Dev Call Nov 27, 2017 2300 UTC

Copter

  • 3.5.4 released

Rover

  • 3.2 update

Log analysis

http://www.maverick.one/analysis/uploader/

Issues & PRs

FAA’s UAS integration program

  • Registering as an interested party

Contribution of the month

  • Eligibility

Funding Committee

  • Unconference

Code Of Conduct

Attendee count (max): 22

UTC23:02 - Log analysis / James

  • Maverick is available and people should give it a try and provide feedback
  • Pre-alpha version
  • A few limits on log-size that can be uploaded
  • Tridge needs to talk to Dronee about their Javascript stuff again
  • Perhaps this will work well with

[b]UTC23:04 - [url=https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/7291]

  • Set a variable in existing switch statement
  • Don’t generate all the names - too much wasted space
  • “Executing wp=%u %s”

UTC23:14 - Randy and Copter and Rover

  • 3.5.4 was out last Thursday

  • Compass fixes

  • See release notes

  • HMC compass GPS modules going away is less of a problem now!

  • Will need a new release of Rover for new GPS stuff

  • Also a Plane release, probably soonish

  • New loiter is progressing

  • Flight-mode-classes

  • Focussing on getting a Rover release out

  • New version is better than the stable version

  • Need to get it out

  • Motor jump when you are rotating on the spot with a skid-steering vehicle and you go from forward to reverse or reverse to forward

  • High left-motor value vs high right-motor value

  • Mixer changes were possibly better the first way

  • Reverting a few bits

  • Should skid-steering vehicles drive like a car?

  • When you drop in reverse….

  • Set_global_position ROS changes

  • Manual mode / steering mode

  • Like driving in auto mode

  • Lateral acceleration etc etc

  • We have other things we could do, ‘though

  • E.g. rotate at 90 degrees/second when holding stick all the way over

  • E.g. headless mode

  • E.g. cruise mode

  • When you activate the sticks it moves a waypoint around (in Plane)

  • Would be useful for boats

  • Yaw’s been fixed for this

  • Guided is already a heading controller….

  • Define size of tires and vehicle length?

  • Maybe all tuning parameters would work after that?

  • Maybe a max steering angle

  • Might need to know more about the steering system

  • Rovers have a very direct line between these parameters and its handling

  • E.g. Wide vehicle with small wheels has slow rotation

  • Halve the vehicle width and turn rate doubles

  • Model-based controller…

  • PR in next couple of days to add this stuff

  • Pierre: small-speed issues need looking at

  • Sometimes the EKF is saying we’re moving slowly backwards when we’re moving slowly fowards….

  • Perhaps an epsilon for speed?

  • Leonard thinks we should rely more on our desired vs our actual speed

  • Trust lower-level controllers to actually get us to that speed

  • Pierre: Ability to add different frames in ROS is coming

[b]UTC23:34 - [url=https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/7270]

  • S.BUS out PR
  • Should be much safer to merge now
  • Flight-tested now
  • Servos on boot is a problem
  • Setting initial mode to qstabilize seems to work around that
  • SERVO_SBUS_RATE
  • Refresh rates need to be higher to be able to use on multirotors
  • Doing a good job on the Convergence, however!
  • Unbuffered writes will be useful for other systems
  • E.g. the volz servo
  • Jitter goes down a long way
  • 300us now
  • There’s some Log_Writes under SITL
  • Couple of debug statements to go away
  • Tridge will need to look at in-depth
  • UART Pid-restriction needs to be looked at
  • Maybe a semaphore
  • Use early-returns rather than deeply nesting if blocks…

[b]UTC23:48 - [url=https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/6406]

  • Continue land on failsafe
  • If vehicle is in land mode, should it continue to land if a failsafe activates?
  • Originally this PR changed behaviour with no parameter
  • Parameter now which specifies behaviour
  • No default change in behaviour
  • If param is set then vehicle may continue
  • Should we have a bitmask here?
  • Volume of parameters is a bit painful…
  • Mission Planner’s bitmask interface needs improvement
  • See APWeb’s bitmask interface with checkboxes
  • FS_OPTIONS
  • See Q_OPTIONS
  • Started off with a single bit but within 2 days it was three bits
  • We only ever have one level of failsafe ATM
  • Perhaps we could have multiple levels of failsafe?
  • Land mode is both a mode and an intent
  • E.g. if you are using correction data from a GCS (landing on a ship) then you may not want to continue landing on GCS failsafe!
  • E.g. some people use land to just lose height rather than to actually land
  • Land-within-auto needs to be checked and considered

UTC00:05 - Airspeed driver

  • External baro and airspeed baro on same address
  • Airspeed pin parameter to disambiguate?
  • This is why we added the airspeed_bus parameter
  • But they’re on the same bus
  • Need to change the address on 5525
  • Can we do that?
  • We test for both addresses ATM
  • Add new type ms5525 on alternate address
  • Changes probe address
  • Ms5525-high and ms5525-low?
  • MS5525, MS5525-[hi-addr], MS5525-[low-addr]

UTC00:09 - battery monitors

  • Enable parameters make sense
  • People want more battery monitors
  • Lots of people have power bricks and don’t configure them
  • Type an enable parameter?
  • On by default?
  • Would break the MP setup page if we were to change this behaviour
  • Failsafe may engage by default?
  • All power bricks have different scaling factors
  • Voltage-scaling on motors!
  • Need to do scaling on correct battery pack for quadplanes
  • Trim_throttle in normal planes hsould be scaled with battery voltage
  • Not an issue if you have an airspeed sensor
  • Teach AP_Param to teach the first open to display?
  • Magic flag
  • Sounds complicated
  • Tridge: “parameter library isn’t that scary”

[b]UTC00:17 - [url=https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/use-apds-9930-proximity-sensor-for-land-detection/23487]

  • really , just be aware of it

UTC00:17 - sensorhub

  • Doesn’t work well with the singleton

  • Instantiates multiple copies

  • Needs to generate the protocols separately from the sensor

  • Pierre wants to use this to test electronics

  • [url=https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/pull/6388]

  • Using SITL to test more hardware

  • We already have ways of getting data from physical devices

UTC00:23 - regulation

  • This morning the FAA had some webinars to get people to register for their UAS integration program
  • We can register as an interested party
  • Important because US scheme will probably be model for other countries
  • Jeff is willing to take the lead on this
  • Spektreworks, Aion robotics and a few other partners have already registered

UTC00:28 - Contribution of the Month

  • eligibility

  • Maintainers are excluded?

  • Dev-team-members are excluded?

  • Apparently we forgot to put Paul R on the dev-team until yesterday!

  • Welcome to the dev-team Paul!

  • Tridge: Nomination for lorbass for RealFlight modelling

  • Olivier: Nomination Patrick P for helping users on forums etc

UTC00:40 - Volunteers required for funding committee

  • Term has ended

  • People need to step forward if they want to do this

  • We now have three new people! (Olivier, David, Luis)

  • Make funding requests for unconference

  • Clarify FF’s funding term!

  • Vote was for one year discussion was for 6 months

  • Also, please contribute on US$ vs Euro discussion

UTC00:50 - Code of Conduct

  • Prevent member of dev team in own consulting activity working on weaponised/manned aircraft
  • Do good as opposed to weaponising which by definition is intended to do hard
  • How does AP ever get better at manned stuff if we absolutely decree you can’t work with AP on manned?

UTC01:25 No-fly zones

  • At current state we could be excluded
  • Not even close at the moment
  • How about vehicles without GPS?
  • Time frame?
  • Force-down?
  • MISSION_AUTHORIZATION?
  • Or have GCS upload a set of no-fly zones
  • Couple of weeks work
  • Tom did some of this for Syria uplift
  • Randy can do the flight control stuff
  • Need low-level SD-card database storage stuff
  • Authorized zones instead?
  • Authorized areas within no-fly zones?
  • Really has to be done on the flight controller
  • Not CC or GCS
  • DJI is almost real-time
  • updates maps in real-time
  • Bypass codes. Bleh.
  • Multiple tools, we should do many
  • So do MISSION_AUTHORIZATION
  • AND no-fly zonesundefinedundefined