Ping360 Sonar not working

Hello,

I have two Ping360 sonars (Sonar A and Sonar B). I am having problems connecting my BlueROV with Sonar A and I would like some advice on what should I test in order to help me find the problem.

I have followed all the steps in the Learn tab of the product and when I open PingViewer it cannot find the device (Sonar A), although the device is listed as a connected device in the system tab of the companion.

Sonar B works completely fine when I connect it to the same BlueROV, which makes me believe there is a hardware problem with Sonar A.

I haven’t open any of the sonars yet. Should I open Sonar A and try some troubleshooting or what should I do?

Hi @Alex_UJI1,

Are you connecting both at the same time, or just one at a time?

Was Sonar A powered up before/at the same time as Companion? Companion only searches for sonars when it first boots, so if it isn’t already connected then it won’t be found.

If they’re each listed as Ping360-id-X then they’re being detected as valid Ping360 devices, so I’d expect them to also be able to connect to PingViewer on the topside.

Can you try connecting each sonar directly to your topside computer (running PingViewer) and see if they get detected and are able to connect as expected?

The FAQ & troubleshooting from the Ping Viewer docs may also be helpful, but note the point about RX/TX wires refers only to Ping1D.

Hi @EliotBR

After further tests I managed to make it work. Turns out that the companion firmware and the Ardusub version on the Pixhawk were outdated.

I mixed up some SD cards and I thought I was testing both sonars (one at a time ) with the same Raspbian image, but no, one was updated and the other one wasn’t.

Now I have a question. When I was entering the system tab through the companion interface it said that there were no updates available for the companion despite it being outdated. I downloaded the latest version and flashed the SD card.

1.- Is there a way to know if there is an update available?
2.- Can I update the companion without needing to extract the SD card from the Raspberry and flash it?
3.- Is it possible to update the Ardusub version on the pixhawk without disconnecting it from the Raspberry?

Great to hear! :slight_smile:

Yes, that should be automatic, although understandably only works if your companion has an internet connection (any chance it wasn’t connected to wifi?)

Directly flashing the SD card is the most robust way of getting a working version, but that’s generally only required if something has gone significantly wrong with the normal update process (via the system page) or for very major updates (e.g. going from normal companion to our new Companion Beta).

Yes, via the system page, although there were some recent issues that mean that’s now only possible with the latest version of Companion (0.0.30)

Ok, yeah my companion was not connected to the internet.

How can I get this version (0.0.30)? Earlier today I downloaded from this link: Installing Companion Software Image · GitBook the “latest” version, but it was 0.0.29.

From your previous reply:

In the system menu of the companion, in the detected devices window the sonar is listed as FT230X_Basic_UART and not as Ping360-id-X, Can this be an issue later or what does this mean? Right now it works despite being listed like this.

Fair enough

Yeah, 0.0.30 was supposed to be a really short release before 0.0.31 came out, so we didn’t build an image for it. If you connect your Companion to wifi you should be able to update to 0.0.30 via the Companion section on the system page :slight_smile:

Ahh, I think that was poorly described on my part. Is there an “Active Service” called Ping360-id-X (where X is a number)? I assume there has to be for it to be working, otherwise something weird is definitely going on.

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