Warning: MYGCS: 255, heartbeat lost - Critical: Lost Manual Control

Blue Robotics Software QGroundControl
1

Dear All,
Sometimes we lose control of the ROV and the following error messages appear: ‘Warning: MYGCS: 255, heartbeat lost - Critical: Lost Manual Control’.
Please find attached an image of the error messages.
Does anyone have any idea of the cause?

Warning message
Warning message809×1024 176 KB

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2

Hi!
First thing I would check is network bandwith from ROV to surface computer.

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3

Hi @Boko,

we contacted the support and they suggested us the following setting that seems to work:
“changing the parameter FS_PILOT_TIMEOUT to 5 in QGC” (see attached screenshot)

image
image3322×1410 300 KB

4

I want to ask you, when I want to change it, it tells me that the maximum limit is 3, and I cannot put the number 5, and the error message still appears on the program. I cannot control the vehicle. Have you found a solution?

5

image
image692×241 41.4 KB

In addition to the warning message, I cannot connect to the program and it tells me that it cannot access the vehicle

6

Hi @rabah -
It seems like you’re not connected to the vehicle correctly, have you followed the network setup instructions? Can you ping 192.168.2.2 successfully?
If you can ping and not connect, I would recommend opening that IP address in your browser, and making sure BlueOS and the Ardupilot firmware are updated to the latest versions (1.2 beta 4 for BlueOS.)

8

Hi,
I’ve just upgraded a BlueROV R3 by replacing the RPi 3 and Pixhawk to a navigator and a Raspberry Pi4.

As a result I’m getting the MYGCS: 255, heartbeat lost error average every 7 mins.

I’ve just made the change to MAVP2P as suggested above but still getting the heartbeat lost every now and again, but spaced out by average 30 mins.

Are there any obvious reasons why this might happen or stuff for me to check?

This issue doesn’t cause any real problems when using the ROV, but it would be nice if it wasn’t there for when I’m using the ROV in front of other people.

My network connection has improved since I made the upgrade. With iperf I’m now getting 50MBit/s up and down (I was previously getting 20-30). But I never had the MYGCS warning before.

9

Hi!
While this is not the “right” fix for the issue, I’ve just opened a PR in Ardupilot to add a parameter for setting the timeout, and doubled the default value.

It will eventually show like this in the (new) failsafes configuration page in BlueOS:

image
image837×331 17.4 KB

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10

Meanwhile, you could just disable the GCS failsafe at FS_GCS_ENABLE.
The Rov should still disarm if you lose control if you keep the pilot input failsafe enabled.

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11

I was struggling with this and a newly built ROV today as well -
After trying MavP2P with no luck, I updated to 1.3 beta 7, and switched back to Mavlink Router. This combined with setting FS_GCS_ENABLE as Willian suggests, and extended inthe pilot input failsafe to 10 seconds (from 3) seems to have cured the issue!

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12

I’m unsure whether it’s related, but there are some optimisations in the latest ArduSub beta that reduce its CPU load, which should allow it to process and send messages with lower latency, and may help to reduce or avoid issues like this one.

That said, the control station heartbeat and input from the pilot can reasonably be expected to arrive at the autopilot every few seconds, so if this isn’t caused by CPU load issues (which may also be from other services / Extensions running on the system) then there may be some issue with your network configuration or hardware.

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