Shutdown of companion computer post flight

APSync / Companion Computers
1

Hi all,

I am fairly new to ardupilot and have just got a F450 quad with pixhawk 2.4.8 running and tuned which seemed to go pretty well. Now I have added a companion computer (RPI 2b+ with Maverick) and have a few logging issues to resolve. At least some of them I suspect are from me disconnecting the battery post flight and thus not properly shutting down the RPi.

I was just wondering how other people manage shutting down the companion computer cleanly post flight? Do you:

  • issue a shutdown command from a terminal or somehow from the GCS?
  • have a shutdown button on the drone (I guess using the I/O on the companion computer and some scripting)?
  • similar arrangement using a channel on the radio?
  • Or something else I have not thought of?
1 Like
2

I fly with BeagleBone , RPI , BPI and Jetson NANO, some X86 CC as well and I generally don’t shutdown the system, I just unplug and let the file system recovery do his job at next reboot. I never experienced system lost because of a sudden power termination.

3

You can easily setup a system on ur radio to shut the system down properly. Or a push button that you hold down for 4-5 secs.

4

Thanks for the input. In the end is mapped a Pixhawk relay to a transmitter button and connected the relay to a RPI GPIO following the instructions here:
https://github.com/gilyes/pi-shutdown. So now I can use the one button on the remote control to start/restart/shutdown the rpi depending on how long I toggle the switch. All good!

5

I bought this, and it came in handy for both power and shutdown function.