DroidPlanner fans,
Over the life of DroidPlanner, we've received many requests to add features that push the limits of autonomous drone operation. As a result, you've helped create a world class Android GCS app. We wanted other developers to be able to easily create Android apps based on our vehicles, ArduPilot flight controller, and DroidPlanner.
To that end, we've taken the last month to separate out the DroidPlanner backend to "3DR Services". Think of 3DR Services as the Google Play Services of the drone world.
We're opening up the first beta of DroidPlanner 3 built on top of 3DR Services. On the surface, this beta DroidPlanner is identical to the last 2.8.x beta release. Over the next month or so, we'll incorporate UI changes, polish, and changes based on your input.
To access the 3DR Services beta, please join the mailing list, or the Google+ community. Then, you can signup to download 3DR Services here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/org.droidplanner.services.android.
Over the life of DroidPlanner, we've received many requests to add features that push the limits of autonomous drone operation. As a result, you've helped create a world class Android GCS app. We wanted other developers to be able to easily create Android apps based on our vehicles, ArduPilot flight controller, and DroidPlanner.
To that end, we've taken the last month to separate out the DroidPlanner backend to "3DR Services". Think of 3DR Services as the Google Play Services of the drone world.
We're opening up the first beta of DroidPlanner 3 built on top of 3DR Services. On the surface, this beta DroidPlanner is identical to the last 2.8.x beta release. Over the next month or so, we'll incorporate UI changes, polish, and changes based on your input.
To access the 3DR Services beta, please join the mailing list, or the Google+ community. Then, you can signup to download 3DR Services here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/org.droidplanner.services.android.
To access the DroidPlanner 3 beta, please join the mailing list, or the Google+ community. Then, you can find the beta for DroidPlanner 3 here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/org.droidplanner.android.
We created 3DR Services to accelerate the development of drone apps. We have a few new apps built on top of 3DR Services which we'll release early next year. We'll also be working with developers to get a new generation of apps published for your vehicles.
If you want to get started developing on top of 3DR Services, you can find more information here: https://github.com/DroidPlanner/3DRServices.
If you want to get started developing on top of 3DR Services, you can find more information here: https://github.com/DroidPlanner/3DRServices.
If you are interested in contributing to DroidPlanner 3, you can find more information here: https://github.com/DroidPlanner/droidplanner.
Thanks!
DroidPlanner Devs
Comments
@Michael Beaubien, the 3DR Services app is the backend layer. You need to separately download the DroidPlanner 3 front end app to make use of it.
@Fnoop Dogg, i think you're referring to 'DroneShare'. DroneAPI includes some of the apis used by DroneShare. Do note however that droneshare's implementation is open source as well. Only the data is not available since, of course, you wouldn't want to have user data easily available to external parties.
@Hughes your comment is 100% correct. Without documentation, the apis provided are close to useless, and we understand that very well.
Do note however that this announcement is for the beta releases for these projects. Our objective for this blog is to announce to the community the future direction for DroidPlanner, and get more beta testers so we can get both projects ready for a stable release.
One of the requirement for the stable release however is to include enough documentation to guide non-experienced programmers. Additionally, adding documentation is more efficient near the stable release since at that point in time, the apis and code are less likely to drastically change.
Regarding DP documentation, we'd love contribution to improve its state :)
Okay okay, so I have made an app or two previously.
I also have Droidplanner and an APM2.6 board.
I learned about the Arducopter code using a Crius AIOP board and loading Arducopter *megapirateng using the Arduino IDE (Which I have been using since my first led blink test in 2008).
I also learned to use MITapp inventor to make android apps, specifically I wanted to learn to use TX & RX serial data & commands such as a camera shutter control via bluetooth etc etc.
Which leads me to making a simple app for Arducopter that will switch flight modes...Let's call this the "Hello World" of the Arducopter app environment.
What would help me achieve my goal for making an Android app for Ardupilot: simple. Like Hugues states, simple documentation for things such as command codes.
I'm using MIT app inventor because it saves me tons of time and is super simple.
Will there be a "hello world" ardupilot tutorial? Or are you relying on seasoned app developers only?
Sorry if I misunderstand this - and I'm not trying to troll here but just to understand - isn't the DroneAPI a proprietary 3drobotics cloud based service? And by proprietary I don't mean whatever source code is available, but the service and data is fully controlled and closed by 3dr?
+1 for your objective to facilitate the development of drone apps. However I believe you are trying to close a tiny hole, not seeing the huge gap next door that should have priority in the facilitation efforts. I explain below what I mean by that.
-Either someone is a seasoned programmer; then he does not need any facilitation. He will dive without any problem into the complexity of the mavproxy, droneapi, pymavlink ilbraries.
-Either you’re not a very experienced programmer or not a programmer but just someone who ‘d like to build a drone app. In this case I do not believe that you will help this category of people by splitting the complex libraries and pieces of code in multiple parts (3DR services, etc..). This remains inaccessible for these people because of the lack of DOCUMENTATION. By documentation I mean real documentation explaining how APIs work, how they are called, with examples. It is non sense to claim that github code repositories like “https://github.com/diydrones/droneapi-python” is documentation.
This is not documentation, except if you fall in the first category of expert programmers I describe above; people who can read source code like they read a text book. But then again, it these people are your target group, you do not need to facilitate anything by creating 3DR services.
My point is : rather than splitting things (3DR services, etc) wrongly thinking this will facilitate drone app developments, you’d better focus on producing DOCUMENTATION of the existing libraries: droneapi, pymavlink, etc. A documentation of these libraries would have a greater effect at pushing/helping people to develop drone app; much more efficient than creating yet another undocumented contraption.
This is not yet another rant about someone who does not know his subject. I tried and tried hard to make such conclusion; I have documented two blogs in this community about my attempt to create a small drone app to read/write arducopter parameters on a pixhawk (part1 and part2). That should have been extremely simple to do and I was expecting to find documentation about how to do that with ready-made examples. Forget it. There is a total lack of documentation. And again don’t come tell me that a github repository and/or that comments in the source code is documentation.
The documentation is so absent that , for my project, I finally found it easier to NOT use droneapi and directly use pymavlink (and mavproxy). Isn’t that ironic ? Droneapi was meant to facilitate the use of mavlink and revealed to be too complex (because undocumented) to be used !
(accesorily I reported a blocking issue using droneapi , open here in google drone discuss)
I’m afraid that you’re are falling in the same pitfall with this 3DR services thing, unless you will be able to produce DOCUMENTATION.
I'm a supporter of droidplanner and love it. I will love it even more with DOCUMENTATION (by the way also documentation to use droidplanner...and do not refer me to the DP wiki, this is not documentation).
thx
@benbojangles if that's your first time making an app, and if you happen to have 3DR hardware, I would suggest to begin by building on top of the DroneAPI (3DR Services for android, droneapi-python (https://github.com/diydrones/droneapi-python) for desktop, and web api (https://developer.3drobotics.com/) for browsers).
Once you get the functionality that you want, then you can easily dive into these apis source code to figure out how they do what they do.
@hotelzululima apks for 3DR Servicess can be found @ https://github.com/DroidPlanner/3DRServices/releases.
Bear in mind that the code will be updated frequently, and so you'll need to frequently check that page to get the latest update. On of the advantage of using the Google Play store is that you get updated automatically.
Hi Fredia thanks for the reply.
I'd like to have a go at making an app. Do you or anybody here know the list of commands (RTL, Loiter etc) and the codes sent via serial port? (Is it simply 1,2,3,4,5 etc? Or a HEX code like #FFFFFF or a phrase?) It would help me make my first drone app.
Thanks a lot you guys :)
-
1
-
2
-
3
of 3 Next