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felixge / godrone

GoDrone is a free software alternative firmware for the Parrot AR Drone 2.0.
http://www.godrone.io/
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Mavlink Protocol API #25

Open wiseman opened 10 years ago

wiseman commented 10 years ago

Mavlink is a popular communications protocol for small drones, currently supported by the standard AR.Drone firmware: http://qgroundcontrol.org/mavlink/start

Supporting it would enable the use of existing open source ground control station software and add the ability to define multi-step missions.

felixge commented 10 years ago

Good idea. Added a feature label. Anybody who is interested can work on this, but it probably won't make sense until the firmware has a few more basic features.

currently supported by the standard AR.Drone firmware

Really? I'm not aware of the Parrot firmware supporting mavlink. You must be talking about AR Drones that are modded to use a PX4, right?

Supporting it would enable the use of existing open source ground control station software and add the ability to define multi-step missions.

This sounds great short term. However my long term vision for this project is to provide a first-class HTML UI. In the future we should be able to use google maps to set way points without the need for any desktop apps.

wiseman commented 10 years ago

Recent stock Parrot firmware does mavlink, see e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak97_myhqIk (not sure if you need to have the Flight Recorder GPS module, though).

I believe in HTML UIs, too, and I think they're orthogonal to the issue of mavlink (see e.g. https://github.com/wiseman/mavelous). Some external API is desirable, and mavlink is not a particularly good one but it is the current standard in the small drone world so it's at least worth considering.

felixge commented 10 years ago

Recent stock Parrot firmware does mavlink, see e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak97_myhqIk (not sure if you need to have the Flight Recorder GPS module, though).

I didn't realize they implemented mavlink. That's cool!

I believe in HTML UIs, too, and I think they're orthogonal to the issue of mavlink (see e.g. https://github.com/wiseman/mavelous). Some external API is desirable, and mavlink is not a particularly good one but it is the current standard in the small drone world so it's at least worth considering.

Yes, I agree. I think support mavlink is a good idea, but hopefully we can make it completely redundant in the future.

felixge commented 10 years ago

Ohhh, I just clicked the link - mavelous looks fantastic! That's exactly the kind of UI I want for this project as well. Maybe there is a way to reuse stuff?