My Pixhawk 2 Build/Setup Experience (might be handy for anyone needing info)

@Lance_B wrote:

After 4 or 5 days of messing with it over the last couple of weeks, I've worked a few things out now and thought I'd share them.

My setup is:

Hexa 800
Pixhawk 2.1 w/ Edison Base running Copter 3.5 RC3 (RC4 as of this posting)
Here GPS
Mauch Power Module @ 6S (Using only 1 power supply)
Mauch HO Power Supply (Running Periferals, except PX4Flow)
Edison is installed
PX4Flow
Lightware SF11/C on I2C Powered Separately
1.3" Oled
Gimbal w/ Hero
380KV Motors with Xrotor 40A ESCs
Taranis X9D w/ X8R
FRSky FLVSS SBus Lipo
FRSky Telemetry Cable using Craft & Theory FlightDeck Hud on Taranis

Yes I have a lot of crap connected - I like to tinker. However, I've never even considered this to be a power issue. It's what I do, so I make sure it's right,
and I make certain I have plenty of spare capacity by putting all of my large loads onto a BEC and running as little as possible off of the FC.

There's a real lack of info out there - or at least I had a hard time finding it - regarding connections, setup, etc.

Here's the quick and dirty:
Telem 1 = Serial 1 (I have my Sik Radio installed on this port @ 115k baud)
Telem 2 = Serial 2 (if using Edison, set this to 921 baud and 1 for Mavlink - and do NOT connect anything to it)
GPS1 = Serial 3 & Safety Switch
GPS2 = Serial 4 & I2C (This is what my FlightDeck Telem Cable is connected to. I Hacked a DF13 into the serial portion and connected my Telem Cable
that way - Set Serial 4 = 57k baud and 10 for FRSky Passthrough.
This I2C port is the only way I could connect my I2C devices. I made a cable and connected my Pixhawk I2C splitter to this using
the I2C Port on the PH2.1, but got nothing, so I simply connected the GPS2 cable and everything comes up)
I2C = Nothing - at least for my setup - since it didn't work. Read GPS2 above.
USB = Speaker

I originally got everything connected and setup - and had a real time getting calibrated. The FC seemed buggy.
I couldn't power it via USB or connect that way - without connecting the battery. All calibrations were slow to respond ro failed.

I managed to work through it, took it up and flew a bit on a Sunday seemed ok.

The next weekend, decided I'd go testing. Power copter up, hit safety switch, arm it, and it doesn't spin up, and insantly disarms.
I narrowed this down to the Edison and once I removed it, the unit powered up via USB, and seemed to respond. Motors spun up.

I then noticed that my Telemetry was sketchy. It would simply lock the hud & the Pixhawk - not allowing me to connect to it.

I changed my log settings, to log less, turned on logging while disarmed, and changed the buffer size.
While this seemed to ease the telemetry issue a bit, it didn't fix it and in fact, I started getting random strange errors.

This change on buffer size also kept EKF3 from loading - giving me a insufficient memory error.

So I changed the logging buffer from 40 - down to 20. This fixed the EKf3 error, but everything still seemed buggy.

So I turned off EKF3 all together. This fixed everything.
Telemetry worked, the laggy Hud updated and slow system performance went away.

I decided to reinstall the Edison just to see what would happen and whatdya know - I can boot it from just the PC USB connection, and connect to Mission Planner, all telemetry working, and the system is stable.

So, turns out the majority of my issues were due to EKF3. This makes my Telemetry Laggy on my other 2 Pixhawks, so it's definitely taxing the system, but it must be even more so on the PH2.1.

Just loaded 3.5 RC4, did accel and compass calibrations and took her up...was super windy though but all seemed fine. Had to land it quick and tipped it though..log attached if anyone is interested.

00000043.bin

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