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ArduPilot Ground Control Station ready for public beta testing

Posted by automatik on May 12, 2010 at 9:30pm

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LabVIEW based ArduPilot Ground Control Station ( GCS) is ready for public beta test.

GCS wiki: See wiki for installation and configuration instructions (read through it, or at least watch video )

Requirements:

- Windows OS
- LabVIEW run time engine 9.0
- Google Earth ( if you already have it you don't have to re-install it. Google Earth version prior to 5.1 ( newest) should be fine)


- Ground Control Station application (zip file) - Updated May 16, 2010 !


Optional: Code for GCS can be found here ( you will need LabVIEW 8.6 or higher)

New Features of ArduPilot GCS :
  • Data logging
  • kml logging
  • voice synthesis
  • (UI has been redesigned, code architecture has been changed, etc.)

Short introduction video explaining how to start and stop GCS:

http://vimeo.com/11772440



more comprehensive GCS video ( worth watching ! ) is here:

http://vimeo.com/11608873

Tags: control, gcs, ground, station
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Comments

  • BriFly July 31, 2010 at 9:16pm
    As far as the altitude is concerned is this displayed in meters? Along the same line, when i plug in my ArduPilot and I start receiving telemetry the GCS displays an altitude even though my airplane is on the ground. Is this elevation above sea level? How can you easily tell what your aircraft height is from its home location when flying?
  • Rana June 20, 2010 at 10:05pm
    Hi Automatik !

    Thanks for addessing my issue !
    At the time when the airplane symbol was not moving and the plane was airborne, even at that time all the telemetry like IMuU data & GPS lat longs were coming very well, so no com issue.

    Pl. have trust on my feedback and just look into it. When I am looking into the data folder, I am surprised, there is no kml log file created TXT log files of two flights are ceated bt those files do not have any data inside them. Well, I have atached them for your reference.
    ArduPilot_DataLog_2010_06_20_09_49_42.txt

    ArduPilot_DataLog_2010_06_20_16_56_39.txt
    ArduPilot_DataLog_2010_06_20_19_48_15.txt
    ArduPilot_DataLog_2010_06_20_20_00_52.txt

    Automatic, can you please make this small feature upgradation in the GS so that based on the home position lat long and the current lat longs, every time the GS should display the distance of the plane from the home location. Automatik, it will certainly add more valaue to the GS.

    Thanks & Best Regards

    Rana
    premium.pl
    Największa polska giełda domen internetowych. Najniższe ceny przedłużenia. Nie zastanawiaj się - przenieś do nas domeny już dziś!
  • automatik June 20, 2010 at 9:05pm
    Hi Rana,
    for "the airplane symbol which keeps on moving whereever the plane moves, did not moved at all though the other telemetry was cominh like lat longs and IMU etc. " take a lok at the data log file ( text log file) and see what the walues for roll and pitch are for the time frame when you experianced issues. Data is logged as it comes to GCS, and GCS just displays it - so if you have com issues, or changed the AP code or.... it might manifest itself like that.

    As when there are no waypoints - currently all that is handled in AP and GCS just displays the data - there is no "high logic" in GCS as of now. We could change that in future....
    Index of /
  • Rana June 20, 2010 at 11:01am
    Automatik, during our few flights, I have observed that the airplane symbol which keeps on moving whereever the plane moves, did not moved at all though the other telemetry was cominh like lat longs and IMU etc.

    I have also observed one thing and that is the distance shown by the GS from Waypoint 0 or subsequent was some times not displayed timely and not displayed correctly however GPS Lat Long telemetrY data was getting updated every second.

    Automatik, one thing more its a feedback from my side, by default, if the plane is not navigating waypoints, it must display the ground distance of the plane from the home location.


    Thanks & Best Regards

    Rana
  • Peter Seddon May 31, 2010 at 8:46am
    With automatik's very kind help I managed to fix the problem with his GCS not working. It was down to my using a version of APilot2.6 that was not giving the expected serial data output that confused the LabView parser. Using the latest version of APilot 2.6 everything works correctly.

    Thanks! Peter
  • Taylor Cox May 19, 2010 at 3:46pm
    Actually.. disregard my last post...it's working now......however..my battery meter is still showing that my battery is always full
  • Taylor Cox May 19, 2010 at 3:44pm
    @Automatik............here is my KML file....remember ..my problem is that on google earth it won't zoom into my plane..even though my lat and long data is being showed on the GCAPflight_2010_05_19_15_37_15.kml
    https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3692043518?profile=original
  • Peter Seddon May 19, 2010 at 6:58am
    I re-installed NI-VISA (hmm, the readme file does not mention either LabView 9 or Windows 7 as being specifically supported) and things seem to be slightly better with the GCS.

    I can now start the GCS up, get some data that makes GE work, Stop it cleanly and restart it. However still no indication of the mode and if anything goes wrong at the start up then all sorts of weird things happen such as position co-ordinates being way off or still at 0 - and it will not Stop. I am starting GCS and allowing GE to open and settle before switching the Ardupilot on. The Xbee at the PC is connected all the time whilst the XBee at the AP gets powered up with the rest of the airplane - is it critical that the GCS sees all the data from the AP - some maybe missing as the Xbee sorts itself out.

    Does that give any further clues as to what may be happening?

    Peter
  • Rana May 19, 2010 at 5:31am
    Leonardo,
    I have replied to your query below in the thread you have started.
    @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
    Hi automatik, is there any way you can add a functionality to your GCS for it to forward the telemetry data received in a com port (where the xBee modem is connected), to another com port (where we can connect the Ardustation)?

    Please have a look in the thread I've opened below:

    http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/ardustation-pc-ground-station?xg_...

    Thank you,
    Leonardo
    @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
  • Peter Seddon May 19, 2010 at 4:28am
    Sorry about this second post but I have retstarted my pc and restarted the gcs.
    The latitude and longitude at the bottom are reporting 0 and the GE aircraft is on the equator. There is no indictaion of the mode (manual is selected) but changing mode has set it to Fly by wire but once again it will not indicate any other mode. If I maximise the window then part of the lower part of the window disappears behind the toolbar at the bottom.

    I still seem to have valid data in the received data window although only the hsi and heading is working. Pressing stop does not shut it down - it only seems to freeze it.

    There seems to be a data file produced but I suspect it stopped when I swicthed modes.

    Any suggestions as to what maybe wrong?

    Peter
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