I am evaluating using the Zubax Myxa ESCs with the T-Motor MN501-S 360KV (Included on the PMSM parameters sheet). These motors will be used with a lift+cruise VTOL drone and are candidates for replacing our PWM ESCs. I am hoping to use the Myxa ESCs but have been having a series of compatibility issues on v0.6 (please note that switching to Cyphal is not an option for our use case).
I am using the DroneCAN GUI tool to program my 4 ESCs for the VTOL and have programmed the motor-specific parameters on the ESC (see the .parms file attached). The ultimate goal is to connect the motors to a CubePilot Cube Orange and fly the vehicle with that autopilot.
My problem is I am not able to see any difference in motor speed when sending various bench test commands using the actuator test provided in QGroundControl. The motors are either spinning when I give them any command or are off when I do not send a command.
Is my problem with the parameters I am using on the Myxa? Or is there a way to program the Cube Orange to send the proper message? I have the range set from 1 to 8184 for each ESC.
Any help would be great as we are still debating on whether to use the Myxa or keep our standard PWM ESCs. tmotorparams_v1.parm (2.0 KB)
Your motor controllers appear to be configured in the current control mode, which is an odd choice for the attitude control thrusters. Perhaps this is by design, as I don’t know the design of your airframe, but please double-check that this is intentional.
To diagnose the cause of the described behavior, please share a dump of CAN frames exchanged through the bus when the problem is observed. You can simply open the Bus monitor in the DroneCAN GUI Tool and take a few screenshots at the appropriate moment.
Thank you for pointing out the control mode issue. We wish to use the ESCs in the RPM control mode, so I changed that parameters and tuned the ESC response. (See my updated parameters tmotoparams_working10102023.parm (2.0 KB))
A remaining question I have for you is how do I command a desired RPM to the ESCs? I have attached a PX4 log showing my throttle input from the transmitter. However, I do not know how the command from the autopilot maps to an RPM command. Is there an equation for the mapping, or do I need to change some parameters on the autopilot? See the attached bench test PX4 log: BenchTest.ulg (998.4 KB)
and the attached PX4 parameters of my autopilot: dragon_vtol_10102023.params (42.7 KB)
Essentially, I am not sure how the raw command sent from the autopilot corresponds to what the Myxa interprets as the commanded RPM.
