Hi, I wanted to ask if Mission Planner supported 100% auto missions? I am assuming so as I have seen youtube tutorials on how to auto takeoff and set waypoints and return to home. But I thought that I would ask instead of just assume. Thanks.
yes it does. but you probably would want to write your own GCS to be on the safe side of customizing you automations or extend GCS with scripts
Interesting, thank you. Could you please elaborate on what your mean by writing my own ground control software or extending mission planner with scripts? Did I understand that right? The reason that Im asking is:
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Why would I want to write any extensions to Mission Planner if it can already do auto missions?
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Do you mean include something like a DoneKit or is there somewhere in Mission Planner that I can push a python script? Or do you mean forking the repo and customizing the production src?
We do fully automated missions and for that we have written a lot of software in the past 5 years…
We might have a diferent understanding of what automated missions are…
What do you understand for “automated missions” ?
First of all, thank you for your time on this. I am learning from your posts and hopefully this conversation helps other newcomers in the future.
I think the best description of what I was assuming as a completely automatic mission comes from an arudpilot doc where my quad automatically takes off a X meters, then ascends to some max altitude visiting waypoint(s), and finally returning home and landing.
That to me sounded like a completely automatic mission where I didnt have to use my flysky transmitter at all. But I still wanted to ask because I’m new to this.
What was intriguing to me was your point about customizing with scripts. What do people do that for, I mean what kind of things are commonly customized? Is there a link I can read on this? Thanks
This is basic functionality for Ardupilot and configuring an Auto Mission with Mission Planner.You could run the mission completely from the Ground Station but it’s much smarter to have the RC operative in case of trouble.
Is there some type of kill switch that can be deployed? I am trying to see if I can do completely without a receiver and transmitter.
Hey @chrislinux. You can definitely do a fully automated mission (takeoff, flight to different locations, delivery a payload or take pictures, return home and land) with MP and no transmitter/receiver required. However, we always recommend having a transmitter/receiver on hand in case of an emergency. Most likely you will not have to use this pipeline to takeover - but it is always good to have. So yes, what you are trying to do is definitely capable through MP (just need to turn off some RC failsafes) - but not really recommended to do without a transmitter. Hopefully this makes sense.
@manavgandhi17 https://discuss.ardupilot.org/u/manavgandhi17) this does make sense thank you for the explanation. Is there any other kind of kill switch hardware or software that exists other than transmitter / receiver?
If you have Mission Planner running and connected during the entire flight, you can always disarm or kill the aircraft via telemetry. You can also connected a GamePad to Mission Planner via a generic USB cable and control the aircraft that way - albeit with a good amount of lag.
There are multiple failsafes that can be configured for low voltage, mah consumption, loss of RC signal, loss of Ground Station, etc. But if you loose the Ground Station and have no RC obviously a GCS activated “kill switch” function isn’t going to work. Or if you have no RC a control function isn’t going to work from the Transmitter either. Mission’s beyond RC and GCS range rely on configured failsafe action.
@dkemxr @manavgandhi17 Thank you so much for the education on this. It makes sense…
If anyone can give a heads up on the original response about customizing scripts, that seems very interesting – I just cant find where that takes place.
For the kind of automation that you want, no scripts are required. We are doing fully unmanned flight with no pilot, and an automated hangar.
Scripts can be added to Mission Planner in Python AFAIK and it can be extended with C# plugins. More info is on the mission planner documentation.
@amilcarlucas thanks I’ll check out the documentation to try and find the scripts piece. I appreciate your posts. And I have to ask, what does that mean when you say automated hangar? I already know it’s way above my head but what does that even mean? Again, thanks for your time…
Here is a video of our system in action:
That is just about one of the coolest things that I have ever seen. Thanks for sharing.
Cool. It’s a small world 