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Flight Core PWM ESC Calibration

The following describes an alternative way to calibrate PWM based ESCs without the using QGroundControl, which requires you to remove the battery upon power up of the VOXL Flight or Flight Core, which isn’t an option for a non-USB powered device like ours.

NOTE: Alternatively, you can avoid calibration if your ESCs support DShot. Checkout the DSHOT_CONFIG parameter in the PX4 settings using QGroundControl.

WARNING: PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE PROPS REMOVED

px4-esc-cal-tool

Clone the following repo to proceed:

git clone https://gitlab.com/voxl-public/px4-esc-cal-tool
cd px4-esc-cal-tool

This tool uses python3, so depending on your environment, you may need to run python3 or python.

Dependencies:

pip install pymavlink pyserial

or

pip3 install pymavlink pyserial

Procedure

USB

Required:

  • Host PC (OSX or Ubuntu)
  • Python 3
  • VOXL-Flight or Flight Core
  • USB to JST Cable (MCBL-00010 + MicroUSB cable)

Instructions:

  1. Remove the PWM output cable from the board (J1007 on VOXL Flight or J7 on Flight Core)
  2. Connect host PC to VOXL-Flight or Flight Core using USB to JST cable
  3. Power vehicle with battery
  4. Run the following command from the root of the px4-esc-cal-tool project:
# For v1.10
python px4-esc-cal-tool.py

# For v1.11+
python px4-esc-cal-tool-v1-11.py

or

# For v1.10
python3 px4-esc-cal-tool.py

# For v1.11+
python3 px4-esc-cal-tool-v1-11.py
  1. Follow the instructions on screen

UDP

Required:

  • Host PC (OSX or Ubuntu)
  • Python 3
  • VOXL-Flight or VOXL + Flight Core, where voxl-vision-px4 is configured

Instructions:

  1. Remove the PWM output cable from the board (J1007 on VOXL Flight or J7 on Flight Core)
  2. Power vehicle with battery
  3. Connect host PC to VOXL-Flight or Flight Core over local network using voxl-vision-px4
python px4-esc-cal-tool.py 0.0.0.0:14550

or

python3 px4-esc-cal-tool.py 0.0.0.0:14550
  1. Follow the instructions on screen

Next: Flight Core Firmware