Operatinal Setup

How to get a new hardware operational

• Mechanical Checks
• Electrical Checks
• Flash Latest Firmware
• Flight Controller Placement
• Motors Setup
• Sensors Calibration
• Battery Setup
• Sensors Setup
• Radio and Flight Modes
• Safety Configuration
• Tunning

Mechanical Checks

• Frame integrity: No cracks or any other mechanical defect
• Structural Symmetry: check for arm symmetry, measure diagonals from motor to motor to ensure symmetrical geometry.
• Screw and Bolt Tightness: Make sure all the screw and bolts are fully thight
• Motor mount: check for no play on the motor mounts
• Landing gear
• Propeller Clearance
• Component Mounting (non-electrical): Brackets, antenna mounts, and accessory holders should be tight and aligned.

Electrical Checks

Flash Latest Firmware

In case that the drone is already in our catalog, make sure to flash the latest version of the firmware, you can follow the page How to Flash Firmware for more information.

If the plan is to integrate the drone into the catalog, the first step is to create the minimal functional set of file required to generate the firmware, please follow Add a new firmware to integrade the drone into our pipeline.

Why building the firmware from source ?

• Granular control on the firmware generation
• enable drivers (mainly the CRSF driver for radio)
• custom version tracking
• custom airframe config; this allow for easy setup.

Flight Controller Placement

Follow: "as close as possible to the centre-of-gravity (CoG), top-side up, and oriented so that the heading mark arrow points towards the front of the vehicle"

• Set the FMU position, see EKF2_IMU_POS_X
• Set the FMU orientation, see SENS_BOARD_ROT or using QGC Flight Controller/Sensor Orientation (discourage)

Motors Setup

• Motor distribution and placement based on the drone airframe, see PX4 Airframe Reference.
  • Set the right number of motors CA_ROTOR_COUNT
  • Set motor geometry placement (w.r.t center of mass), see parameters:
    • CA_ROTORn_PX
    • CA_ROTORn_PY
    • CA_ROTORn_PZ
    • CA_ROTORn_KM
  • Set flight controller output assignment, see PWM_MAIN_FUNCn
• ESCs Calibration values (only for PWM ESCs)
  • Motor PWM_MAIN_MINn. and PWM_MAIN_MAXn, see offical docs from step 7 onwards https://docs.px4.io/main/en/advanced_config/esc_calibration.html

Checks:

• Motor numbering and placement
• Motor sping rotation acording to the airframe

Sensors Calibration

Magnetometer:

• Mounting a Compass (or GNSS/Compass)
• for large drones

Battery Setup

Sensors Setup

Radio and Flight Modes

See the dedicate page Radio Setup.

Safety Configuration

Tunning

reference