Important Update: Hi Everyone, I got a couple of things slightly wrong in this video regarding the multiprotocol and UAV CAN 1: there is a error in this video with regards to the Node ID of the Service needing to be the same as the Flight Controller, while this was the case for the units I was testing this was a firmware error and its been corrected in later revisions. To confirm the Node ID of the Servo should not be the same as the Autopilot, as standard Ardupilot sets your controller as Node 10 and the servo should be something other than this. 1,2 or 3 for example. Also note setting the Node ID to 128 will tell it to mirror the Servo number for the Node ID. Sorry for this error it was due to some early firmware and has now been resolved. Node ID for all UAVCAN Devices should always be different. 2: The servo should be bought in the connection and protocol its needed for, the Model MD70 is available in UAVCAN,PWM and RS485 versions and you cant actually change the input your model supports. Sorry this was a miss understanding of the spec by me.
They are VERY new, you could not even buy these when I was sent them. Right now they are not the norm but a few years down the line they will be far more normal. I have had them for nearly 4 months but there has been changes in SW that I was waiting for before posting
@@MadRC Excellent work ! PWM servos are old, old tech. So many things you could do with these, including finding out that the servo isn't moving from the flight controller ! I can't wait to see these things become the norm. Receivers will need to change before that happens though... But it would be so much easier for a receiver to output CANBUS versus PWM or SBus.
I particularly like the idea that their is servo sensing capability. I'm going to guess that in future when you have an airframe with redundancy built into the airframe e.g. redundant control surfaces, it will be possible for the Flight Controller to detect a failed servo and be capable of failing over to the redundant servo / control surface to ensure continued safe flight?
Redundancy is certainly one of the benefits. The major benefit for RC/UAV is the reduction in wiring complexity. It doesn't need the traditional hub and spoke topology, in fact a loop topology is advantageous. You can run just a single connection to a servo in a wing, from there you can plug an ESC or GPS or anything else directly into the servo, rather than running the connection all the way back to the FC. Ideally you would have just three connection to the FC: Left wing, right wing, and fuselage. From there everything can be daisy chained together and looped back on itself. Ensuring that if one connection is broken, the network continues to function. As sUAS become increasingly sophisticated, the resiliency, simplicity, and reliability of CAN will be very appreciated. At work we're trying to incorporate it as much as possible in our electrical architecture for our big fixed wing platforms already, and have just received our first Hitec CAN servos for testing. In the future, we don't plan on specifying PWM servos unless requested by clients.
Wonder if you could help with something im trying to figure out with the UAV can servos configuration My company has designed a 2 axis gimbal for our aircraft using the can servos as the axis points. We got everything to work perfectly however we are trying to get the Pan Axis to stabilize during flight which is not working at all. On ardupilot you have the pull down menu for gimbal selection and that has the stabilization option. However when we activite the RC input for the different axis. When we try this it changes the servo inputs automaticly to a mount option and then we have 0 control on the gimbal. It seems we only have control over the gimbal if we select the spicifc RC input we have selected. Do you possibily know what we can try to get the stabilization to work?
Thanks you for the tutorial, very interesting. I bought these servos to control flap rotation on a drone. The Autopilot is a Pixhawk5 using PX4. Do you have any idea of how I can make these servos communicate with PX4 ? Thank you
Important Update: Hi Everyone,
I got a couple of things slightly wrong in this video regarding the multiprotocol and UAV CAN
1: there is a error in this video with regards to the Node ID of the Service needing to be the same as the Flight Controller, while this was the case for the units I was testing this was a firmware error and its been corrected in later revisions. To confirm the Node ID of the Servo should not be the same as the Autopilot, as standard Ardupilot sets your controller as Node 10 and the servo should be something other than this. 1,2 or 3 for example. Also note setting the Node ID to 128 will tell it to mirror the Servo number for the Node ID. Sorry for this error it was due to some early firmware and has now been resolved. Node ID for all UAVCAN Devices should always be different.
2: The servo should be bought in the connection and protocol its needed for, the Model MD70 is available in UAVCAN,PWM and RS485 versions and you cant actually change the input your model supports.
Sorry this was a miss understanding of the spec by me.
It's about time CAN bus becomes standard in the hobby world. It's been used various industries forever and many MCUs support it.
the explanation is very clear.
Uavcan servo can be controlled also with a RC
Where to buy ? Excellent video and thanks for keeping us up to speed on tech progress.
Fantastic product, fantastic video. I had no idea that CAN bus servos were a thing !
They are VERY new, you could not even buy these when I was sent them. Right now they are not the norm but a few years down the line they will be far more normal. I have had them for nearly 4 months but there has been changes in SW that I was waiting for before posting
@@MadRC Excellent work ! PWM servos are old, old tech. So many things you could do with these, including finding out that the servo isn't moving from the flight controller ! I can't wait to see these things become the norm. Receivers will need to change before that happens though... But it would be so much easier for a receiver to output CANBUS versus PWM or SBus.
I have been trying to figure this out for a while now and this video cleared up almost all my questions, thank you so much!
Nice job 😷😷
Where can I download software utility to configure those Hitec UAVCAN servos?
I particularly like the idea that their is servo sensing capability. I'm going to guess that in future when you have an airframe with redundancy built into the airframe e.g. redundant control surfaces, it will be possible for the Flight Controller to detect a failed servo and be capable of failing over to the redundant servo / control surface to ensure continued safe flight?
Redundancy is certainly one of the benefits. The major benefit for RC/UAV is the reduction in wiring complexity. It doesn't need the traditional hub and spoke topology, in fact a loop topology is advantageous. You can run just a single connection to a servo in a wing, from there you can plug an ESC or GPS or anything else directly into the servo, rather than running the connection all the way back to the FC. Ideally you would have just three connection to the FC: Left wing, right wing, and fuselage. From there everything can be daisy chained together and looped back on itself. Ensuring that if one connection is broken, the network continues to function. As sUAS become increasingly sophisticated, the resiliency, simplicity, and reliability of CAN will be very appreciated. At work we're trying to incorporate it as much as possible in our electrical architecture for our big fixed wing platforms already, and have just received our first Hitec CAN servos for testing. In the future, we don't plan on specifying PWM servos unless requested by clients.
Wonder if you could help with something im trying to figure out with the UAV can servos configuration
My company has designed a 2 axis gimbal for our aircraft using the can servos as the axis points. We got everything to work perfectly however we are trying to get the Pan Axis to stabilize during flight which is not working at all.
On ardupilot you have the pull down menu for gimbal selection and that has the stabilization option. However when we activite the RC input for the different axis. When we try this it changes the servo inputs automaticly to a mount option and then we have 0 control on the gimbal. It seems we only have control over the gimbal if we select the spicifc RC input we have selected. Do you possibily know what we can try to get the stabilization to work?
Thanks you for the tutorial, very interesting. I bought these servos to control flap rotation on a drone. The Autopilot is a Pixhawk5 using PX4. Do you have any idea of how I can make these servos communicate with PX4 ?
Thank you
Mads, do you know if the position feedback is stored in the logs, somehow, or could be stored? it would be very useful for debugging
Wich kind Servo we can use in vtol drone....??
Where can you install the UAVCAN software you are using in this tutorial?
It’s from Hitec directly. They will provide it to you if you have the servos.
@@MadRC So need to send someone an e-mail or something?
Is the servo able to spin continuously?
Price ? Is it brushless ?