Hi all,
I am currently struggling to set up/ receive a reading from my Ping2 sonar. I am not receiving connection or obtain a waterfall display on Ping Viewer. The BLUART currently has a continuous green LED and flashing green LED when connected to the laptop.
The Ping2 has been installed as per Blue Robotics instructions (Navigator not Pixhawk – plug into ‘SERIAL 5 + I2C 6’ port).
I have tried the following options:
Tested with QGC open (with “SIK radio” deselected) and QGC not open
Open BlueOS to see if Ping2 is recognized (which I believe was successful - image attached)
Downloaded and installed Windows FTDI VCP Driver Executable
Checked COM ports (including making changes to BUS controller power management)
Reset Ping Viewer settings
Ensured usb-uart bridge is working
Tested with “MAVLink Distances” (on BlueOS) on/off
Automatic and manual connection methods
Additionally I have tried direct connection to PC which was successful, having a green and white LED on BLUART and waterfall display on software.
Hi @HamishC -
Sorry you’re having issues!
If the Ping2 works ok when connected to your computer, your issues may be coming from running a (very) old version of BlueOS - 1.02 it looks like?
Please update to version 1.2.6 (stable) and give it a try. You might also want to try serial port 3 or 4!
You will want to turn on the MAVLink Distances if you’d like your logs to record the distance measurement, and have it available to the autopilot / for display as a # in QGroundControl.
Once you open PingViewer, it may take up to a minute for it to detect the Ping2 when it is connected directly to your ROV, and this will shop up as a UDP connection to the BlueOS IP address. Make sure your subnet mask on your ethernet tether interface is set to 255.255.255.0!
When you say " * Ensured usb-uart bridge is working" - no dedicated bridge needs to be setup manually for the Ping2 to work, and if you’ve done so this may be interfering with the Ping process that identifies and sends the data on its way…
Thanks Tony!
I was able to update BlueOS and the Ping2 now operates.
Where does it display in QGC and do I need to alter any settings for it to display?
Hi @HamishC
Glad that got things working for you! To see the depth read out in QGround Control, you’ll want to enable Mavlink Distances in the Ping Sonar Devices menu in BlueOS. Then, within QGroundControl, you can edit the telemetry displayed in the bottom center black box to include the RangeFinder message:
Note - this does not give you the confidence % of the measurement, only the sensed depth. You may want to check out the SimplePingSurvey extension if you’d like to record depth and confidence, and have an interface that displays your swath to help set appropriate survey line spacing.
