this allows for an offset in ESC numbering for much more efficient CAN
bandwidth usage.
For example, on a coaxial OctoQuad quadplane the ESCs are typically
setup as outputs 5 to 12. An ideal setup is to split these over 2 CAN
buses, with one CAN bus for the top layer and the one bus for the
bottom layer (allowing for VTOL flight with one bus failed).
Without this offset parameter you would be sending RawCommand messages
like this:
bus1: [ 0, 0, 0, 0, ESC1, ESC2, ESC3, ESC4 ]
bus2: [ 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ESC1, ESC2, ESC3, ESC4 ]
this is very wasteful of bus bandwidth, with bus1 using 3x the
bandwidth it should and bus2 using 4x the bandwidth it should (the
above will take 3 can frames for bus1, and 4 can frames for bus 2)
With this patch you can set:
CAN_D1_UC_ESC_OF = 4
CAN_D2_UC_ESC_OF = 8
and you will get this on the bus:
bus1: [ ESC1, ESC2, ESC3, ESC4 ]
bus2: [ ESC1, ESC2, ESC3, ESC4 ]
that takes just 1 can frame per send on each bus
// @Description: Offset for ESC numbering in DroneCAN ESC RawCommand messages. This allows for more efficient packing of ESC command messages. If your ESCs are on servo functions 5 to 8 and you set this parameter to 4 then the ESC RawCommand will be sent with the first 4 slots filled. This can be used for more efficint usage of CAN bandwidth