Ardupilot Debug Setup

Hardware Requirement

Debug Probe
- Vimdrones STLinkV3 Probe - Purchase Link
- Optical:
  - any stlink v2, v3
Device
- Pixhawk4
- SH1.00mm 6P/10P Pixhawk Standard Cable (Device has Pixhawk Standard Port Only)
- Optical:
  - any ardupilot flight controller with SWD interface
  - any AP_Periph device with SWD interface

Wiring Diagram

Vimdrones STLinkV3 Probe pixhawk wiring diagram

Software Requirement

vscode - Download
vscode extension cotrex-debug - Download
openocd - Download
gdb

Build Ardupilot Firmware

In Terminal - Clone ardupilot project

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot.git
cd ardupilot

Setup OS Dependency
- Linux - https://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/building-setup-linux.html
- Windows - https://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/building-setup-windows.html
- MacOS - https://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/building-setup-mac.html

Firmware Build

./waf configure --board Pixhawk4
./waf copter #change target type here, ie plane, rover 

#check build result
➜  ardupilot git:(Copter-4.5.1) file build/Pixhawk4/bin/*
build/Pixhawk4/bin/arducopter:             ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, with debug_info, not stripped
build/Pixhawk4/bin/arducopter.apj:         ASCII text, with very long lines (65435)
build/Pixhawk4/bin/arducopter.bin:         TTComp archive data, binary, 4K dictionary
build/Pixhawk4/bin/arducopter_with_bl.hex: ASCII text

Bootloader Build

./waf configure --board Pixhawk4 --bootloader
./waf bootloader 

#check build result
➜  ardupilot git:(Copter-4.5.1) file build/Pixhawk4/bootloader/*             
build/Pixhawk4/bootloader/AP_Bootloader: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, ARM, EABI5 version 1 (SYSV), statically linked, with debug_info, not stripped
➜  ardupilot git:(Copter-4.5.1) file build/Pixhawk4/bin/AP_Bootloader.*
build/Pixhawk4/bin/AP_Bootloader.apj: JSON data
build/Pixhawk4/bin/AP_Bootloader.bin: TTComp archive data, binary, 4K dictionary
build/Pixhawk4/bin/AP_Bootloader.hex: ASCII text

Create openocd target specific ie. Pixhawk4.cfg

source [find interface/stlink.cfg]
source [find target/stm32f7x.cfg]

Create vscode launch file .vscode/launch.json

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "name": "ArduCopter",
            "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
            "executable": "${workspaceFolder}/build/Pixhawk4/bin/arducopter",
            "liveWatch": {
                "enabled": true,
                "samplesPerSecond": 4
            },
            "request": "launch",
            "type": "cortex-debug",
            "servertype": "openocd",
            "configFiles": [
                "${workspaceFolder}/Pixhawk4.cfg",
            ]
        },
        {
            "name": "AP_Bootloader",
            "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
            "executable": "${workspaceFolder}/build/Pixhawk4/bootloader/AP_Bootloader",
            "livewatch": {
                "enabled": true,
                "samplespersecond": 4
            },
            "request": "launch",
            "type": "cortex-debug",
            "servertype": "openocd",
            "configFiles": [
                "${workspaceFolder}/Pixhawk4.cfg"
            ],
        },
    ]
}