Gimbal Manager commands fowarding

ArduCopter
1

I am writing a gimbal manager to run on a companion computer connected to the telemetry port 2 of a Pixhawk and can’t get the Gimbal manager commands ( different system/target ) to be routed from telemetry 1 to telemetry 2. Gimbal Device commands are routed but manager-related commands are not.

Is this expected behavior?

Cheers

2

Welcome to the community,

First things first , which firmware version are you using?

Have you tested master? You should.

3

great that this capability of the gimbal manger/gimbal device concept is being exploitet. For this to work, to have the gimbal manager not on the fc, you will also need to figure out a way to disable ArduPilot’s gimbal manager (which is currently not possible) if your gimbal is connected to the fc. If the gimbal is connected to the companian, that’s no problem though.

4

Thanks for your reply and welcome.

I’ve upgraded to Arducopter V4.4.2 but the same routing issue.

For example, I’ve set up a target_system: 222, target_component: 22 with heartbeat etc (so should be added to the routing table)

GIMBAL_DEVICE_SET_ATTITUDE will route TELEM1 ↔ TELEM2
GIMBAL_MANAGER_SET_MANUAL_CONTROL will not route

I’ve noticed similar behavior with Camera manager commands.

I think the “Detailed theory of MAVLink routing” MAVLink Routing in ArduPilot — Dev documentation needs updating to indicate this

Cheers

5

Thanks, Olliw,

The gimbal is connected to the companion, but I wanted to control it from the radio telemetry channel connected to the Ardupilot FC by routing messages out a spare
telemetry port to the companion. As it’s all experimental at the moment, so in the meantime, I’ll not use any GIMBAL_MANAGER messages, I’ll just send GIMBAL_DEVICE messages.

6

Please open an issue on the GitHub - ArduPilot/ardupilot_wiki: Repository for ArduPilot wiki issues and wiki-specific website infrastructure.

7

that’s not an issue of the routing but simply a consequence of the fact that in v4.4 these gimbal manager messages are not included in the mavlink .xml files … these messages are just unknown to your ardupilot …
Ardupilot unfortunately has a somwhat strange philosophy with regards to which messages to include or exclude. You need to go to the master branch, since there they are included.