TF Mini Plus UART and I2C driver

[gian1312]

Feature Request

Hi
In my opinion, the TF Mini Plus would be a handy and cheap rangefinder. It is capable of I2C and UART communication. Its predecessor is already implemented as serial device. According to a Benewake document, this sensor (UART) already worked on PX4. If it is still working, I am really sorry. I can't figure out how to get it working in this case. However, it would be nice if an I2C driver could be implemented. I couldn't get anything useful written, though.
As I was told, they have just finished the driver for Ardupilot together with Benewake. Maybe, this helps.

An additional question. Is there any documentation for the Pixhawk 4 mini which states which of the different serial ports correspond to which physical port of the mini?

Best Regards

[dagar]

It looks like a fairly straightforward driver to add if anyone has this hardware in hand.
@mcsauder any interest in this one?

[mcsauder]

Hi @gian1312 , I have a TF Mini Plus that I've been using with the tfmini driver for months now, it works great for me.

As an example of what I just tested on the bench, plug the sensor into the UART & I2CB port (ttyS3) on a pixhawk 4 (fmu-v5), the run tfmini start -d /dev/ttyS3 If you are trying to run it on ttyS1 or ttyS2 you might be conflicting with a mavlink stream that would need to be disabled to run the sensor on those ports. Feel free to find me on PX4 slack if you have trouble getting it working!

[gian1312]

Thanks a lot for your help @mcsauder . I gave it a short try because I had to leave home quite early today and I won't be back before next weekend. I will contact you on Slack as soon as I am back home and did some more research. For now, I got the following output:

However, the feature request for an I2C driver would still be active. (It would free the UART port for other applications).

[dagar]

Isn't this a completely different driver?

[mcsauder]

Hi @gian1312 and @dagar, yes. this would essentially be a (new) addition for i2c capability. Only newer versions of the product manual describe interfacing with the device via i2c, so it looks like its possible. I'd like to try this out, but it will be a few weeks before I can get to it.

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[dimon777]

@mcsauder do you use specific branch for: tfmini start -d /dev/ttyS3 ?

I get different output when I try it:

nsh> tfmini start -d /dev/ttyS3
nsh> 
nsh> tfmini status
state @ 20024bb0
Using port '/dev/ttyS3'
tfmini_read: 0 events, 0us elapsed, 0.00us avg, min 0us max 0us 0.000us rms
tfmini_com_err: 0 events
poll interval:  9 ticks
report queue	2/64 (2/2 @ 200247b0)

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. Thank you for your contributions.

[bys1123]

I need this driver too.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. Thank you for your contributions.

[gian1312]

Are there any news?

[FeCLN]

@mcsauder hellooo, have you connected in the UART 6 parameter to use it?

[chahatdeep]

Was this solved? I'm not able to get my TFMINI-S working on UART but my older TFMINI (Not S model) works perfectly with RANGE FINDER TYPE = 20.