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RELEASE-NOTES.md

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Piksi Firmware Release Notes

Contents

v0.21

Core

  • Fixes "dgnss_baseline returned error: -2" bug when dropping a satellite.
  • Reduce occurence of "status glitches" that were observed by users integrating Piksi with Pixhawk by increasing RTK availablity.
  • 1PPS output on debug connector (pin DEBUG1)
  • New tracking lock detection architecture
  • Allow NMEA rates to be set to zero to disable
  • Reduce default baud and air rates for 3DR radios
  • Reduce observation message size for Mavlink encapsulation
  • Reduce serial bus traffic to improve console responsiveness on user machines
  • Fix uninitialized week number in SBP ephemeris TOC
  • Numerous minor fixes and improvements

v0.20

Core

  • Updates to libsbp for stability
  • Deprecate MSG_PRINT in favor of MSG_LOG which includes log level in protocol
  • Remove strings that indicate log levels from msg print prefixes
  • Update the following messages in order to widen PRN field and rename to SID
    • SBP_MSG_TRACKING
    • SBP_MSG_ACQ_RESULT
    • SBP_MSG_OBS
    • SBP_MSG_EPHEMERIS
    • SBP_MSG_TRACKING_STATE
  • Add sanity check for user entered base station position upon broadcast of location
  • Change tracking threshold to 31 db-hz to help maintain track
  • Fix known bug where Piksi could operate incorrectly during GPS week rollover

v0.19

Core

  • Fix bug where acquisition could get stuck searching an empty Doppler range
  • Fix buffer overflows when building NMEA messages
  • Add better checks and thread safety to random number generator
  • Add GPRMC, GPVTG, and GPGLL NMEA messages
  • Settings and FileIO messages are now directional

libswiftnav

  • Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM) to filter out bad position solutions
  • Various off by 1 fixes
  • Add phase lock counter to local observations
  • Improved PLL lock detection
  • Change tracking C/N0 estimator to dQ/I
  • More robust nav message decoding
  • Update UTC time offset for leap second on June 30th, 2015

v0.18

Core

  • Fixed flash corruption bug - increases % of time device reaches the correct Fixed RTK solution and reduces device crashes
  • Fixed bug in acquisition core in SwiftNAP that caused device crashes

libswiftnav

  • Float filter robustness improvements
  • Refactor of baseline / differential positioning management code

libsbp

v0.17

  • More robust nav bit / Ephemeris decoding - reduces number of position outliers and Fixed to Float transitions
  • Improve C/N0 estimation filter and reduce tracking integration length - reduces mechanical flexing / heat sensitivity
  • Use a larger initial covariance in Kalman filter - decreases chance of an incorrect Fixed point solution
  • Uses highest elevation satellite for nominal pseudorange
  • More robust checks on tracking channel measurements before using in PVT solution

v0.16

Core

  • Acquisition / Tracking
    • Increased sensitivity: correlate for 20ms intervals (rather than 1ms) after nav bit sync
    • Avoid bad ephemerides by treating new ephemerides as candidates until received a second time
    • Reset carrier phase ambiguity for a tracking channel if its SNR falls below a threshold
    • Prioritize satellites the base station is tracking in the acquisition management
    • Now using true C/N0 SNR estimator
  • Fault Handling
    • Watchdog and hard fault handling
  • External Event Capture
    • Add external event timing input to DEBUG header (documentation for this feature coming soon)
  • Miscellaneous
    • Use external antenna as default rather than gated depending on external antenna current draw

Piksi Console / Scripts

v0.15

  • Fixes to setup script for new and untracked dependencies

Core

  • Fixes to libswiftnav to improve firmware stability
    • Fix for known crash when receiver drops from 5->4 satellites
    • Fix "LD Factorization" message & bug
    • Fix for suddden large baseline bug when dropping & reacquiring sats
  • Send RTK absolute positions as outputs over the MSG_POS_LLH (id 0x0201) and MSG_POS_ECEF (id 0x0200) SBP messages - (Please review the SBP documentation of the flags field for both messages)
    • A flag of 0 represents single point position
    • A flag of 1 represents the float solution
    • A flag of 2 represents the fixed RTK solution
  • Add log level prefixes to messages prints (ERROR, WARN, INFO & DEBUG)
  • Remove SBP functionality from libswiftnav and use libsbp instead to handle communication
  • Piksi's messages, defined by Swift Binary Protocol (SBP), are now more fully documented at http://github.com/swift-nav/libsbp. See the libsbp README for more details.

Console / serial_link.py

  • Add display of psuedo absolute positions on solution tab
  • Annotate settings to provide a description and notes for each setting
  • Add Json serialization option to serial link functionality
  • Provide a progress indicator for firmware updates
  • Add a pause and clear button to the console log
  • Add Piksi serial number to the console window header
  • Use libsbp to decode messages from Piksi
  • Watchdog timer option on Piksi heartbeat messages
  • If running console from the source, update dependencies or rerun the setup.sh script to grab the necessary dependencies

v0.14

  • Numerous fixes to setup script for Ubuntu, OS X, ARM and RasberryPi targets

Core

  • Make low latency mode the default
  • Added chi-squared test on baseline solution residual to catch a large class of potential errors, including some cycle slips and incorrect IAR initializations
  • Handle the DMA RX buffer overrun and observation message packing: integer overflow errors more gracefully, these are no longer a critical errors and the system will continue to operate correctly
  • Fixes a bug that periodically caused a Obs Matching: t_base < t_rover error message and prevented any BASELINE messages from being generated
  • Improvements to integer ambiguity resolution speed when adding new satellites
  • New tracking loop filter architecture

Console / serial_link.py

  • Added options to log SBP data to a file in the console and serial_link.py
  • Ephemerides are now saved alongside observation files from console
  • serial_link.py now has options to reset the device upon connection and to exit after a timeout has elapsed
  • More compact layout of GUI elements

v0.13

  • Fix a bug resulting in a stack overflow when satellite set changes
  • Fix a bug in the NMEA output when the longitude magnitude was >127
  • Simulator mode enable is now a setting rather than a button in the console
  • Numerous improvements to the development environment setup script including now using Ansible to provision the required tools

v0.12

  • Fixes a bug where a "disorder in the sdiffs" message is displayed and the RTK solution output stops
  • Fixes an issue where Piksi would stop outputting observations and solutions for a period of several minutes before resuming
  • Adds a "lock count" field to the observation message format, allowing the remote receiver to detect when a satellite has been reinitialized. This fixes a problem where the RTK solution would become large and erronious when one receiver is restarted or satellites are rapidly lost and re-gained
  • Fixes issue where console would freeze on start-up
  • Increases the precision of settings values, fixing an issue where the base station position would lose precision if the settings were saved and the Piksi was then reset
  • Added a "Reset to factory defaults" button to the console
  • Fixes the center on solution button in the console
  • Fixes the start date in RINEX file headers
  • Improves handling of the Piksi being unplugged in the console

v0.11

  • Add ‘low latency mode’ which provides very low latency baseline outputs irrespective of the radio communications delay with a small accuracy penalty
  • Fix a stack overflow bug that occurs when the number of satellites in common falls below 5
  • Improve the robustness of the firmware update procedure

v0.10

Core

  • FFT based acquisition core for ~100x increase in acquisition speed
  • Increased from 9 to 11 tracking channels
  • Long SPI transfers to the NAP now use DMA
  • Numerous improvements to the simulator to make it more closely match the non-simulated behaviour
  • Fix bug where settings were not always saved to flash
  • Fix numerous stability issues
  • Firmware now checks for compatible NAP version
  • Added monitoring of UART throughput and observation latency
  • New compacted observation format for increased throughput and flexible over the wire frame size
  • Refactored UART code to allow peripherals (e.g. Bluetooth or 3G modules) to claim a UART for exclusive use
  • Remove the old Float Kalman Filter with position states that was running in the background, now we exclusively run the new KF which only uses ambiguity states and constraint equations
  • Add FLL aiding to the carrier tracking loop PLL during the initial pull-in period
  • Add ability to periodically transmit a message indicating the surveyed location of a base station
  • Add support for external modules to the build system
  • Add mechanism to register NMEA dispatchers (used by the external iAP Bluetooth module to interface to Apple devices)
  • If we have received a message with the surveyed location of the base station then output "pseudo-absolute" NMEA messages

libswiftnav

  • Generate a fixed solution even if only a partial set of PRNs have had their integer ambiguity resolved
  • Add FLL-aided-PLL loop filter
  • Fixed bug where the reference satellite was not found
  • Numerous bug fixes and stability improvements

Console

  • Check for updated Piksi firmware, NAP firmware and console version on start-up and prompt the user to flash updated versions to the device
  • Allow the user to select a serial port using a GUI dialog if one is not specified on the command line
  • Binary builds of the console now available for Window and Mac OS X
  • Fixed a bug with the RINEX header format output
  • Numerous fixes to support a wider range of Python/Qt/Wx environments
  • Numerous cosmetic enhancements
  • Format of CSV log files improved for greater precision and more readable time format

v0.8

  • First public beta release, as shipped with Kickstarter rewards and pre-order hardware
  • Basic RTK functionality