[Paparazzi-devel] Modifying Paparazzi for non-UAV activities

[James Smith]

Hi,

 

I’m really new to the paparazzi system, only stumbling across it this past week, so please forgive me if my questions appear amateurish. I’m currently working on several projects and was wondering how easy/hard it would be to modify the system to suit our needs. We have different types of projects using different sensor technologies and we wanted to develop a plug-and-play type of system. When we found paparazzi it looks like the real deal and would perfectly suit our needs, but I’m getting myself confused and don’t know where to start. If I could get it working the way we need it to, it would save our company heaps of time in development as it appears it is already setup and just needs a few minor tweaks.

 

I’ve successfully got the simulator running and can change the flight plan and environment factors. But I was hoping someone might be able to point me in the right direction with the following:

 

-          Each of our projects uses a different type custom made sensor and so we want to be able to specify which sensor we want to use for each project. Is this possible with Paparazzi and if so, could someone show me how to replace a sensor. I noticed in the Microjet XML example it contains three sensors. If we wanted to replace them with our own sensors how do we do this. I tried to modify the XML file and point it to one of our own sensors, similar to the LED sensor, but I could not get it working.

-          We also would like to redirect the messages sent from the sensors to another program for manipulation and storing. We wanted to avoid using the existing loggers and use our own logging program. Is this possible? Is it just a matter of replacing some code in the XML file or could we tap into the Ivy bus and capture the messages being sent?

-          Finally, each of our projects is for different clients we have and they all want a different style of interface for their project. Some want a visual display, others only require text-based. How hard is it to modify or replace the GCS? It looks like it is a separate tool on its own and that it can be replaced, but it appears to be written in a language we don’t know (OCAML?) and our experience is mainly in C and C++. Is this a possibility or is the GCS required for the system to run?

 

I’m sorry to ask so many questions, but this system really excites me with the way it works and how it can potentially be used. I have been reading through all the notes and pages on the wiki site, but I’m struggling to comprehend some of the techniques used. I have done some basic searches on the mailing list as well to see if anyone else had similar problems but I cannot find any answers that match my needs.

 

Any information you can provide or sites with documentation that you could direct me too will really help.

 

Thanks,

 

James.