I have an 8-motor fixed wing plane running blheli_32 ESC’s. I have read that there are hardware conflicts with outputting DSHOT protocol on ch13-16. Currently I can control ch9-12 with DSHOT and receive a clean telemetry signal. Has anyone out there been able to get DSHOT running on ch13-16? If not, is there a way to pass telemetry back to the pixhawk from each ESC without running DSHOT?
It varies depending on the particular flight controller. Which one are you using?
Pixhawk 4 (sorry for not posting that!)
The readme file in Hwdef says only the 1st 4 Aux outputs are Dshot capable. You can try configuring them and see what the banner message says in the MP Messages Screen after connection.
yeah - only 4 DShot reliably on that. You might find that ch13 and 14 work with DShot150 (I can’t remember whether it was actively disabled, or we just changed the docs so users wouldn’t do it), but there is a conflict that could bite you. ch15 and 16 aren’t capable, and haven’t been enabled. The best alternative to DShot for esc telemetry is using CANBus ESC’s, but you probably don’t want to replace stuff at this point in your project, and there are only a limited range of them so might not fit your need.
Good luck!
I’ve done that, and the RC-out is PWM 1-8, DSHOT 9-12, and PWM for 13-16
Darn, sounds like the fix to this is a new hardware rev? Yeah I have a set of the zubax myxa’s hanging around but they are a bit bulky for this application.
fmu-v5 has a number of design issues that make me wish it didn’t exist…
moving on though, the depending how you want to set things up, a board without an iomcu generally allows more DShot. If you need additional PWM, SBUS-out to a splitter is one way to get them
What I am really looking for here is to get individual motor telemetry without soldering on a bunch of phase sensors or additional current sensors. I also need prop reversing capability for STOL reasons. The system now works, but without telemetry obviously. Do you think there are any options available to do this? Is there a way to pipe telemetry data to a teensy and into the autopilot perhaps?
Something similar has been done before, but never pushed to the main repo. Basically it is possible to use a second flight controller (a revo mini was used in the instance I know of) as a DShot expander. The use case was the same as yours (octocopter vtol plane). I’m not sure where the code for it is though, or if it’s in a state where it could/should be used outside an R&D environment.
Are you able to change flight controllers? The cube orange supports 6 and the CUAV nano supports 8+ and the new CUAV Nora and X7 support 12
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I am not familiar with that controller, I just looked it up and it looks impressive. The RTK is a nice add on too. Might be a dumb question, but can the Nora run arduplane?
Any Ardupilot vehicle firmware. Usually this question is asked the other way around with the Matek XXXX-Wing boards. Yep, it will run a Multirotor just fine despite it’s name 