PX4Flow mount

3689673859?profile=originalIn my last post I showed a Flip32 flight controller talking to a PX4Flow unit using the I^2C protocol.  Once that was working, I wanted to mount the PX4Flow to a vehicle and make a more permanent cable connection.

For the mount, I used Tinkercad to design a simple rectangular plate with four recessed screw holes, plus a small rectangular hole to pass the I^2C cable through.  Four M3 nylon machine screws and standoffs, both 5mm size, fit snugly into the holes, after which I mounted the plate permanently on the rear  bottom plate of my 250mm H-quad using E6000 adhesive.  

To make the cable, I soldered one end of the four-position cable from 3R to a four-pin jumper cable from Sparkfun.  To keep the color-coding sensible, I covered the red jumper wire with black heat-shrink tubing, making it the ground (leftmost) of the four I^2C pins on the Flip32.  Then the orange wire was +5V, the yellow SCL, and the green SDA:

3689673771?profile=original

3689673885?profile=original

Once the PX4Flow unit was mounted and wired, I found that the vehicle's legs were too short.  So I designed and printed some extra-long legs, allowing the unit plenty of ground clearance:

3689673796?profile=original

My ultimate goal is to modify the Flip32's Baseflight firmware so it uses the sonar and optical-flow readings from the PX4Flow to perform altitude- and position-hold.  Before doing that, I plan to collect in-flight data from the PX4Flow, by attaching a Bluesmirf modem to the Flip32's UART pins and sending a new MSP message from the Flip32 to a Python program on my laptop.

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Comments

  • You're getting so good with the CAD and 3D printing I don't have to do it for you anymore. Great work Simon!

  • Distributor

    Nice work :-)

  • I start my Masters of Science in Unmanned Systems at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Jan 2016, I am immensely grateful to the Veterans Administration for their sponsorship!

  • Thanks, Charles, I agree.  This is why I wroteTinyEKF, anticipating such a need.

  • PS: *I worked with the PX4FLOW sonar

  • I worked with the sonar for altitude control before, and we needed to do some sensor fusion with the accelerometer to obtain a good altitude hold.

  • Thanks, Stephen!  The PX4Flow sonar is apparently insufficient for using with the Ardupilot firmware, but I'm writing my own addition to the Baseflight firmware and will be using my own EKF if necessary.  Because the existing Baseflight firmware works pretty well with a cheap sonar unit, I'm optimistic that I can get it to work with the one on the PX4Flow.  I do have  a LidarLite unit and other MaxBotix sonars as a backup, but I want to try the built-in sonar first.

    simondlevy/TinyEKF
    Lightweight C/C++ Extended Kalman Filter with Python for prototyping - simondlevy/TinyEKF
  • T3

    Nice work Simon!  I do have a question.  The wiki says that the PX4Flow's sonar is insufficient.  Have you found this to be the case?

    Ref: http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/common-px4flow-overview/

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