I was just wondering if there has been any progress in having a native Apple/Mac based GCS for arducopter ( or other ) - that doesn't require all the craziness of emulators and running WindoZe crap and such
I Sometimes don't understand the software world - millions of Macs - Users - etc . . and yet no one writes a mac GCS ?
I was able to get Configurator "running on Mac OS X" some hour ago.
That is; I installed Windows 7 on Virtualbox (the Sun/Oracle VM) and could map the USB serial port to it.
Works very good although the Mac blows its fan somewhat to hint VirtualBox can be demanding.
The key issue that had me struggle the past two days was I had forgotten to increase the connection timeout from the default 5 seconds in Configurator. I set it to 10 and connecting worked, the Wiki says 30 seconds.
This won't be a very short-term solution, but did any of you consider using/adapting QGroundControl for this? With the ArduPilotMega MAVLink port in place (which might not be end-user ready, but definitively in perfect shape for developers) it should be feasible to use QGroundControl soon with ArduCopter.
The benefit is that all tools to create QGroundControl are open-source, so anyone interested in establishing ArduCopter support could do it (vs. the expensive LabView license). So it will need some polishing, but could be a very viable medium to long-term option.
BTW: Did you see the recent Google Earth View of QGroundControl? The screenshot was done on a Mac - so it definitely works there.
I am on a Mac. I built my Arducopter using a work around. The Arduino software, which is true cross-platform, has a Mac version and it works great. But unfortunately, to run the Arducopter Configurator software, which is necessary in order to tune and fly your machine, you do need Windows in some shape or fashion. I got around this by using vmWare Fusion (which is a Windows emulator) on my Mac. This is similar to Parallels and bootcamp, but with vmFusion and Parallels you can run WIndows in a window, rather than having to reboot your machine, etc. Please note that in order to install one of these emulators, you need a copy of the Windows OS and it actually gets installed on your hard drive in a protected area. Hopefully, DIY will provide a Mac version of the Arducopter Configurator software soon so that we can avoid having to purchase and install Windows onto our Mac machines.
i received my quadcopter today from FahPah (excellent) and have assembled it and after many hours of trying are unable to do anything with it. I have a mac and it seems that i was misinformed when i read that the software was mac friendly. From reading the comments above it would appear that i now have to buy a dos box before i see this bird hover like a dragonfly. Is this correct or have i missed a link somewhere - every mac link i go to says that it is currently unavailable.
Any help would be appreciated
Regards,
Richard
OK. The good news: LabView runs perfectly on my macs.
The bad news: ArduCopterConfigurator contains windows-only requests for retrieval of registry keys (obviously windows-only). I need to get this cleaned up, but don't know anything about LabView yet :)
In short, the OSX version will take a bit longer - at least I need to figure out LabView first !
LabVIEW is cross-platform, so we just need someone with a OS-X version to compile it and release an executable. We're doing that with the APM GCS, which is also LabVIEW.
Replies
I was just wondering if there has been any progress in having a native Apple/Mac based GCS for arducopter ( or other ) - that doesn't require all the craziness of emulators and running WindoZe crap and such
I Sometimes don't understand the software world - millions of Macs - Users - etc . . and yet no one writes a mac GCS ?
That is; I installed Windows 7 on Virtualbox (the Sun/Oracle VM) and could map the USB serial port to it.
Works very good although the Mac blows its fan somewhat to hint VirtualBox can be demanding.
The key issue that had me struggle the past two days was I had forgotten to increase the connection timeout from the default 5 seconds in Configurator. I set it to 10 and connecting worked, the Wiki says 30 seconds.
The benefit is that all tools to create QGroundControl are open-source, so anyone interested in establishing ArduCopter support could do it (vs. the expensive LabView license). So it will need some polishing, but could be a very viable medium to long-term option.
BTW: Did you see the recent Google Earth View of QGroundControl? The screenshot was done on a Mac - so it definitely works there.
Any help would be appreciated
Regards,
Richard
The bad news: ArduCopterConfigurator contains windows-only requests for retrieval of registry keys (obviously windows-only). I need to get this cleaned up, but don't know anything about LabView yet :)
In short, the OSX version will take a bit longer - at least I need to figure out LabView first !