In setting up my next multi I have chosen the pixhawk FC. I have tried both the arducopter firmware and the firmware from pixhawk themselves. The pixhawk firmware had no problem detecting the transmitter being turned off. Arducopter does not detect this. It shouldn't be an issue though since all the satellite does when it loses signal is to stop transmitting its serial stream. I would prefer to use arducopter for this, but not having a transmitter failsafe is a really big issue for me. Anyone have a fix for this? Am I doing something wrong? Are other people aware of this issue?
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I am too shocked that this is not being addressed. Why would they have a satellite port for DSM stuff and not address the failsafe issue?
I trying many other boards in rcgroups and no solution
In post #21 someone claimed to have resolved the issue with the help of 3DR:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2176375&page=2
We must be in a minority! And the stupid part in that NO Spektrum regular receivers has a PPM output to plug in RCin so I'd have to buy a PPM encoder. I think Orange 4 Channel DSMX receiver does have a PPM output (and puts out 8 channels)
This is ALL so failsafe can work!
Thanks.
Hopefully this and the PX4FLOW support will be added soon. Personally I like sbus. You can get a pretty good dsmx orange sbus receiver for not too much money. I haven't tried it with APM or pixhawk yet, but I assume as long as your transmitter supports changing the channel order it should be no problem. This is because futaba goes EATR and spektrum goes TAER as I recall. You can probably also change which channels do what in software, but I do not know the process to do that off hand. Or spring for the real deal from futaba. That said this is something that can be easily fixed.
Regarding the PX4 flow, the I2C velocity data should be able to be incorporated into either the EKF or complimentary filter without too much trouble. Esp the EKF as it should just be another measurement update. But of course easier said than done. With vision control indoor loiter can be achieved to a high level of accuracy as is done with the ar drone and others.
And the worst of it is that if you use the pixhawk firmware and q ground control over APM / mission planner it works perfectly fine.
Hey, there are failsafe values. Depending on what you receiver emits when the transmitter is turned off you can program different actions. In example, land, RTL or whatever you like.
Further reading on this can be found in the documentation under http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/throttle-failsafe/.
Hope this helps
So I guess DSM sattelite failsafe and pixhawk is not a priority for anyone. It works with the pixhawk software. It does not work at all with APM. It is trivial to implement. Why sell a product with a DSM sat port if the only way to get a transmitter fail safe is to use the PPM sum converter? Is this just a cynical attempt to sell more crap?
@Michael,
No one is forcing you to use the Spektrum Remote Receiver with your Pixhawk. That was your decision.
I never use just a Remote Receiver on anything that flies and can fly away or fall from the sky if it gets too far from the transmitter. I only use the Remote Receiver on my Pixhawk equipped rovers and even then I have had transmission loss in some instances.
I suggest that you invest in a PPM encoder and a standard Spektrum receiver with the Remote Receiver if you value your aircraft.
Regards,
TCIII AVD
By that logic let's never make anything better. Let's just be satisfied with the status quo. It works fine with the q ground station and pix hawk firmware.
And luckily for me I already invested in a 12ZH and will be using SBUS. That said, the whole point of this post was to point out the absurdity that the receiver which needs failsafe support the most doesn't have failsafe support. All it takes is a single timer to make this happen.
http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/throttle-failsafe/
Thanks. I checked that link out and tried it all. Apparently loss of PPM signal is detected, but loss of spek sat is not. Try it for yourself.