Electrical connections
Connect the Pixhawk power cable to P1 and the supplied UART Telemetry cable to Power Pilot’s UART Port, as shown below-
Setting up MAVLink-
There are some changes which you will have to make to the user parameters on your Pixhawk. These include-
- SERIALx_PROTOCOL – MAVLink2
- SERIALx_BAUD- 57600
These maybe set for a different serial port as well. In case you select to do the process for a different Telem port, you can select the appropriate SERIAL port on your Pixhawk
<—Example params set to appropriate values
Once you have made the electrical connections and changed the parameters on Pixhawk you can launch the Power Connect app
Under the “Device” dropdown, select “Power Pilot MK1” and under the “Port” dropdown, select the appropriate port for Power Pilot. Click the refresh button in case you are unable to see the appropriate port under the “Port” dropdown. Once selected, click on the connect button.
[In order to disconnect from the device, you may click the connect button again, disconnecting your Power Pilot from the software]
Use the Hot keys – Ctrl + M to check whether Power Pilot is able to communicate with the flight controller. You will get a pop-up indicating the arming status and MAVLink connectivity as shown below-
In case you get a prompt indicating “MAVLink is not connected” please check the parameters set on Pixhawk and the electrical connections between Pixhawk and Power Pilot
Setting Port Voltages
Power Pilot offers the facility of letting you set the Port voltages of your buck converters digitally. Once set, the device stores the value in memory and sets the voltage of all ports to the last stored value upon connecting the battery and booting up.
Connect your battery to Power Pilot, and plug in the device to your PC and launch the app. Once connected, the last set values will be displayed on the Port Voltage sliders. You can move the slider for the 3 ports to provide your setpoint for that port. In case you are setting the values but have not finished the setup, you can click on the refresh icon and check the port voltage values which are presently set on that particular port
[Note: If you have not plugged in your battery, Port voltage will be displayed as 0 ]
Once you have selected the required setpoint, click on “Finish Setup” and wait till the device prompts you with informing a successful setup. The status LED will flash repeatedly indicating that the device is attempting to reach the desired setpoint.
You may get a prompt such as “Battery not connected” indicating that the battery isn’t connected. In case during the device’s operation it has faced any electrical failure or has been externally shorted, a prompt indicating “Port voltage not set” will be displayed. In case there are no electrical problems and you still receive this prompt, try to set the same voltage again.
Here is a short video demonstrating the process-
Logging rate and Threshold current-
Logging rate: When Power Pilot is able to communicate with the flight controller over MAVLink, it can detect when the flight controller is Armed/Disarmed. It starts the logging process when it detects the FC is armed and terminates the logging process when it detects that the FC has been disarmed. The rate at which the device makes 1 measurement of all the currents/voltages, is the logging rate
Threshold Current: This is the current draw value at which the device will trigger an RTL command to the flight controller in case it detects any single ESC is drawing more current than the threshold current. You can select the value between 1-30 Amps and toggle the functionality on/off with the button next to the slider. The following video demonstrates the outlined feature during a flight-