Brief
This is the first ZeroPilot sync meeting in preparing for competition in early May 2023. The goal is to synchronize electrical and firmware on integrating what we have to meeting our competition requirements as well as clarifying competition requirements where they may be vague.
Attendance
Major Points
Firmware Status of critical systems
Which things are we going to want ?
Here’s some ideas:
SM
PPM
TM
VN300
LED Control
Mav link reading
Bidirectional Dshot
Dshot Telemetry
Firmware testing out ZP3 IOC
ZP3 Board assembly
We have 2 that electrical has tested that are ready to go
How many more do we want before competition ?
Discussion
System Level
High Level ZeroPilot acts as a communications management module on the drone
We need to review the CONOPs to ensure all the stuff we’re working on is actually competition critical vs not.
Exams start April 13th. Next meeting we will discuss minimum viable product and the hierarchy of necessities (what can we scrape by without?). Integration testing will take the most time!
Firmware Status Update
Ground station to ZP Link (Through RFD900) Driver
Done through RFD900 (A UART driver)
Aaditya Chaudhary Owning
IMACS team has been testing
Jetson to ZP Link
UART Driver
Aaditya Chaudhary owning
Testing will start soon
PPM Input Driver (RC Controller / Ardupilot → RF Link → ZeroPilot)
Working and was tested a while ago by Christopher Chung & Aaditya Chaudhary
Should be tested after merging though not much has changed (would need an ioc driver)
PPM Output Driver
Stanley Tang Owned development and working with Ayoung on debug
Currently being test by Ayoung Eun with support from Christopher Chung
Driver seems to be working, but some issue with interrupts that needs to be resolved. Can only use a single interrupt at a time? Not an interrupt priority issue, Chris will help
Competition Telemetry Manager
Owned by Aaditya Chaudhary
Planning on testing tomorrow, this is mainly logic once all the drivers are working this should be simple
Manages Jetson Link & Ground Station link using
Will be using UART driver from Ground station to ZP link and Jetson to ZP Link
VN-300 Driver
Anthony Bertnyk Owning
Recently tested and verified output of the driver is correct
Working to integrate in to LOS Driver and LOS Pos framework.
PX6 has it’s own GPS/IMU - all data for VN-300 is for the ground station and GUI
Mav-Link Driver
Driver code only is completed by Stanley Tang though no testing yet
Ardupilot receives Mavlink commands and adds them to it’s own internal queue
Ardupilot cannot/doesnt generate its own mavlink commands
We need to be careful when testing this - Anni cutout mid sentence 💀
Ishman Mann & Armaan Rasheed have recently been assigned to start testing
Scope → Ground testing → Houston Testing → Cornflakes testing → Comp testing
This driver is for telling Pixhawk guided flight modes in Ardupilot in a more precise way then can be done over PPM
We need this to fly autonomously.
Ideally from a system perspective: ground station sends the waypoints to ZP, ZP converts that into the corresponding mav link commands then pixhawk takes these commands and has the waypoints
There is no other way to send waypoints to the Pixhawk other than these Mavlink commands.
Commands this Mavlink driver does:
Autoland
This is a mavlink command and not a PPM input we’re pretty sure
Waypoints
For sure required to be MavLink
Return to Home (RTL)
In the case our RC link (PPM) drops out
Bidirectional Dshot
This is not being used for competition
Flight controller is directly connected to the ESCs for data transmission over DSHOT
Dshot Telemetry
This is not being used for competition
This can give information about voltage and current seen by the ESCs
This would be redundant of the existing power module, but could be added to the telemetry
Competition System Manager
Should handle LEDs (once EE has sourced, see below EE section)
Owned by Gordon Fountain (Deactivated)
Main diff between normal SM and Comp SM. SM is the only thread that runs and runs ontop of Free RTOS though we could run it bear metal (requires testing if we wanted to do this)
TM requires Free RTOS for data safety regarding passing data from interrupt servicers.
Manages all of the drivers → core logic (main function) for zeropilot
Path Manager
Ground station gives waypoint, Jetson gives movement commands, Path Manager connects waypoints
This would replace Mavlink and ardupilot stuff if it gets completed in time
Mavlink and ardupilot are an adequate replacement for PM though
Neha Srivastava is owning
ZP3 IOC: Switch from Nucleo to actual ZeroPilot board
Christopher Chung Has started ioc
Christopher Chung Owning
Aidan Bowers (Deactivated) Made an ioc as well
Testing should initially be carried out on Nucleo and flights should be done on ZP3HW
Both Nucleo’s and ZP use an STM32L5… so it shouldn’t be too bad to test between them
Currently EE has two boards available, with components to have 5 ready to go, more is gated by interboard connector component
As a backup STM32L5 Nucleo is still viable (Assuming ZP3HW doesn’t work)
SD Card
This will not be used at competition.
PWM driver for a Video Mux module
Video Mux switch for OSD and VTX → information about the device can be found in the RFC
EFS leads Anthony Luo Christopher Chung to assign this to an owner!
This is critical for manual landing beyond ~50m horizontal distance from pilots
Electrical Updates
LEDs
Needed to indicate passengers are on board as required by competition
Required to get any points for carrying “passengers”
Needed for Nav-Lights for legal requirement of night flying
This is more optional as we may not do any night flying though it would be nice for testing
EE Needs to Source this
GPIO toggled solution
RGB controlled (Neopixel style) solution
Once this part is sourced and ordered from an electrical perspective the firmware behind it will be EFS as a part of Competition System Manager
LED Power supply / controller as well
Talk to mech about mounting location and package for these LEDs
Will be handled as a part of ICARUS power architecture: Nolan Haines Farris Matar
Arm/Disarm Controller
This is a competition requirement
We don’t need an external board, this is already handled as it’s a part of a Pixhawk module
We need to order this! Anthony Luo (this will be orderred along with more motors prior to comp)
Purchasing Link: https://newbeedrone.com/products/holybro-m9n-gps
ZP3 Boards Assembly
We have 2 boards right now
Both these boards we’ve verified flash and carry out code
Need to solder some more 100mil pitch headers but it should be quick
5 boards at once are possible
limited by inter-board connectors currently, Alison Thompson
Ethan Abraham owning this
ZP3 Flight Interface
This will not be done for competition
Exclusively a mechanical change regarding connectors at this point