First person flight through Google Earth HK - GCS Update - Blogs

Darren December 1, 2010 at 6:18am

Yes, I dnloaded the new version and Yes it does exactly that, Thank You!!

Paul Mather November 30, 2010 at 5:52pm

Hmmm....maybe I'll have to add heading and yaw reverse to the settings page too (already have pitch and roll reverse). ..

Good suggestion. Darren, did you try the new fixes in 1.0.12? It should prompt your to overwrite and also show a red square when recording.

Darren November 30, 2010 at 5:09pm

I dont know if this is old news or not, but this is for anyone using Magnetometer (even though its not supported in beta1.0) but my heading on the ground station showed 180 degrees off, which threw me for a bit, and then read the posts over on the Arducopter site. and I added this to ArdupilotMega.pde and walla good heading output on the HK-GCS.

APM_Compass.SetOrientation(APM_COMPASS_COMPONENTS_UP_PINS_BACK);

Riccardo Kuebler November 30, 2010 at 2:24pm

It works !
It seems I was able to reach the end speed tacho with my Funjet :D
Thanks for updating it to 280.

Ric

Paul Mather November 30, 2010 at 2:13pm

To handle the delay...I decided to try splitting the output (just to confuse everyone more). The 3D model shows yaw and the Google Earth output shows heading. That way, the map won't show the "drifting" plane since the GPS heading stream matches the lat & long stream. Let me know if that works for you guys. As for everyone else who's not using yaw, the 3D model and GE will show heading.... ..

Paul Mather November 30, 2010 at 2:07pm

New version uploading now. Ric, I've figured out the regional date problem. You should be able to playback files now. Also, I added a "R" button to reload your output folder file list.

Riccardo Kuebler November 30, 2010 at 1:57pm

Happy, telemetry files were captured with Openlog and serial UDB extra option, the same Pete uses.
Btw, when I move a new file in the folder I have to restart the CGS, otherwise it does not see the new added files. Is there not a way to solve this (sorry, anyway it is not urgent at all and I can deal even without it) ?

About GPS delay, Pete added a cursor in his flight analyse tool to compensate this. You can select a delay for GPS, to have plane position match with flight path. Is this you asked for a couple of post ago ?
He even added an altitude compensation cursor, for GPS altitude errors ;D

Ric

Paul Mather November 30, 2010 at 1:49pm

Ooops...sorry, forgot about the heading issue for the compass. I'll add that back. I'm working with Ric right now to fix what I think is a regional problem. He's getting a date format error that I'm not seeing. When I post that fix, heading will be working again.

To playback a .txt file you have already saved, click the "Data File" tab. At the bottom is a button that shows "..." where you can select your data file directory. Once selected, you can click on the combo and select an existing .txt file (not sure how Ric has been capturing them, but he had them before I started this GCS project)... once selected, click the play button.

To record, type a new name in the combo box (yet more bug fixes there, sorry Darren, I think I've got everything addressed. Leave the file extension off and it will make a .hko (HappyKillmore Output) file. It records the raw data so don't worry about what you're doing on the display side....

As for the delay, I guess that could account for it. I haven't been paying attention to the yaw on the AP or APM and I really don't have any existing flight logs like the ones Ric sent me for AP or APM... so it might be a common issue with all systems... it's just seeing it on GE really shows you how much of a delay there is. The plane turns 90 degrees left and blips forward for a few seconds and then makes the turn. It's almost like it's "drifting" around the turn.

Developer

Pete Hollands November 30, 2010 at 1:37pm

Happy, That's super ! Roll, Pitch and Yaw are working in real time with MatrixPilot SERIAL_UDB_EXTRA. As Ric said, the orientation is correct for inverted flight as well. Thank so much !

It's all working in the right hand window which shows the picture of the EasyStar. The left hand compass dial does not move with the plane changing yaw in the earth reference. I suppose that is because you have left that dial to be driven by the GPS heading ?

I would like to put some of my own flight logs through the system (and possibly record a video). Can you explain how I might do that ?

With regard to the GPS Heading Delay. People that just primarily use a GPS for heading, velocity and location are probably never aware that the data that exits the EM406A or a Ublox is a about 1 second delayed. To be clear, I'm not talking about the frequency of GPS updates, I'm talking about the fact that the data is delayed. So with the Ublox, even if it sends updates every 1/4 of a second, each update is actually reflecting position, heading and velocity from more than 1 second ago. (The Ublox has variable delays).

So this is one reason why you may see a discrepancy between the gyro headings, and the GPS heading when replaying flight data through the HK GCS.

At the beginning of the flight, and when no magnetometer is installed, there may be a significant discrepancy between the yaw shown on the right hand screen(gyros) and the heading shown on the left screen (GPS), as the Direction Cosine Matrix (gryos readings) are calibrated by the GPS heading.

I hope that explanation helps , Pete

Paul Mather November 30, 2010 at 12:39pm

No problem. Should I make it a selection for the UDB user? Right now I have commented out the heading reading all together. The only data I'm using is the yaw. Do you think the user should be able to choose? Things looked much better (in my opinion) on playback using the heading variable instead of yaw during flight. The heading and GPS values seemed to be aligned but the yaw to GPS values are several seconds off.

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