Re: [Paparazzi-devel] MAVLink / QGroundControl v1.0.0 available

[Christophe De Wagter]

Dear Lorenz,

I think in the interest of "the opensource autopilots community" combining projects is probably a very good thing. It makes both projects consider the strong and weaker assets of the other and I believe in term that should lead to improvements everywhere. 

There are a few difficulties as paparazzi flight plans are rather unique in that they are complete programs with for instance payload control but even control-loop interactions and so on. E.g. the flight plan triggers camera's, takes pictures during some straight phases of search patterns but not during turns, can reconfigure the control loops and automatically move waypoints during landing, can include exceptions like coming back home when out of radio range or battery voltage, can define forbidden zones, do step rolls, polygon searching, catapult launching, formation flying, collision avoidance and things like that which do not easily convert to a list of waypoints. 

But combining projects might trigger QGCS to become even more mission-driven. Even if I'll probably keep using the very stable, light but powerful paparazzi GCS (system) I'm in for the adding mavlink support to any feasible extend.

-Christophe 

On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 1:13 AM, Felix Ruess <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi,

just some quick thoughs on this as well:

I think it would be nice to integrate MAVLink into Paparazzi.
First maybe just integrate it into the airborne code so you could see
telemetry within QGroundControl (first without flight plans support).
The Paparazzi Flight Plans concept does not neatly fit into the
waypoint list based concept of QGroundControl (at least not on first
glance).
But we could add support for flight plans to MavLink and in principle
to QGroundControl as well I guess.

Not really sure what the best way is for the long run.
We could make another datalink client that reads MAVLink messages from
the serial port and posts them on the IVY bus.
But I haven't looked at the differences/similarities between the
standard MAVLink and Paparazzi messages so far.
So if we really want to support both, Paparazzi and MavLink messages
at the same time, we'll have to take a closer look at the common
messages.

I don't really have the time to do this myself, but I can provide
support to whoever wants to tackle this...

Cheers, Felix

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 4:29 PM, Gareth Roberts
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi Lorenz,
>
> I am impressed with QGroundControl and use it with our ArduPilotMega
> boards.  We also use MAVLINK extensively internally.
>
> That said, I think there would be some reluctance within the community -
> the paparazzi GCS is pretty much feature complete and also extremely
> stable (more so that QGC in it's current form in my opinion).
> The cross-platform nature of QGC is appealing though.
>
> The problem you'll have is the architecture of the paparazzi system.
>
> data_link -> server -> GCS
> simulation ->       -> Other stuff
>
> This communication is via the Ivy bus and IMO is extremely useful; you
> can subscribe other programs all of which can read and alter the status
> of a UAV.
>
> To get QGC working with paparazzi you'd either need to remove the
> datalink and server components (which would break a lot of things),
> alter datalink to also speak mavlink (but then QGC wouldn't work) or
> alter QGC to understand the Ivy bus.
>
> http://paparazzi.enac.fr/wiki/Overview
>
> Cheers,
> Gareth
>
> On Thu, 2011-09-29 at 09:48 -0400, Lorenz Meier wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>>
>> MAVLink v1.0 will be released soon, bringing a number of new features
>> and a substantially cleaned up protocol to the community. It is
>> however still under review, so adopting MAVLink now would thus offer
>> you the opportunity to shape the protocol.
>>
>>
>> It would be great to have Paparazzi and QGroundControl working
>> together and I'm willing to help in the integration and adjust QGC
>> where needed.
>>
>>
>> I've substantially improved QGroundControl over the last few weeks,
>> the most notable differences are some cleanups in the user interface
>> and a factor of 2x-4x in speedup - it should consume substantially
>> less CPU now.
>> Here is a video of the latest features, including some customization
>> that would allow you to tune controllers.
>>
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaQ0bH0WW80
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> It should be rather straightforward to port MAVLink to Paparazzi. Of
>> course it would need some effort, but it shouldn't involve difficult
>> steps. I would be ready to help this process by active help on this
>> mailing list and changes to QGroundControl where needed.
>>
>>
>> For testing the current version, I recommend to build from source, it
>> is quickly set up, or to download the v10release binaries from the
>> downloads section of the website.
>> http://www.qgroundcontrol.org/dev/start
>>
>>
>> If you're on Mac OS or Windows and don't have a build environment
>> installed, you can download QGroundControl v1.0.0 here. PLEASE NOTE
>> THAT THESE ARE ALPHA BINARIES! They are well tested and did not crash
>> during the tests, but do not reflect at all the final application
>> stability.
>> https://github.com/mavlink/v10release/downloads
>>
>>
>> A few more links with useful information:
>>
>>
>> How to add MAVLink support to your autopilot:
>> http://www.qgroundcontrol.org/dev/mavlink_onboard_integration_tutorial
>>
>>
>> The new mission lib (makes parameter and waypoint support a lot
>> easier, see the testing folder / main.c for a working Linux example):
>> https://github.com/pixhawk/mavlink/tree/v10release/missionlib
>>
>>
>> Available ground control stations for MAVLink:
>> http://www.qgroundcontrol.org/mavlink/start#mavlink_ecosystem
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Lorenz
>> _______________________________________________
>> Paparazzi-devel mailing list
>> address@hidden
>> https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/paparazzi-devel
>
>
>
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