UAVTalk... at the bottom

[pedro.assuncao]

Hi All,

After hearing about Tom's work on DIYDrones I have been searching for an area were I could bring something to the Gluonpilot project/community. I guess the Ground Station is the obvious choice for a few reasons, the main reason being the fact that I have knowledge of C# which is common ground with Tom GS I think.
So I decided to kick start this by writing some ideas and doing some research, having Tom's common ground station vision as my primary objective.

It is no easy task, and I am not expecting my work to be adopted by the this project or any other just because I am writing this. I am starting this for myself and if the work has quality to be used/adopted by people then I would be happy with that. But if anyone wants to be part of it I will be very happy to work with you.

I think the best way do achieve this has to be by adopting protocols created by others, that way creating common ground and making it easier for other projects to be brought in as well. Whit that in mind I have been looking around and I think UAVTalk designed by the fine people at OpenPilot.org. I think it is very good and it can easily fit every ones propose. It is, in my opinion, a packaging protocol for UAV. It does only define the way messages are sent and read. The actual messages are not specified which allows us to use and expand this the way we want. I think it will be used by a lot of other projects.


So UAVTalk will be on my communication layer. For the presentation layer I am thinking on using WPF, I am not very familiarized with it but I think this good moment to start learning.

And what about the features... well I am hoping you guys can help me with that. I have published some of my ideas on another post... so here they are again!

Health & Usage Data

• AHRS Sensor Raw & Filtered Data
  
• Battery Voltage readings
  
• Temperature Sensors readings
  
• Servos positions

Mission

• Total Flight Time
  
• List Waypoints
  
• Next waypoint and previous waypoint
  
• Current position
  
• Add new WayPoint
  
• Set next waypoint
  
• Delete waypoint
  
• Abort mission/Return Home

Software Architecture

• Modular Design, including the UI
• UAVTalk

Any thought on this list, It is a bit short, I know.

Regards,

P.Assuncao

[Tom]

Hi Pedro,

Thank you for your persistence

I haven't replied yet because currently I'm trying to get the basics of the autopilot working and tested. Once that works I will move on to the groundstation.
As for the technology: I created a basic GCS some time ago. I used C# and WPF, together with Live Earth. I'm planning to re-write that, because the architecture became a bit too complicated. The idea should be that everybody can understand and modify it.
[youtube]1wcOh5dhOig[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wcOh5dhOig

Please take a look at the code for my configuration tool. You'll see that you can perfectly decouple the communication protocal from the groundstation functionality. I well designed groundstation (architecture) should be able to work with different protocols!
So yes, a common communication protocol is important. But no, it shouldn't keep you from starting your development.

[pedro.assuncao]

Hi Tom,

Yes a good ground station should be able to support several protocols (including a more common protocol and some autopilot specific implementations). So I would say that a plugin/driver system should be a good approach for this problem. I want to research this topic in the next weeks and maybe I will manage to have a detailed architecture to support all these ideas.

I have been having a quick look at your configuration tool as you recommended. I haven't been coding for some time but non the less you code looks very easy to understand.
Indeed the communication layer is easy to separate from the rest of the application. Obviously the code needs a lot of work in terms of error handling but it is a good base.
If you like I can help you with that. If your interested let me know.


Regards,

Pedro A