Backport latest scripting to Copter-4.4 git branch

partisanapiarist · November 28, 2023, 3:11pm

Greetings! I am looking forward to use the latest scripting globals, namely mavlink, camera, mount and require on otherwise stable firmware. That is, I will have to build a custom firmware. What else do I need in order to achieve that, other than merging commits from the PRs listed below into stable fork?

github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot

AP_Camera/AP_Scripting/AP_Mount: allow scripts to control camera and implement driver

ArduPilot:master ← rmackay9:camera-scripting-test

opened 03:57AM - 07 Apr 23 UTC

rmackay9

+350 -111

This PR improve scripting support of cameras including: 1. AP_Scripting gets …new bindings (and an example script) for the most important camera features: - take picture - record video - set trigger distance 2. AP_Camera gets a new Scripting backend to allow lua scripts to implement camera drivers 3. ViewPro driver is updated to use the AP_Camera::get_state() instead of AP_Mount::get_camera_state() 4. AP_Mount's scripting library loses its camera controls because Lua backends can now the bindings to AP_Camera These changes have been tested in SITL and on real hardware including testing on a ViewPro camera. Below is a screen shot of a SITL test showing the example script taking pictures at 5sec intervals. ![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1498098/230537897-a5078395-11cb-4ae0-97c0-ed1e36d00ffb.png) This closes issue https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/issues/23163 although I've left out the zoom and focus controls because the format of those will change in the near future as part of adding support for setting the absolute zoom and focus.

github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot

Scripting: Support sending and recieving MAVLink messages

ArduPilot:master ← WickedShell:wickedshell/scripting-mavlink

opened 01:03AM - 25 Feb 20 UTC

WickedShell

+276 -9

The updated implementation requires generate lua modules using this PR https://g…ithub.com/ArduPilot/pymavlink/pull/786 . To generate the modules run: ``` mavgen.py --lang=Lua --wire-protocol=2.0 --output=<lua scripts location>/modules ardupilotmega.xml ``` This PR adds support for including lua modules through require method as well. --- Older Comment: This allows you to send/receive MAVLink messages from a script. This is a cut down bit from some of the original wilder ideas, but it does actually work nicely. Scripts can register for incoming MAVLink with a given message ID. The script then can ask for any pending messages which it knows about, this returns a byte array which gets feed into a Lua decode function. The restriction on incoming messages is that the vehicle must have known about the message ID when it was compiled. That means you will either need to use a message which is already known, or use one of the ones like COMMAND_INT to extend the functionality. On outgoing messages we are given the message ID, the channel and the Lua packed buffer. Currently this use the MAVLink CRC struct which we could easily pass from the script in the future to give us complete freedom on encoding outputs. The generated Lua code uses https://github.com/ArduPilot/pymavlink/pull/386 to generate the relevant encode/decode functions (which should be ported to C eventually), as well as generating the table of messages. Because this table of messages can eat a *lot* of RAM it's expected that you cut the XML file down to just the messages you care about, or trim the generated output to match the messages you want to use. I still need to test this on real hardware, and Valgrind it, (and include an example script which spams output). But I wanted to get the PR pending for comments. ---

All help is very much appreciated, thank you in advance for your assistance!

amilcarlucas · November 28, 2023, 3:54pm

Hello @partisanapiarist , welcome to the community,

yes, that is basically it, git rebase those branches back to the Copter-4.4 branch. Just make sure to rebase only the last n commits from those branches, not the entire master branch

partisanapiarist · November 29, 2023, 8:47pm

Thank you for the warm welcome and better wording!
To rebase or cherrypick turned out quite problematic, because branches from the PRs are avaliable no longer. To pick individual commits from the PR I failed miserably as well. For instance,

user@DESKTOP-CIHA7S1:~$ git clone https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot.git
Cloning into 'ardupilot'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 437925, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (248/248), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (176/176), done.
remote: Total 437925 (delta 120), reused 150 (delta 72), pack-reused 437677
Receiving objects: 100% (437925/437925), 305.13 MiB | 1.73 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (324923/324923), done.
Updating files: 100% (5852/5852), done.

user@DESKTOP-CIHA7S1:~$ cd ardupilot
user@DESKTOP-CIHA7S1:~/ardupilot$ git status
On branch master
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/master'.

nothing to commit, working tree clean

user@DESKTOP-CIHA7S1:~$ git cherry-pick 9737d8c890bb5295d31efee457153fbadfa90de1
fatal: bad object 9737d8c890bb5295d31efee457153fbadfa90de1

How exactly do you suggest rebasing those branches? A complete command will be met with extreme gratitude.

amilcarlucas · November 30, 2023, 12:23pm

git checkout Copter-4.4
git checkout -b my_branch
git cherry-pick 03148a113f792797fb7e5ca2ab77c9e3c4b25656
git cherry-pick 5d29935039595d4f496c84e9781694b168f8d696
git cherry-pick 58b73c3613a09da175fb7b101d7f757de7b0f1f8
…
git cherry-pick 1a9189d602debc5ff03a7c4218d45670d00f8224
gi cherry-pick 598919d8ad076f0aa288e41df099c02de429a451
…
git cherry-pick 06b5400d0bf582225397e761eca2e8b43cab1200

partisanapiarist · December 2, 2023, 12:28pm

Thank you very much!
Now I think I am starting to understand what seems to be the problem: the commit hashes are different form the ones I took from the PR. Where did you get the hashes from? I need fill in the ellipsis, after all.

amilcarlucas · December 2, 2023, 1:21pm

All are from the master branch. Use“gitk master“ search function to find them.

partisanapiarist · December 13, 2023, 12:47pm

Thank you!
After merging I have run into the next issue: these PRs, especially the new viewpro driver, seem to depend on new lua features, like require.
Lua: /APM/scripts/mount-viewpro-driver-4.5.lua:155 attempt to call a nil value (global 'require')
Yet, I was unable to find it in commit descriptions. What PR do I need?

amilcarlucas · December 13, 2023, 12:58pm

use gitk --all and search for viewpro in the commit messages