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VOXL ArduPilot

Table of contents

  1. Overview
  2. Current Status
  3. Installation
  4. Parameters
  5. Building from Source
  6. Resources

Overview

VOXL 2 and VOXL 2 Mini are supported in mainline ArduPilot (4.6 and newer): ArduPilot runs directly on the VOXL 2’s DSP in place of PX4, alongside the standard VOXL SDK services.

ArduPilot on VOXL is community supported. The authoritative setup guide is the ArduPilot wiki’s ModalAI VOXL 2 page; for questions, use the ModalAI forum’s ArduPilot category and the ArduPilot community channels.

Current Status

  • Flight tested on four models of small-to-medium quadcopter (ArduCopter) and one small fixed wing (ArduPlane).
  • The VOXL 2 IO board is supported, providing up to 8 PWM outputs for PWM ESCs on multirotors or servos on fixed wings. It has been flight tested on a quadcopter with four PWM ESCs and on a fixed wing with PWM servos.

Installation

Prebuilt ArduPilot packages for VOXL 2 are published on the ArduPilot firmware server:

On a VOXL 2 running SDK 1.4.0 or newer:

  1. Disable the PX4 service:

    systemctl disable voxl-px4

  2. Download and install the latest voxl-ardupilot package for your vehicle type, for example:

    wget https://firmware.ardupilot.org/Copter/latest/QURT/voxl-ardupilot_ArduCopter_<version>_arm64.deb
dpkg -i voxl-ardupilot_ArduCopter_<version>_arm64.deb

  3. Optionally link a default parameter file in /data/APM:

    cd /data/APM
ln -s D0013.parm defaults.parm

  4. Enable the ArduPilot service:

    systemctl enable voxl-ardupilot

Parameters

Default parameter files for ModalAI frames are maintained in mainline ArduPilot under Tools/Frame_params/ModalAI. The AutonomyDevKit parameters are also appropriate for the Starling 2.

Validate all parameter settings before flying. Follow the relevant ArduPilot setup documentation to configure the vehicle fully, and calibrate all sensors and the RC.

Building from Source

Prebuilt firmware comes from the ArduPilot servers, or you can build it yourself. Building requires the Hexagon SDK from Qualcomm integrated into a build docker — voxl-docker-ardupilot-build sets that up. Additional build and setup information is in the ArduPilot QURT HAL documentation.

Resources