LUX H7 Flight Controller Primary ArduPilot Set‐up & Quick Guide
This Guide will be divided into 2 sections (how the Flight Controller was set up with ArduPilot Firmware and how to start/use the flight controller):
The flight controller that we will be using for this year's challenge is Lumenier's LUX H7 flight controller with the MCU of STM32 H743. The documentation for this flight controller is hard to find, hence the need for this guide. Information regarding the wiring and hardware setup for this flight controller can be found here.
Hardware: LUX H7 Flight Controller and a USB Type C DATA cable. Make sure that the cable is a data cable, for some cables are just "power" cables (that is, they will only supply the chip with power but will not enable the transfer of data from and to the flight controller. Learning that cost me 3 days of my life going around in circles).
Software:
1- Mission Planner: Mission planner is a ground control station. A ground control station is what we will use mainly to monitor and control all of the drone's activties through the flight controller. Mission planner is pretty popular amongst drone enthusiasts, so finding tutorials to show you around the app will be easy. To download the compatabile version of Mission Planner that we will use for this project, click on this link. Scroll down near the end, and click on "MissionPlanner-stable.msi".
2- STM32 Cube Programmer: You will only need this software if you are going to make any changes to the current firmware that I have already set up on the flight controller (ArduPilot). This includes deleting the MCU's memory and firmware, installing new firmware, or installing your own custom made firmware. Please consult any of the Junior Engineers (Omar or Pavan) or the Team Lead (Alvaro) before making any changes to the flight controller's firmware. Follow this link to download STM32 Cube Programmer. ``
ArduPilot Firmware set-up on FC (skip this to the next section if you don't want to make any changes to the current firmware. Mostly, that's not what you want):
This has already been done. The Flight Controller has ArduPilot up and running. This is simply for future reference. The LUX H7 FC comes with a pre-installed BetaFlight FIrmware on it. The reason we choose to go with ArduPilot Firmware is for the extra features that we would like to have (like the drone self landing feature). To download the ArduPilot Firmware, you can follow this link for instructions. The specific firmware we used can be found here by following this path: stable/MatekH743/arducopter_with_bl.hex.
Next, press and hold the bootloader button on the flight controller while connecting the computer to the FC through the data USB C data cable (you will find the bootloader button right next to the USB C port). Once, you've done that, the FC should light up a stable red LED light only (no other LEDs should be working). If not, disconnect the FC and make sure you repeat this process correct again. This will set the FC to DFU mode. For us to make any changes to the FC's MCU, the FC has to be in DFU mode. Otherwise, it won't work.
After that, launch STM32 Cube Programmer on your computer and follow the STM32 instructions section provided in this link to load the new firmware into the board.
Set Baudrate to 57600 and connect the flight controller.
Recommended parameters:
You should be able to see these parameters on the Config/Full Parameter List tab after connecting the board.
- Go to the army section and set the bitmask to include the battery and GPS. if GPS is too noisy, uncheck it.
- Look for the action of what happens when RC signal is lost and set to disable (this will disable checking for RC signal, useful when you're not using an RC controller)