Had a fairly decent tank test yesterday, no leaks!
One issue we did seem to have though was the mapping of the controls and possibly motor direction, things seemed to be a bit mixed up and worked around it manually.
Going to recheck all our esc-motor and Pixhawk signal connections today to make sure that is correct then walk through the controls and rotation.
To that end is there a document outlining the which motors and which rotation they should have for each stick input? ie roll stick right motor A -CW, B CCW, etc? ie the mixing setup.
To check that the motor rotations are correct, I would put the ROV into “manual” mode, set the gain to its lowest setting, put your hand either in front or behind each thruster, then move the joysticks for “forward”, “reverse”, “up” and “down”. Should be pretty obvious which way the thrust should be pushing for those 4 directions.
As for the gamepad mapping, I personally don’t like how Blue Robotics has it set up. I’m used to forward/reverse/turn left/turn right on the right joystick and up/down/strafe left /strafe right on the left joystick. This is more in keeping with other ROVs in the industry. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to remap everything either in qGround Control or a joystick mapping utility.
Looks like 2 of my motors were rotating wrong way, seems to make sense now on the bench and explains some of the weird behavior. Hopefully next test will prove that out.
Kevin - I’m just using the QCG config for joystick with no issues.
@all - Just so you know, we’re working on some upgrades to QGroundControl that will eliminate the joystick calibration process and you’ll be able to choose exactly which mapping you want. That should make this process a lot easier.
Rusty - One other suggestion to have in QCG would be a motor test section. Mission Planner for Pixhawk has this. Basically allows you to test each motor to confirm the proper rotation. Been handy for various UAV systems, most feature some system like this. Just a thought.
@Kevin - For my F310 I’m using Logitech Gaming Software, and for my PS4 gamepad I’m using DS4. I’m using qGroundControl to configure the buttons and one of the above for the sticks. Probably could do it all with qGroundControl, but I’ve had issues with it. I also can’t see the entire joystick configuration menu on my display. The right half of the example joystick graphic is cut off. Changing display resolutions doesn’t seem to fix it.
Ok I’m getting through this thing and troubleshooting. Basically one motor (#1) is acting like it can only go one way. Doesn’t look like the ESC boots properly (lights aren’t on), then once I go full forward/back a few times it will suddenly turn on and only go one direction. Basically neutral sticks it goes forward, full back it stops, full forward it goes even faster. Even disarming doesn’t turn it off. Is it possible the ESC has formatted itself to a default setting?
@Vincent, you need a new ESC. Looks like this one didn’t get flashed with our custom reversible firmware. Shoot an email to support@bluerobotics.com and we will get you a new one asap.
