I’ve been working through the documentation on fences.
As I understand it, the first type of fence supported by ArduCopter was the “tin can” fence around “home.” It’s enabled by checking the “enable” box on the CONFIG/GeoFence screen.
Inclusion/Exclusion fences were added later - and created on the PLAN screen after selecting “FENCES” in the drop down menu.
My question is how do you ENABLE the Inclusion/Exclusion fences without also enabling the “tin can” fence?
My guess is that type type of fence that’s enabled is controlled by the CONFIG/GeoFence drop down box that updates the parameter FENCE_TYPE.
I finally got down to the NOTE that explains this:
Turns out that “polygon” includes circle inclusion/exclusion fences. And “circle” specified the “tin can” shaped fence.
I’ve spent quite a few hours today trying to figure this out - I wonder if it might be possible to make some improvements that might be helpful. For example, instead of “circle” for FENCE_TYPE, how about calling that shape “tin can?”
The vehicle must be always in the tin can fence if the fence is enabled.
You can’t. But you can simply disable the behavior with
and also FENCE_ALT_MAX to some high altitude.
But it is always a good idea to set that tin can fence with some reasonable values to be safe in the field.
If the bit for “tin can” fence isn’t set in fence_type, it won’t be enabled, and if you don’t load/add a circular fence within the include/exclude fences, you won’t have one. At least that’s how it’s meant to work. Are you saying that this is broken, or just that fence_enable defaults to the original circle fence?
My question was how to distinguish between the “tin-
can” fence, and a circular shaped inclusion/exclusion fence created on the PLAN screen.
The only place I found that explains this is the small note I’ve highlighted in my original post.
The note explains that all the Inclusion/Exclusion fences created on PLAN page are enabled by using the “polygon” bit on the FENCE_TYPE bit mask. (can also use the drop down selection on the CONFIG/GeoFence section for TYPE)
So as far as I can tell so far - everything works fine. It’s just terribly difficult to figure out how to use it.
A couple of suggestions that would help a typical user: (apart from better documentation)
don’t use the same name “circle” for the circular shaped tin-can fence and the circular shaped inclusion/exclusion fence.
Include a graphical representation of the tin-can fence on the PLAN and DATA screen maps - as the Inclusion/Exclusion fences are depicted. (using a different color perhaps) That way the user can see that the tin-can fence has been enabled.
When enabling the “tin-can” fence by selecting the “circle” in the FENCE_TYPE bit mask - this fence is not depicted on the map section either the PLAN or the DATA screens. The Inclusion/Exclusion fences are depicted - using colors to distinguish them.
If I’ve got this wrong - please help me by letting me know.
I must not have communicated well - Your suggestion won’t help at all.
I simply wanted to know how to distinguish between enabling the “tin-can” fence and the circular shaped Inclusion/Exclusion fences.
Easy enough to do - the “circle” bit in the FENCE_TYPE bit mask enables the tin-can fence. the “polygon” bit in the FENCE_TYPE bit mask enables all Inclusion/Exclusion fences, including the circular shaped ones.
Easy enough to do - but incredibly confusing due to poor use of terminology.
It would also help if the tin-can fence were depicted on the maps in the PLAN and DATA screens - just as the Inclusion/Exclusion fences are depicted.
I tried this in SITL, and indeed when setting circle bitmask 0 disables the tin can fence centered at home too. It was also in docs, I missed it.
Note
Polygon fence type includes the circular fences specified in the Inclusion/Exclusion fence list. The simple home centered CIRCLE fence is a separate fence. Rover ignores altitudes, if set.
