This is quick intro to FlytConsole, the web-based setup/configuration utility, bundled with FlytOS. FlytConsole is served by the onboard web-server, which is a part of FlytOS. So, you can start accessing/configuring your flight computer without downloading/installing any GCS application. Just point your web-browser to your flight computer, and you are good to go! It is built using RESTful APIs and web-socket connections.
FlytConsole offers a clean dashboard with all key parameters in one place. It provides access to all regular GCS features, such as, frame-selection, sensor calibration, RC calibration, gain-tuning, autopilot-parameters, waypoint navigation, mavlink inspector and so on. Some new features, such as, esc calibration and motor testing have been introduced (more are being added).
Why is FlytConsole interesting? Because it is very easily customisable and extensible (built using simple html and javascript)! Further, it eliminates the need for installation of any special GCS software on the client machine; and can be readily accessed from even a mobile device. Most importantly, FlytConsole serves as a template, allowing developers to reuse the code, to develop their own custom user-interface for their drone applications. Future commercial applications will all need their own custom interfaces (along with custom onboard/cloud apps). A single/common GCS will not make the cut. FlytOS makes it super-simple to build commercial drone applications (onboard, web/mobile, cloud), integrate a variety of payloads, leverage the power of ROS and OpenCV (libraries for collision avoidance, computer vision, SLAM, swarms), and expose custom user-interface over web/mobile.
While it may not look very polished yet, all the back-end features have been integrated and thoroughly tested. We are adding several other interesting features to FlytConsole, and are looking for more contributors to help us in this effort, esp. with UI/UX refinement. If you would like to contribute, do let us know! We will be happy to share the development plan.
FlytConsole is a sub-project of FlytOS project. The initial release is available for download (as part of FlytOS) at: http://flytbase.com/flytos/ ;
More sample applications (onboard and web/mobile) built for FlytOS are available here: https://github.com/flytbase/flytsamples
Documentation for FlytConsole is available here: http://docs.flytbase.com/docs/FlytPOD/GettingStarted/About_FlytConsole.html
Comments
FlytPOD is live on Indiegogo. You can Preorder it now :https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flytpod-advanced-flight-computer...
Yes, theoretically, it should work on any ARM based SBC that supports linux (Ubuntu 14.04) and ROS. However, to start with, we are officially supporting Odroid XU4. Once the core features have been thoroughly tested by a large number of developers, we will add other popular SBCs to the officially supported list.
So cool. Can this be run on a Raspberry Pi ?
Hello Fnoop,
FlytConsole is available in open-source (bundled with FlytOS). We will soon be making its code available as a separate github repo.
We have recently made FlytOS available for download (as debian package and image) at http://flytbase.com/flytos/ . Large parts of it are already open-source. We are currently requesting community feedback and suggestion on how to take this forward. Several users have started using it with their own companion-computer setups (mostly, Odroid XU4). We hope that FlytOS will help commercial/research drone application developers jumpstart their projects, as it offers out-of-the-box support for computer-vision, swarms, video-streaming, mobile/web/cloud apps, etc. More libraries can easily be integrated to keep it relevant for increasingly sophisticated drone applications.
Based on the community feedback, if they find it useful and would like to contribute to it, we will be happy to release the entire FlytOS project in open-source.
Is this all proprietary, or is any of it open source?