2023-03-14 Meeting Minutes - ZeroPilot Sync

Owned by Daniel Puratich
Last updated: 2023-03-16
4 min read

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

  • @Daniel Puratich

  • @Christopher Chung

  • @Ethan Abraham

  • @Sahil Kale

  • @Anthony Luo

  • @Darwin Clark

  • @Aaditya Chaudhary

  • @Ayoung Eun

  • @Farris Matar

  • @Mostafa Hussein

  • @Nolan Haines

  • @Stanley Tang

  • @Anthony Bertnyk

 

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

    • 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