New FC: RadioLink Mini Pix

Thanks @iforce2d for the post.

I hope that your “experience” with that controller won’t prevent you to cooperate with the ArduPilot team on a few points that you note on your videos (yes, I’m the one that saw them all for the entire duration :blush:) and can be a first step to improve our “first contact” with ArduPilot.

I bought one of these. I want to use it to do some Ardupilot development. Has anyone got a “stock” firmware to load on it or gotten source from the manufacturer ?

FYI, Ardupilot is licensed by GPL3. If you ship a product that uses it, you have to provide source. If you modify the source, you have to share the changes. If this supplier isn’t willing to share their source, it is time we notified OSS and have them deal with hit.

I’m guessing their anti vibration stuff is really a Kalman filter on the IMS output. But I might be wrong.

http://gpl-violations.org/

Radiolink have started working with us, and there is now a build target using ChibiOS. It’s not in the auto build or stable releases though.
If you want to fly master (ie pre-beta firmware), you can build for this board.

Thanks for the reply. @james_pattison

What do you mean “started working with us” ? They haven’t checked their changes into github ?

What is the --board argument for the minipix ? stm32f405 ?

https://github.com/radiolinkW/ardupilot !!

@james_pattison : What is the --board argument for the minipix ? stm32f405 ?

The hwdef.dat for the board is here: https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/blob/master/libraries/AP_HAL_ChibiOS/hwdef/mini-pix/hwdef.dat

So it is now supported in master. Radiolink engineers did much of that, and also contributed some driver work.

I’m not sure how different their nuttx build is from upstream: frankly, I doubt ArduPilot will add nuttx support for any new boards, so probably wouldn’t merge a pr if it was made.

I agree that license violations need to be treated seriously. In this case, after some nudging, progress is being made.

Their customers (myself included) still have a right to their source code, so feel free to pressure them for it (politely - no need to threaten). I haven’t checked for a while, it may be published somewhere already.

Regards,

James

—board mini-pix to configure the build

Thanks. @james_pattison

No worries. I was replying via email and didn’t see your edits: if the minipix is a target in their repo now, they should really inform customers, but at least it’s in the wild.

Any comment on this :slight_smile: @james_pattison

./waf configure --board mini-pix
python: can’t open file ‘/home/me/Downloads/ardupilot-master-Radiolink/ardupilot-master/modules/waf/waf-light’: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Missing waf submodule. Trying to get it
fatal: Not a git repository (or any parent up to mount point /)
Stopping at filesystem boundary (GIT_DISCOVERY_ACROSS_FILESYSTEM not set).
Could not update submodule

Will this go away if I clone from git instead of downloading ?

I’ve never used waf before. What happened to 'make all" or even cmake ?

Yeah. Git doesn’t include submodules when you pull down the zip file.
Clone it, then run https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/blob/master/Tools/scripts/install-prereqs-ubuntu.sh (if you’re on Linux). There’s instructions in the wiki for windows and Mac .

Thanks again @james_pattison

Those instructions should be put in the BUILD.md file.

Also, I can’t remember if the pre-req scripts updates the modules, so if you have a problem again, try “git submodule update --init --recursive” to make sure they update.

Thanks again @james_pattison

But… no mini-pix

$ ./waf list_boards
aero aerofc-v1 bbbmini bebop bhat blue dark disco edge erleboard erlebrain2 linux minlure navio navio2 ocpoc_zynq px4-v1 px4-v2 px4-v3 px4-v4 px4-v4pro pxf pxfmini sitl zynq

Is there a Fedora version of the prerequisites file ? Fedora doesn’t use apt-get, for example. This covers it, I guess.
http://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/building-setup-linux.html#building-setup-linux

My bad. I cloned from the wrong repository ! :man_facepalming:

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Cloned the right repository, but still no mini-pix, @james_pattison

$ ./waf list_boards
aero aerofc-v1 bbbmini bebop bhat blue dark disco edge erleboard erlebrain2 linux minlure navio navio2 ocpoc_zynq px4-v1 px4-v2 px4-v3 px4-v4 px4-v4pro pxf pxfmini sitl zynq

Is it pxfmini ?

definitely mini-pix.
are you on master?
try “git checkout master” then “./waf configure --board mini-pix”.

If that doesn’t work, I’m confused (as I just tried it, and it works for me). I can build a firmware if you like, just let me know which one.
This is Copter for mini-pix https://goo.gl/Ve4aBU (if you can’t upload as an apj, just change the extension to .px4)

Are you using https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot or https://github.com/radiolinkW/ardupilot ?

Thanks for all the help. Sorry to be a pain.

I’d take you up on the executable except I want to be able to mod the code and rebuild it. Thanks anyway.

I checked both for /libraries/AP_HAL_ChibiOS/hwdef/mini-pix/hwdef.dat and it isn’t there. So I must not be getting the true master for some reason.

My git command is: git clone https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot.git <-- oopy pasted from my command line !

Does your environment have any git variables set ?

Edit: I’ve reached my limit of posts for the day because I am a new user. So I can’t reply to your last post.

Edit: it worked ! I have no idea what I was doing wrong before. Weird.

It built after I messed around with a few dependencies. I’ll post the entire command sequence in case someone else follows in my footsteps.

Thanks again. I owe you one.

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Ardupilot master: “git clone https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot.git” then “cd ardupilot”, “git submodule update --init --recursive”, “./waf configure --board mini-pix” and “./waf copter --upload”. Obviously build for whatever vehicle type you want, and you don’t have to upload. Be careful uploading copter, as sometimes it uploads heli (both get built), and I’ve never looked into just building for multicopter.

Awesome! Glad you got it building :slight_smile: