from new developers will be harder
  - Will slow things down a bit
- There are tools out there to ease the process

UTC2338 - GSoC

Most students have published a blog on discuss
- Poking the rest
Putting together a meeting for all of the mentors for evaluations
- Skype group chat is a reasonable place to put stuff
Ebin has balance-bot balancing in SITL
- He has hardware
- Should be balancing on real hardware shortly
- Desired-velocity controller still to be done

UTC2340 - funding committee

Very nice response
James Pattison has been voted in
Still time to vote ‘til end of call
[9:42 AM] (Channel) MdB: please leave vote result viewing open…
[9:42 AM] (Channel) MdB: not to keep harping on that, but really?

UTC2342 - nominations for contribution-of-the-month

Sh83, chobitsfan
More nominations welcome
We’ve been a bit slack on doing these
Give both?
- Vote to give to both as we’ve not been doing this in too long

UTC2343 - new funding request

[9:43 AM] (Channel) J: speaking of funding… new funding request Funding for Shenzhen EXPO booth 22-24th June, max 1k$USD
- Will be looked at and responded to ASAP

UTC2344 - Shenzhen expo

1.5 weeks off
Conference schedule under control
1 or 2 slides missing
- Will be finalised in next few days
  - Then translated to Chinese
People have been working on exhibition booth
- Banners are an issue
  - Jani will make and hand-carry to Shenzhen
  - Ideas for design are welcome for these banners
  - 24 hours before work to be started
Text for the banners would be greatly appreciated
- The VTO banner wording
  - Business commentary? Technical commentary
  - Jeff has layouts in front of him but writer’s block….
    - Contact Jeff if you can help!
History-wall will be there
LCD TV
Jeff will supply list-of-videos
- 25-minute-loop
- N: Here’s 45 more seconds of video for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCPpPgR1pWo
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h1_2G_8xBSOs1fTpaQasGqz3U77YKPNbxTAHC-Pt3Pg/edit?usp=sharing

UTC2355 - qloiter and airspeed error

Quadplane and new loiter code
- Initialisation fix
- And some new default parameters
- Will go into second beta
Airspeed sensor
- Vertical lift motors popped on on the Porter
- Interesting class of error
  - Brief airspeed failure
  - 3 seconds
  - We correctly shifted to internal airspeed estimate
    - We updated a filter based on this value, however
      - Including for the raw pressure
      - Completely rubbish airspeed when the sensor came back because the filter was polluted
  - Be wary of “Infinite impulse response”
    - Big erroneous input will affect filter forever
    - Not the case with this particular bug, but something to look out for
New beta time!

UTC0000 - Randy and Copter

Rover Rc2 is out and being tested
Polygon fence fixed
Easy calibration fixed
- Hal-armed flags etc
RC8-minimum-below-trim
- MP sets RC trim on unused RC channel to zero all around
- Hopefully MO can fix this
- Does happen on higher-numbered-channels too
New beta to come out

UTC0004 - Randy and Rover

Still in beta for 3.4
Really great feedback
Including on vision-position-estimate
accel/decel fixes
Better pivot turning
One issue outstanding
- Wide turns
- We moved the speed-scaling into the motors library out of AttitudeControl
  - Restricts the output range
  - Leads to not having good steering control at high speeds
- PR is in place
  - Accepts numbers outside -1…1
Rc2 should be out later this week
Moving scaling to output?
- Clamping to +1/-1 only after scaling is applied?
  - Not just Rover which suffers
- Meaning of i-term an change over time
  - E.g. tight corner at high speed == i-term buildup
  - When you slow down the meaning changes?
- Plane has multiple actuators for same axis
  - E.g. differential thrust and rudder
  - Need different speed-scaling factors for these actuators
  - Tridge is thinking about adding something in servo library to add speed scaling
  - Set-speed-scaling of k_left_throttle
    - Would always be 1
  - Set-speed-scaling of k_left_rudder as 1/speed
    - Would scale rudder according to speed
E.g. a swamp boat with two motors and a rudder?
- Motors library or parameters as tridge described?
- Multicopter with rudder?
  - Something into motors library
    - Every multicopter frame would need to know about rudders?
Will continue discussion in general chat during the week
- Fun, worthy of debate!

UTC0014 - AntennaTracker maintainer position still open

UTC0015 - expo redux

Ardupilot.org as main banner text

UTC0016 - make videos!

Need videos for things like calibrating airspeed sensors on Planes and the like
- Nate might be able to put some together
E.g. CO’s tradheli videos