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Look of the new Ardupilot GCS

Posted by automatik on March 14, 2010 at 6:41pm

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Hi all,
please critique new look of the upcoming Ardupilot GCS. Functionality will be discussed elsewhere, so for now please provide constructive criticism for the "look and feel".


Thanks
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Comments

  • Darren March 16, 2010 at 11:08am
    Wouldnt this one be nice for a GS... talk about wow factor

  • Cronselaar March 16, 2010 at 8:22am
    Log files will be great... I'm trying to set the gains for my plane and just can't get it right. Friend of mine has a Paparazzi and after the flight he can just plot the data to see what all the setting changes did... So Log files is a must! Thanks in advance. oh, btw, please keep in mind the small 8.9" screens. 1024x600 i think :)
  • Phil Argent March 15, 2010 at 7:32pm
    Looks Great guys. My only suugestion would be to make sure that is EASY to read in bright sunlight. Maybee grab your lappy and go out and check its readability.

    Again Well done
  • Developer
    John Arne Birkeland March 15, 2010 at 3:01pm
    I was just going to mention the same thing as Pedro just did. Users have different needs and laptops have different screen resolutions, aspect ratios etc. I would suggest making each instrument a standalone applet. The applets can then communicate with a central node that contains flight data. That way you can open/close/resize and move around the instruments on the desktop as you want.
  • passunca March 15, 2010 at 6:48am
    I realize that what we really need is theme-able instrument panels. So that we could have several variants and maybe a system to allow every one to create there own. It is not impossible to do... but it ain't easy aether.
  • Jimbo1981 March 15, 2010 at 6:25am
    Hi Automatik,

    I have to agree with Dougs on some of his comments. I look at the panel a bit differently. I fly every day with the boeing 737 and I think you should maybe put in a panel that is a copy of a real plane as lots of people did research on it. That means that it's setup user friendly for a wide range of people.
    I also read that some people want to become a uav operator later on and I think this would help for situational awareness (SA).

    see the following picture:

    pfd.jpg


    So on top you see arm/hdg sel/vnav path This box displays the mode thrus //lat nav// vertical nav are in. *Maybe good for autopilot mode// way point

    Left is speed tape with the selected speeds on top in magenta and the selected speed bug on the tape!
    ** handy to display how far speed is of from desired. At the bottom of the tape you could put ground speed GS

    Bottom is the heading including the heading bug again.
    *** Also good to for dispalying heading and the a bug for heading to Waypoint

    Right is Altitude tape with vertical speed needle.
    **** same as speeds tape handy for showing alt easy to read and can display selected altitude on top.

    I know its a lot to program, but maybe you can steel some of its workings from any given flight sim website with free panels like Boeing 737 or Airbus.
    Jasons idea is also good as a second tab next to the main view with maybe this ghost plane later.
    Dougs values look perfect for me for alt in meter/feet but airpeeds I would say km/h or miles/h

    Just an idea;)
  • passunca March 15, 2010 at 3:25am
    wow... jason love your layout... it has a very clean and polished look. I like it.
    Obviously it looks better that automatik's screen shot, no disrespect to automatik's work. But maybe jason's control panel uses too much space, a slightly more compact version would be more usable... I guess.
    If automatik could integrate some of the ideas of jason concept. The small aircraft dials help a lot.
    Automatik in what programming language are you doing this?
  • automatik March 15, 2010 at 12:52am
    @Cronselaar - there will be logging functionality ( actually two files are created - one is data log file with all telemetry defined data, and another is kml file...

    Thanks to all who provided the input - keep'em coming...

    Jason's GCS does look very nice !

    Examples of some of the instrument displays can be found here:
    http://www.diydrones.com/photo/albums/gcs-instruments
  • Cronselaar March 15, 2010 at 12:45am
    I do like... Might i give one suggestion. Could we please write something in the GS to log the GPS co-ords and time stamp. That way there is no need for an extra GPS logger. The file could then later just be converted to kml or something. I like Jason's flash app.
  • fibrewire March 14, 2010 at 9:57pm
    jasonshort - that looks fantastic! Now all we need is a DirectShow filter to show forward looking video from the plane, and Voila!

This reply was deleted.