Blogs

Updating DroidPlanner (v1.2.0).

Well, what can I say about these releases: That I have just done a fraction of the work?

I must especially thanks Azrin and bob01 for their incredible contributions, in fact most of what I did is merging their pull requests and resolving the merge conflicts. And that has become this step in the life of the app.

On the side you can see a small bar chart of the how many commit's each developer has done on the last month (from left to right: me, Azrin, Bob01, Jason, Brad and Brandon ), for more info like that go to this link. 

The update

The new version has the following updates ( v1.2.0 over v1.0.0):

Droidplanner v1.2.0

• Planning: renamed column header - #348
• Planning: Markers - additional UI + zooming fixes, distance while dragging marker - #324
• Planning: Markers, Mission - distance from prev waypoint in mission planner w/ live update while dragging - #327
• Planning: Fixed the area function -#358
• Parameters: fix for name column size, progress indicator -#328
• Parameters: sort by parameter name on opening parameter file - #335
• Parameters: Use APM parameter metadata if available when editing parameters - #344
• Parameters: Help display w/ description, units, valid range & accepted values where available - #345
• FlightScreen: Draggable guide-point - #347
• MapType: Made map fragments responsive to map type change, made map type more accessible -#336
• Waypoints: Fix the Waypoint parameters - #337
• Waypoints: Fixed the overlap text in the waypoint editor - #339

Droidplanner v1.1.0

• Support for the new telemetry module from 3DR (FT231)

Droidplanner v1.0.2

• Fixing the waypoint numbering issue when planning a survey and reordering via the waypoint editor
• Live update flight path and distanceView while dragging
• Added RAW_SENSORS and RC_CHANNELS to preferences for compatibility w/ other MAVLink hardware on vehicle

Droidplanner v1.0.1

• Moving the arm/disarm button to the overflow menu for safety reasons
• Fixing problems with the Do_Jump and Set_Home waypoint dialogs
• Reduce the chance of unintentionally deleting waypoints while scrolling

Now just to show up what some of the above means here is a more graphical explanation:

Mission Planning

There have been a lot of little improvements to the waypoint editor (our planning screen), which make it very informative about the mission you are planning. As you can see on the first picture of the post the editor listing now has info like the distance between the last waypoint, and also renders a lot better in smaller screens.

On the map fragment each waypoint now shows it's programmed height. And when dragging the waypoint the distance from the previous waypoint is show on that small dialog over the waypoint.

On the planning screen the area of the surveyed polygon is now reported. If someone could confirm that our polygon area measurement function is working properly I would appreciate.

Parameters

Over to the parameters screen, now we have a way to know the progress when downloading parameters.

Parameters descriptions are now displayed, and the values are checked against default min/max values. Also users having trouble when entering fractional values shouldn't have that problem anymore.

If you click over a parameter now an extended description  is show. And for parameters with a set of values (like board orientation) you can also edit the parameter by selecting thought a list (no need to remember if the value 3 means the board mounted in an inverted position or sideways).

Map Type

Different map styles have been available from the beginning, but they where hard to access (Settings->Advanced->Map Type). Now we just made that a lot easier, just select from the menu and you are good to go.

Also for those who don't know DroidPlanner offers offline-maps, but you have to provide your own map (here is a guide on how to download a map and use it). It's a very valuable feature when you are on the field without an internet connection.

More info

For more information I suggest the DroidPlanner Wiki page. And if you just want to know how to connect your APM board, or what android device you can use just follow the links. 

And as always if you want to help consider making a donation via paypal, or by buying this app .

If you want to help even more, consider joining the development team, or reporting a issue/bug/improvement on GitHub.