I/O Setup¶

In this panel the user can establish the relationship between a determined signal with a I/O port. This allows users to configure external sensors, messages between 1x units (Tunnel) and custom messages.

Priority: Connections between I/O ports can be marked with high priority with this checkbox. If enabled, they will run at high frequency: 1000 Hz.

The following table shows which connections can be selected as high or low priority (marked with S) and which connections are always marked as high (marked with H), so they cannot change to low priority.

Producer\Consumer

USB

Veronte LOS

External UART

RS232

RS485

Commgr port 0-5

RS custom message 0-2

Tunnel 0-2

GPS 0-1 RTCM

External HMR2300 magnetometer

Y 0-2 splitter

Iridium

Vectornav VN-300

Unescape port

Serial to CAN 0-5

CAN unwrapper 0-1

NMEA parser

Veronte LTE

Veronte LTE Auxiliary

External ultrasound

USB

Veronte LOS

External UART

RS232

RS485

Commgr port 0-5

RS custom message 0-2

Tunnel 0-2

GPS 0-1 RTCM

External HMR2300 magnetometer

Y 0-2 splitter A-B

Iridium

Unescape port

CAN to serial 0-5

CAN wrapper 0-1

Veronte LTE

Veronte LTE Auxiliary

Producer: Functions for creating and sending messages.
Consumer: Functions for receiving and parsing messages
Bit: This assigns each connection a bit in a way that allows this connection to be activated/deactivated depending on the status of the selected bit.

By default, the ‘Always Ok’ bit is set to all connections so that they are always active.

The following are the steps to setting up reception or transmission between ports:

Choose the Producer to use.

I/O Setup panel - Producers¶
To configure the desired Consumer that will be bind to the chosen Producer, it is first required to establish the relationship between them:
- Bind \(\rightarrow\): Unidirectional relationship.
- Bind Bidirectional \(\leftrightarrow\): Bidirectional relationship. This enables a port to receive or send information.
Note

Once the Consumer has been selected, it is possible to undo the selection by pressing the Clear button.

I/O Setup panel - Consumer options¶
Select the desired Consumer element.
(optional) Configure the Bit parameter.

The following I/O ports are available:

Field	Description
USB	USB Port
Veronte LOS	Radios
External UART	External UART Port (UART A pin) For more information, see Pinout - Hardware Installation section of the 1x Hardware Manual
RS232	Serial Port 232
RS485	Serial Port 485
Commgr port	COM Manager ports send and receive VCP messages. VCP is the protocol used by Veronte products to communicate. For more information on this, read the VCP user manual
RS Custom Message	This allows user to send/receive a serial custom message, see Serial Custom Messages
Tunnel	Creates a bidirectional brigde between two devices, see Tunnel
GPS RTCM	This allows the user to send/receive RTK information from GND unit to AIR unit
External HMR2300 magnetometer	External magnetometer sensor, see the Magnetometer Honeywell HMR2300 - Integration examples section
External ultrasound	External ultrasound sensor, see the Internest - Sensors section
Y Splitter	Used to split a signal into 2
Iridium	Iridium communication, see the Iridium - Communications section
Vectornav VN-300	Vectornav VN-300 is an external IMU. For more information, see the Vectornav VN-300 - Integration examples section
Unescape port	This allows user to reconstruct a byte stream with an escape logic, see Unescape port
CAN to serial / Serial to CAN	Serial to CAN sends serial streams over a CAN Bus / CAN to serial undoes the transformation ‘Serial to CAN’
CAN wrapper / CAN unwrapper	CAN wrapper sends CAN streams over a serial Bus / CAN unwrapper undoes this transformation, see the CAN wrapper/CAN unwrapper section
NMEA Parser	NMEA 0183 messages parser, see NMEA Parser
Veronte LTE	4G Connection. For more information, see the 4G - Communications section. Warning The configuration for a Veronte Autopilot 1x `hardware version 4.8` is different than for one with `hardware version 4.5`. If the user has any questions, please contact the support team following the user’s Joint Collaboration Framework
Veronte LTE Auxiliary	Warning Reserved port

More information about some elements can be found in the following sections.

Serial Custom Messages¶

Warning

Autopilot 1x has a serial limitation of 64 vectors (fieldset) per Custom.

In addition, there is a limit shared with all Customs, including CAN Custom Messages:
- Maximum number of vectors (fieldset): 104
- Maximum number of fields: 2000

It is possible to configure the messages sent/received through the serial port and its conversion to system variables by selecting the option RS Custom message and configuring the I/O port.

../../../_images/serial_custom_message.png — **Serial Custom Messages**¶

In the image above two possible configurations using an RS Custom Message can be seen. The ‘red’ one is configured to receive a given message from an RS232 serial port and the ‘green’ is used to send a RS Custom Message through an RS485 serial port. It is also possible to use the same RS Custom Message for both tasks if the bidirectional relationship is selected (the arrow indicates this (Bind Bidirectional \(\leftrightarrow\))).

To configure a RS Custom message, the user must follow the next steps:

Press the configuration button ( icon) and a pop-up window will be displayed.

In this window press the icon to add a custom message, the user can choose between System variables, ADSB Vehicle or External Sensor.

Serial Custom Message configuration¶

Note

The difference between choosing System Variables, ADSB Vehicle or External Sensor is that when the user selects Variable as the custom message type, only system variables will appear when System Variables is selected, only ADSB variables when ADSB Vehicle is selected and only variables related to external sensors if External Sensor is selected.
When it is already added, the following options are available to configure a custom message:

Producer RS Custom Message configuration¶

Consumer RS Custom Message configuration¶
- Endianness: Depending on the order in which the device issue the message, it is possible to select:
  - Big endian: Set the value from left to right.
  - Little endian: Set the value from right to left.
  - Mixed endian: Some devices use this format. If users need to configure it, please contact the support team (create a ticket in the customer’s Joint Collaboration Framework; for more information, see Tickets section of the JCF manual).
- Period/Time out: This option has a dual role depending on if it is used to transmit or receive data.
  - Period - Producer: It is the inverse of the send frequency.
  - Time out - Consumer: This is the threshold time between receptions to consider that the message is not being received correctly.
- Delay/Time to Idle: The purpose of this feature is ensuring half-duplex communication. This option has a dual role depending on if it is used to transmit or receive data.
  - Delay - Producer: After sending the message, the Serial bus will be disabled for this amount of time in order to allow half-duplex communication.
    
    Warning
    
    Delay time must not be longer than the specified period, since this will result in out-of-order message sending.
  - Time to Idle - Consumer: This is the time Autopilot 1x waits before discarding partially parsed bytes.
- Bit ID: This option is only available when a message is configured as Consumer. The user bit selected in Bit ID box will be true if the message is being received correctly.
  
  Warning
  
  Pay attention that the user bit selected in Bit ID is not in use for another task.
To create the structure of the message, click on the edit message button ( icon) and then press the icon to add fields to it. The following type of messages are available to configure a structure: Variable, Checksum, Matcher, Skip, Parse ASCII and Position.

The configuration of each structure is covered in the Custom Messages types - Input/Output section of this manual.

Warning

Before configuring any message, user has to know the structure it has to have according to the device that is connected to the port. Each device may have a different message structure when it sends or receives information.

To check serial messages transmission, see the Debug serial messages transmission - Troubleshooting section of this manual.

Tunnel¶

It is possible to configure a Tunnel, which is a bidirectional bridge between 1x units that communicate to each other sharing information about an external device connected to the Serial or Digital port.

Imagine that it is desired to have a button connected to the 1x air unit to launch a parachute. It is not possible to physically connect the button because the air autopilot is in the flying platform, so a different option is needed. Here is where the tunnel becomes useful. The button could be connected through the Serial or Digital port to the 1x ground unit, and then the signal is sent through the tunnel to the air unit. With this configuration it would be like if the button were physically connected to the aircraft.

Let’s consider the following image:

../../../_images/tunnel.png — **Tunnel configuration**¶

In the image above there is a device connected to the RS232 (Producer) and there is a Tunnel (Consumer) which sends that information to other Autopilot 1x with a determined ID. On the other hand, 1x air unit has to be configured to receive the signal sent by other device. In that case the Producer will be Tunnel and Consumer will be the port or destination tunnel where the device is connected.

The options available when configuring Tunnel as Consumer are:

Veronte ID: Enter the address that will receive the information. The following options are the most common:
- App 2: Veronte applications address.
- Broadcast: All units on the network. Select this option for a generic configuration.
- Address of a specific Veronte unit, it can be a 1x, a 4x, a CEX, etc.
  
  For more information on the available addresses, see List of Addresses section of the 1x Software Manual.
Parser: The user can choose protocol to parse message data. The options available are:
- No protocol
- RTCM3
- CANserial
Destination tunnel: Number of port is used to avoid mistakes and identify a Tunnel when using more than one, Tunnel 0, 1 and 2 are available.
Time between messages.
Bytes to send: Sets the message size to send.

When configuring Tunnel as Producer (i.e. on the unit that receives the information), no configuration is required. It is only necessary to connect it to a Consumer, usually to a serial port.

Unescape port¶

To understand what unescape is, the user must first understand what an escape byte is.

Let’s consider that there is a protocol that defines a ‘Flag’ as the start and end byte of the frame. In case the flag or an escape value appears in the frame data, and in order not to misinterpret the message, an escape byte or the same value repeated will be added before them so that, at the time of parsing, it will be reconstructed with the original byte.

../../../_images/escape_byte.png — **Escape byte**¶

In 1x PDI Builder, an Unescape port has been implemented to allows to reconstruct a byte stream with an escape logic.

../../../_images/unescape_port.png — **Unescape port configuration**¶

Two modes of escapes are supported:

SkipChar: The unfolding of the value to be escaped, the byte to escape has been repeated in the message.
SkipAndXOR: In this case, the escape byte is entered first and then the value to escape (i.e. the value to escape XOR escape byte).

In addition to this, two more options are available in this pop-up window:

Escape byte: Escape byte added.
XOR value: Only available when ‘SkipAndXOR’option is selected.

NMEA Parser¶

NMEA Parser is another way to add an external GNSS device. This consumer allows to receive NMEA 0183 messages and parses them directly. The NMEA Parser configuration menu includes the following parameters:

Time out: Defines the period of incoming information from the external system.
Feature: Variable extracted from the message defining the GNSS position. Usually Moving Object variables are used.
Utc: Variable extracted from the message defining the UTC.
Fix: Data provided by the external device which is important to know the status of the positioning.

Once the NMEA message has been parsed, the variables used for Fix and Feature can be selected in the GPS External configuration of the GNSS block as Fix Bit and GPS Position. For more information about this configuration, see Sensors blocks - Block Programs section of this manual.

CAN wrapper/CAN unwrapper¶

The CAN wrapper and CAN unwrapper ports allow CAN communication via serial. For this, CAN wrapper creates a message with a specific sequence which ensures the transmission of CAN message data; and CAN unwrapper undoes this transformation to a regular CAN message.

The structure of the messages sent/received by the CAN wrapped and CAN unwrapped respectively is the following:

../../../_images/can_wrapper_message.svg — **CAN wrapper/unwrapper - Message structure**¶

Content	Size
Matcher: 0xCA	1 byte
CAN ID	4 bytes
Data size	1 byte
Data	N bytes
CRC	2 bytes

Note

For further details on how to use these ports, consult the CAN message transmission via serial - Integration examples and the CAN message reception via serial - Integration examples sections of the present manual.