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Custom sensors and Real-Time logging

Posted by Kate on July 8, 2014 at 11:16am

Hi everyone,

Does anyone have experience with configuring their own sensors onto the Pixhawk (I have an IRIS)? I purchased a gas sensor that I'd like to wire to it, does anyone know of any good resources to help me get started? I've downloaded the PX4 development environment from the Pixhawk developers website and have gone through some of the "getting started" instructions on there, I have been able to install the firmware through Eclipse as opposed to the Mission Planner. I also purchased 3-position and 5-position connectors for the analog inputs.

I was also wondering if there is a way to view the telemetry log data on Mission Planner during flight? If I did add this sensor, would data be saved through the telemetry logs or dataflash logs?

I appreciate whatever help I can get, thank you!

Kate

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Replies

  • Amit Shishodia May 17, 2021 at 11:36pm
    I am also doing the same project can anyone help me.
  • Pablo José Madrigal August 31, 2017 at 11:21am

    Hi Aaron, I am working in a project very similar to what you have done. 

    I have al ready connect some sensors via i2c to the pixhawk, but I can´t  make the changes in the mavlink, can you show us how to make it ?

    Aaron Curtis said:

    Hi Katie, I have flown with CO2, SO2, and H2S sensors on an APM. I hooked them up via I2C and then added a new dataflash 'GAS' log message and later also a mavlink message. Would be interested to hear more about your application, and happy to show you the code I used. It's in a local branch but if you remind me I'll push it to github. You can see the discussion I started here.

  • Prasanna June 9, 2016 at 2:42pm

    Hi,

    Glad I found this post.  I have had some success in connecting an  Odroid XU4 to a Pixhawk using the UART-USB connection to the telemetry.  The sad thing is that the connection is intermittent (might be an issue with my connection setup).  however, it does read the gas sensor (I tried an CO2 sensor) connected to the ADC pin on the odroid and display the voltage readings.. the parts per million(concentration levels can be easily obtained from the voltage given).  I can send details of how to connect to anyone interested. 

    What I am in need of is to trace a plume based on the concentration levels and have a drone navigate that to locate the source of the plume.. any ideas would be most welcome..

    Good post folks..  Keep up the good work

    Cheers

    Prasanna

  • Evan July 28, 2014 at 9:09am

    Hi James.  An example would be great if you have the spare time! 

    • Jogitech > Evan September 12, 2015 at 4:26am

      Hi all,

      i am currently working on an px4 i2c driver to communicate with an external board.
      i used the hmc5883 and mb12xx drivers as guiding examples.
      everything compiles fine but when i try to send data to the external board i get "i2c::transfer returned -6" in the nsh.

      is anyone familiar with this problem or can point me in the right direction?

      thanks in advance!

  • Kate July 14, 2014 at 9:02am

    Thanks for the encouragement, Eric. Will do!!

  • ausdroid July 12, 2014 at 4:05am

    It would be great if someone who knows what they are doing could write a set of instructions (including a flow chart) to show how to read an additional ADC pin and send the data to Mavlink and to log the data. 

    Anyone ?

  • Aaron Curtis July 11, 2014 at 1:33pm

    Hi Katie, I have flown with CO2, SO2, and H2S sensors on an APM. I hooked them up via I2C and then added a new dataflash 'GAS' log message and later also a mavlink message. Would be interested to hear more about your application, and happy to show you the code I used. It's in a local branch but if you remind me I'll push it to github. You can see the discussion I started here.

    • Ed > Aaron Curtis March 22, 2016 at 6:32am

      Hello Aaron,

      I want to use some sensors connected to an arduino and then connect the arduino to the pixhawk by i2c to get thoses values in dataflash logs and to in mavlink messages to store them in live in the ground station.

      Have you succeeded to do that with your gas sensors ?

      Have you some code sample to begin with this ?

      Thanks,

      Ed.

    • Kate > Aaron Curtis July 14, 2014 at 9:01am

      Aaron,

      Glad to see someone else who's accomplished configuring gas sensors to the APM. I have an H2S gas sensor (link here) that I need to configure to the Pixhawk. How did you test/calibrate the sensors? Definitely interested in hearing about your experiments.

      Thanks!

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