Problem 'motor test command failed'

Blue Robotics Software
1

We have a ROV in heavy version. It has been working fine for a while, until we got the ‘No io thread heartbeat’ problem. We replaced the SD card by a new one (formatted in FAT) and the problems with the heartbeat thread disappeared.

However, now we are getting a new set of problems:

    1. If we simply arm the ROV to deploy from the joystick and dive, then everything seems to work fine.
    1. However if we follow recommendations and first perform a motor tests, then we get problems:

– a) We can perform the motor test without problem and everything works fine in the ‘Motors Setup’ tab.

– b) But then sliding the ‘motor arming’ slide back does not disarm the motors (still shows ‘Manual Armed’ at the top of the screen). At this point, we cannot either control the motors with the joystick.

– c) Following this, if we try to disarm from the Joystick, we get an error message ‘Motor test command failed’, and the detailed log shows ‘Warning: motor test timed out’. Following this, we also get some ‘Critical: 10 seconds cool down required’. This is strange, as we are careful to run the motor tests for very short time and this cool down warning did not appear before.

– d) We cannot reboot the ROV from QGroundControl. But we can reboot from the web interface.

– e) If we shut down QGroundControl and restart it, we can jump over the motor test and arm from the joystick and drive. After driving and disarming with the joystick, we cannot perform motor test any longer (the slide for arming is not arming).

We are using Ubuntu 16.04 with QGroundControl v3.2.4-BlueRobotics-Rev6 on the computer side.

Any idea where this comes form? Can it be related to the replacing of the SD card?

2

Hi @JRT, I noticed the same behavior last night and have already filed a bug report. This should only affect first time set up. You only have to configure / test the motors once during first time set up, not before each dive. The workaround in the meantime is to reboot after a motor test.

You can track the progress here: sub: no motor output after motor test completion, then subsequent arming for piloting · Issue #10969 · ArduPilot/ardupilot · GitHub

3

Regarding your problem with rebooting via the qgc/web interface, what version of companion are you using? It can be seen on the ‘system’ page.

4

Our ROV has been packed for shipping and will not be in use before end of this month, so I do not know for the companion version. I think we had updated it to latest version in January or February.

Which system are you running? Possible that one package you use as a library has been broken upon update?