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

[Gareth Roberts]

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
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