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FT7 series Wind/Airflow sensor Driver #22471

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merged 1 commit into from
Jan 22, 2024
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@henrykotze henrykotze commented Dec 1, 2023

New Sensor Driver: Windsensor/Airflow Sensor

This brings support to communicate with an ultrasonic wind sensor, produced by FT technologies: FT742. It provides measurements about the speed and direction of the airflow flowing through its cavity. Its generally used when stationary, and thus will measure the wind conditions, however, there are use cases for mounting on a multicopter to do inspection of the airflow produced by wind turbines. Usecases

The sensor communicates over RS485, and thus a RS485 to UART signal transfer module is needed to communicate with the sensor, as seen in the below image
image

Part of a larger plan to bring the measurements into the EKF to improved its wind estimates, and hence getting the sensor in Gazebo @dagar :
gazebosim/gz-sim#2256

The code was originally based on the lightware lidar serial driver. It queries the sensor at its maximum rate of 10Hz, and publishes its data on the sensor_wind uorb topic.
image

The PR is an WIP, and opened for any comments or suggested changes to improved. There are still a tad amount of cleanup to do, but thought I get it out rather sooner than later.

Changelog Entry

For release notes:

Feature: Windsensor Driver
New parameter: SENS_FTX_CFG

msg/SensorWind.msg Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved
@dagar dagar changed the title WIP Wind/Airflow sensor Driver [WIP] FT7 series Wind/Airflow sensor Driver Dec 1, 2023
@dagar dagar added the Drivers 🔧 Sensors, Actuators, etc label Dec 1, 2023
@dagar
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dagar commented Dec 1, 2023

Would FT7 be the right generalized driver naming?

@henrykotze
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image

msg/SensorWind.msg Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved
copied paste along with formatting change

Some cleanup of driver

Some formatting and more debugging info

year updates, remove private vars, rm CMakeList

naming updates

deleted files

removed unnecessary parameters

improved naming

Resolved documentation workflow issue

uorb topic name: sensor_wind -> sensor_airflow

log sensor_airflow optionally
@henrykotze
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henrykotze commented Dec 8, 2023

Flight tested it:
https://review.px4.io/plot_app?log=046f1af9-36cd-416d-abc6-e04799b59b6c
https://review.px4.io/plot_app?log=046f1af9-36cd-416d-abc6-e04799b59b6c
One log is with the sensor having an sock over it to protect it, and the other without to actually get some sensor reading.s
Unfortunately the vibration is way to much with the sensor, and thus a bit uncontrollable.

Unfortunately, I don't have a photo with the windsensor on the drone during a flight test, but have some leading up to that test.

We will need to make some adjustments to get better info

image
image

@dagar dagar changed the title [WIP] FT7 series Wind/Airflow sensor Driver FT7 series Wind/Airflow sensor Driver Jan 22, 2024
@dagar dagar merged commit 736a730 into PX4:main Jan 22, 2024
87 checks passed
@henrykotze henrykotze deleted the windsensor-driver branch January 30, 2024 10:01
jwwaite pushed a commit to AIVS-Inc/PX4-Autopilot that referenced this pull request Feb 12, 2024
 - new uorb topic sensor_airflow
 - log sensor_airflow optionally
Peize-Liu pushed a commit to Peize-Liu/PX4-Autopilot that referenced this pull request Mar 24, 2024
 - new uorb topic sensor_airflow
 - log sensor_airflow optionally
timzarhansen pushed a commit to timzarhansen/PX4-Autopilot that referenced this pull request Sep 3, 2024
 - new uorb topic sensor_airflow
 - log sensor_airflow optionally
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3 participants