Monitor and Tune: Exclude blocks, submodules from compiling, but allow them to update in external mode

I would like to develop and tune a quadcopter attitude controller (or rather, develop a model for pedagological purposes) for deployment on a Kakute H7 flight controller. I would like to be able to use the "Monitor and Tune" functionality to adjust gains, etc., and have some kind of visualisation displayed at the same time. I had hoped to use the UAV Animation block for this, but, when running in 'External' mode, it does not update. I had then considered sending the data to another model using UDP. However, my board does not support this (nor should it need to - I want the models to communicate with each other!). So, my question is this:

• Is there a way to get blocks like UAV Animation or plotting functions to update at each time step when running a model in External mode?
• Is there a way to exclude blocks from compiling, but still have them run during the external mode simulation? (I tried using a Variant subsystem, but it seems that running in External mode does not update the appropriate condition.)

Answer 1

[Jianxin Sun]

Hi Alyssa,

You could consider following example https://www.mathworks.com/help/uav/px4/ref/simulator-plant-model-example.html to co-simulate PX4 with Simulink. The example contains two models, one for the autopilot controller deployment and testing, the other one runs in Simulink and can be used for visualization purpose.

Thanks,

Jianxin