Lighthouse and AI-Deck compatibility

Discussions about the AI-deck
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Leon76
Beginner
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2020 5:23 pm

Lighthouse and AI-Deck compatibility

Post by Leon76 »

Hello,
I hope this is the correct place for my question.
I´m working on the Lighthouse and AI-Deck compatibility. The GAP8 of the AI-Deck and the FPGA of the Lighthouse-Deck share the same UART1 connection, which is why they cannot communicate with the CF2 at the same time. To fix that cutting of communication, the flow of data from the GAP8-chip must be diverted via SPI to the ESP32 based NINA-chip and then through UART2 to the core.
My question is: Does the data transfer from Crazyflie to Gap8 also have to run via NINA? Or can the data from the drone continue to be sent via UART1? Will the Lighthouse-deck be disturbed when it receives data that were intended for the AI deck, or can it “ignore“ them?

Related Issue: https://github.com/bitcraze/AIdeck_examples/issues/13

Thanks!
tobias
Bitcraze
Posts: 2339
Joined: Mon Jan 28, 2013 7:17 pm
Location: Sweden

Re: Lighthouse and AI-Deck compatibility

Post by tobias »

The final goal has always been have the lighthouse deck on I2C to have it compatible with basically all other decks. It has just not been done yet and I can't really say when. If you are not using the ESP32 uart to the CF2 I think it would be easiest to mod the Lighthouse deck to have the uart go there instead.

When the lighthouse deck is up and running it only uses LH TX -> CF2 RX so in theory you could use the CF2 TX -> GAP8 RX. There is a errata though for the GAP8 RX that it can not be used at the same time as the hyperbus and would have to be interleaved if they are to be used at the same time.
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