18th of September, 2022

Firmware update: inverted LED servos

Firmware update: inverted LED servos
Skybrush Team
Skybrush Team

Our fork of the ArduPilot firmware has supported driving the LEDs using servo outputs (one for each of the red, green and blue channels) for a long while now. However, one thing that was missing is to allow the servo outputs to be inverted in case you have a wiring where a full duty cycle PWM signal turns your LEDs off instead of setting them to full brightness. With this firmware update, you can now set the value of the SHOW_LED0_TYPE firmware to 8, in which case the servo outputs will be driven by taking the inversion into account.

Besides this, we have also fixed a few bugs; most notably, the yaw angle of the drone is now controlled in a more strict manner during takeoff. We also embedded a default parameter set for the Entron 300 show drone so the LEDs should now work out-of-the-box, even after a firmware reset to factory settings.

You can download our firmware on the download page, or get its source code from Github. Make sure to work with one of the CMCopter-... branches as the master branch simply tracks ArduPilot’s master branch.

Cover photo by Victor Aznabaev on Unsplash

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