Dev Call Sept 25, 2017 2300 UTC

Copter

  1. 3.5.3 release update

Rover

X-Plane integration

Lock step

Issues









Trademarks
FAA
Amilcar Vote
Extension vote

Attendee count (max): 22

09:00 - tridge and Flash Storage
Bug found
Stm32 errata 2.1.11 covers it
Workaround implemented
Most vehicles use FRAM for storage not FlashStorage, so very few vehicle types affected
E.g. PixHawk, Cube, PixRacer etc not affected
Low-probability bug

09:04am - Chibios port
Going well
Ported to cube now
Great on CPU usage
15% when running 3 IMUs
No GPS yet, however
First flight in a week or so, hopefully
No PX4 IO support yet
No dataflash storage / fat filesystem support
No EKF3 yet
Or various other drivers
Want this under half-a-meg
Do want to transition to chibios but it will be quite a journey
Nicely structured
Small size
Porting to new chip seemed to be easy
Camera triggering, timing, RPM u=input are all little things that will need to be done
Forum seems quite active
Lead developer responsive and answers questions on forums
http://www.chibios.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4245
Paparazzi has been on Chibios for some time
Various peripherals we use are already using it
GPLv3 but other licenses can be bought
SkyViper will probably be first-to-fly
PixRacer would also be a good candidate
Short porting time

09:18am - Copter 3.5.3
SBF GPS driver fix

yaw/yaw rate support for ROS

Randy will look at this one
Randy / Competition
Need to find dummy and get stuff to it
[9:27 AM] (Channel) TP: QotD: “I have a dummy sitting in my office”
Need winch support
Will use the package-place stuff
Brushed motor
Spool with encoder on it
Bamboo forest
Soft ground
But a light dummy
Walking-vehicle next time?
randy ‘s been impressed with various doll-like vehicles he’s seen

09:22am - Rover
skid -steering issues
Need all the power to turn
Parameter added but more help still needed
Pivot-turning in missions needs help

09:33am - XPlane / Austin
Austin’s has indicated he’d love to help support ArduPilot’s simulation
Wish-list needed
Lock-step scheduling!
Craig will put the call out on discuss.ardupilot.org for people’s input

09:36am - Add support for CRSF · Issue #7006 · ArduPilot/ardupilot · GitHub
Team black sheep csrf support
http://www.team-blacksheep.com/products/prod:crossfire_tx
Kinda like frsky protocol
Driver isn’t straight-forward
Long range data / rc
Some sort of mavlink support
Just a Serial bridge?!
Betaflight have a PR for it
Radios are expensive / not widely used
They are certified
Certified in Japan?
JP: Already kinda works with ArduPilot
MdB wants to get RFD900x certified and wants to split the cost, so get in touch if you’d like to chip in
Needs FCC and CE
MdB was quoted ~$5k
Others are saying 5-figure cost
Needs information on device
Easy uhf
https://pixhawk.org/peripherals/telemetry/crossfire
i2c?!

9:40am - APM_Control: Simpify yaw controller trig by WickedShell · Pull Request #7003 · ArduPilot/ardupilot · GitHub
Trig simplification
Haven’t we already discussed this one?
If the numbers are the same it should just go in
Faster / way faster
Randy and Tom think it should go in

09:49am - Allow specification of parameter information on a per-vehicle-type basis by peterbarker · Pull Request #6998 · ArduPilot/ardupilot · GitHub
Related to moving the channel options into the rc class
Was going to have parameters in all vehicle types rather than just Copter
Peter did patch
Jacob put a PR in to fix the same thing Peter did
Vehicle override metadata by jaxxzer · Pull Request #6981 · ArduPilot/ardupilot · GitHub
Peter pulled his stuff into different PR
So we’re going to use {Sub} not {ArduSub}
Need to do multi vs heli, too
Apparently MP does own parsing?!

09:56am - Zero members by lucasdemarchi · Pull Request #6779 · ArduPilot/ardupilot · GitHub
Will eventually fix Coverity and Valgrind
Massive commit
90+ commits
New method
“Create”
anything which doesn’t need zero-init and is static
Follow-up commit will do zero initialisation in constructors
Already has picked up many places we were copying rather than taking references!
Removes copy constructors
Compilation error if you try to copy one of these
Randy will create a page explaining it
This will be going in later this week

10:04am - Amilcar is a new dev team member
Dev-team vote passed no worries
Craig will arrange addition to dev channels

10:06am - AP_Compass:enable_QMC5883 to use by ljwang1102 · Pull Request #6764 · ArduPilot/ardupilot · GitHub
QMC5883
FF thinks it is safe to enable this driver but want’s Randy’s input
Randy is good with it
3.5.4 will be out soon and it can go in along with other compass changes from tridge
FF will fix message and merge it

10:08am - FF
Random PRs have been closed related to Urus
Doesn’t want to close more without asking

Adds waf to AVR branch
Hard to make sure it works
General agreement that the PRs should be closed

Grant was worried about these changes
PB: any air at all to AVR is a bad idea; people are spending money on AVR where it would be better spent on more recent hardware
General agreement to that
Randy was the first to drop AVR support
Perception
We did ask if anybody wanted to support AVR
Don’t want to be seen as hindering people supporting AVR
Most people are unhappy having to support these boards
Is this just poking around the outside?
No features have been added?
Need to make sure we handle this situation properly…

HAL for Android was skeletonned but never implemented
FF will talk with tridge on this one

10:22am - Random thoughts
SITL on Android would be nice
Native support?
Need RT!

10:24am - Jeff and trademarks

Jeff will talk to his lawyer to get feasibility, costing and schedule
Requirements for trademark defense
Licensing for partners to use trademark
Will need to make a decision as a team as to whether to pursue the trademarks
Do we hand the trademark to SPI straight away?
$500 has been approved for the feasibility study
We’re considering trademarks on arduplane etc etc
Need to consider logos too
Maybe just the font

10:47am - FAA authorisation
Staff to be furloughed
Impending in government of US fun and games…

10:48am - Solo facebook group
Smart battery calibration
Wiki page for battery calibration coming

10:49am - batteries
Tattu
New v2
Smbus

10:52am - extension vote
Can’t do final result ATM due to bug in poll