PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

We wanted to let you know the features you might be missing out in Agam Autopilot because of default values set in PX4 firmware.

Agam Autopilot V6X-RT comes with 3 IMUs on board. One is on the Flight Controller board and rest two on the IMU sensor board with in the flight controller module, which gives our Autopilot that triple redundancy feature. IMU sensor board is dampened internally in the flight controller module and gives the accuracy to the sensor by dampening the flight vibrations.

We ship our units with the default stable PX4 firmware and let the customers do the modifications as per their needs, but few of our customers may be missing some of the important parameters which is why we are writing this post.

PX4 firmware which we shipped with our unit, has a parameter SENS_IMU_MODE which is set to default value "1" and the parameter EKF2_MULTI_IMU is set with value "1". This means that, EKF2 algorithm will only consider the IMU sensor data which is on the Flight Controller and not the other 2 sensors on the sensor board. This works in most conditions, but in different environmental conditions if that sensor is not providing data, The system completely fails and will not help with the stability of the flight. This is under utilizing the hardware which we have given in the Agam Autopilot V6X-RT.

To use the triple redundancy of IMU which is given on Autopilot, you need to update the parameters SENS_IMU_MODE set with value 0 and EKF2_MULTI_IMU set with value 3, as we have 3 IMUs available. With these settings, because we have 3 IMUs and 1 Magnetometer available in the hardware, it creates total 3 instances of EKF and gives more stability of the flight.

When we complete testing these units on our side, we actually reset it to default and ship it. We thank our customers for the feedback given and letting us know about this. From now on, we will ensure the units which we will be shipping will have these parameters set to correct values and utilize the full capabilities of the hardware we provide.

We would love to hear more feedback from the testing our customers are doing and reporting any issues with our products.

Please reach out to us at info@agamrobotics.com