ok, not sure what it is - i got daily build installed. it prints this: 'vehicle 1 did not respond to request for paramters. this will cause… '.
wifi is very stable and works fine. phone is 2ft away from esp card. PC is 15ft away and has perfect stable non-affected link.
what is this ‘request for parameters’?
how can i see what parameters were given? vehicle setup summary screen is empty. says ‘vehicle settings and info will display after connecting to your vehicle’. i am connected.
and i have same scenario now. i close QGC - then disconnected from the wifi. reconnected to wifi. restarted QGC. it waited for the sweet time with no responses - a good time - saying no vehicle connection - and now somehow the summary screen opened up with stuff in it.
i do not get it what is it driven by, this behavior. and, i feel, as i am on custom ‘3.7.0-dev’ build - it does not seem to like it neither. some options are different there.
i disconnected and reconnected again. comm links section was empty and still is - now it does not reconnect anymore. just shows me ‘waiting for vehicle connection’. there is no button to press to force it reconnect…
ok, all in all - it is same exact BS. worked once, then did not, then worked more or less and now 5 times in the row refuses to connect completely, in all combinations - start app before wi-fi, then connect to wifi; or kill all, ap stopped, wifi stopped, start drone, connect to wifi, then start app - that is where it worked fine first time - so now it does not connect, or while wifi on and app on quickly bounce drone power for phone to stay on wifi - nothing works, QGC stays in the ‘waiting for connection’ mode.
it is not workable.
as i killed it for last time - QGC app on the phone, i started old Tower to check - got connected immediately with no issues. it is not usable.
OK, well the reason is because on an Android device only one app at a time can use a connection on port 14550. When you close Tower it doesn’t actually stop. So it still has the connection tied up. So QGC can’t connect. Get rid of Tower by force stopping it, uninstalling it, then QGC will work.
QGC shuts down the connection cleanly when you close the program. Tower doesn’t because the legacy “3DR Services” (or whatever it was renamed to) still is running in the background.
the Tower app is on the other phone, not on the one with QGC…
do i need or do i not need to make an entry for UDP port in the comm links screen? it is confusing as it connected fine first time with comm links empty.
double checked - 3dr services are not installed on the new phone.
Look in the configured connection links under the “Q” and see if the UDP Link on port 14550 shows trying to connect (the connect will be greyed out). If it is, something else has the port tied up and it can’t use it.
If you don’t have a UDP link defined, define one and check the box that says “connect automatically”. This is from my 14" tablet, but still the same despite the bigger screen:
ok, it is some random BS. i just went, killed the app onthe phone - did a ‘force stop’. repowered model, reconnected to wifi - started QGC - it got connected and sucked in all params, rather quick.
stopped it, restarted it - connected again. repeated 3 times. i need to work now, so, will see next time on the field if it will keep working and will keep this BS going on. it wold be easier to have a forced button to do a reconnect and see an exact response code if it refuses - the way it is now it is impossible to figure out what is wrong. one time it works, then does not, then works again - it is total BS.
the whole section under comm links is blank now. there is nothing in there. yet somehow it connects.
beats me.
QGC is supposed to be automatic and not use a connect at all. Using a MavLink radio, simply plug the radio in, QGC starts automatic and connects.
It is the same with UDP, but it doesn’t hurt to define a link to force it to “listen” on port 14550 in case some other app is using the port or has it tied up. That way you can look at the Comm Links page and see if it tried to connect, but couldn’t.
I used Tower for quite awhile but finally gave up on it. Been using QGC for over a year now and it “just works”. When around WiFi routers sometimes the tablet will connect to the WiFi router instead of the link from the vehicle. And then QGC can’t connect. Have to keep an eye on that too.
yep, i hear you. and, thanks so much for your help - it makes more sense to me now, and i will try to setup connection to see what is the issue.
it is what it is, in the end - Tower is in fact abandoned, and, QGC is the new one to use. i will try to sort out what the issue is with connection. but, it seems, after i did a force stop it acted ok. may be it is what i need to do in the future if it refuses to connect. will see.
I think you will like QGC for flight planning too. It doesn’t have finger draw like Tower. But clicking or touching for the waypoints is more accurate anyway, as my finger draw skills aren’t all that good.
QGC really shines on a 13-14" tablet with a hardware keyboard and touchpad for a mouse pointer. I have a tablet with built-in 4G cellular and GPS in it. It’s awesome in the field compared to lugging a laptop around.
If only QGC supported my Solos more cleanly, especially the RTSP video stream, I would switch in a heart-beat from Tower Beta.
If I’m not mistaken Tower was originally written for the Solo. But if you make a feature request on GitHub it is possible it could be implemented.
Tower has not seen any active development and version updates in over 2 years. I would not anticipate anything happening with it in and foreseeable future unless someone steps up to volunteer their time developing it further.
Tower was not written for the Solo. It was made long before the Solo existed, as traditional android mobile GCS. The app was formerly known as Droid Planner and began circa 2013. The name was changed to Tower in late 2014ish. The Solo has its own apps designed around it and it’s companion computer functionality.
As far as I remember both Solo and Tower came out about the same time in 2015. The Solo App didn’t have any sort of flight planning in it. So 3DR repurposed Droidplanner as Tower specifically for the Solo. And that is why it has some features specific to the Solo.
Of course, everybody else used it too, because it runs on the most popular mobile platform there is. And then development for it sort of ground to a halt when 3DR abandoned it.
It’s still a pretty good app. But no longer suitable for Copter 3.6 in it’s present state of development. There was a commit on it almost a year ago now, but nothing since.
Tower was just rebranded Droipdplanner with some jiggery to allow for the Apache License of the code to power the Solo App.
I did step up last year with the intention of keeping Tower updated and delivered with other changes, but I am way to busy, I just don’t have the time.
This was the release I made back then…
Nope. Tower used to be called Droid Planner, which existed since way before the solo. I was using this app in 2013 on my first custom built drone. It was not a solo driven app. It got some updates for solo compatibility in 2015, that’s all.
It would be great to see a more regularly updated Android app from Ardupilot if anyone has the free time. But absent that, the third party Solex app has grown to cover all Ardupilot vehicles, expanding from being solo specific. It’s pretty kick ass.
Hi Bill, if you still remember internal guts of that project - what is your opinion, why does it collapse on the Android 9 upon attempt to do UDP connection?
i went to a camp this weekend and QGC garbage completely refused to connect on a field - did not work a single damn time. i had tower connected, got MP connected later - all that time QGC was acting like it does not see anything.
got home, tried it at home on same model and same phone - it connected from a first try. very annoying and not clear what is the issue. only difference between at home situation and on the field situation was that phone was connected to a local home network prior to hooking up to ‘pixracer’ wifi and on the field it was not connected to anything. go figure.
