Missing feature for APM planner 2.0

Ground Control Software APM Planner 2.0
1

Hi,

I have been using APM autopilot with mission planner since the end of summer 2013 and I appreciate all the work and effort that people have put in making the autopilot and the mission planner work better.

Since I switch from Mission Planner to APM planner 2.0, I have notice that several features are missing:

  • No measuring device (like mission planner) to indicate the distance between two waypoint and waypoint to home distance.
  • No meter displaying an approximation of the total distance travelled in a mission.
  • No capacity to create a grid mission - I know it should be added in the next release.
  • No button to move the home waypoint to the current UAV position.
  • When editing/creating a mission, all IF/DO/CONDITION waypoint are hidden; the numbering in the list and the numbering displayed on the map doesn’t match. I think it would be better if the symbol of these waypoints were different than the “normal” waypoint.
  • No way to use a gamepad/joystick to control a UAV (like in mission planner). It would be very useful to pause a mission and be able to look around.

I don’t know if these improvement can be address in a future release.

2

Any idea when grid or home waypoint at UAV will be added?

3

Hi,
The next release of APM Planner will have:-

  • Elevation View for missions which can show a mission against a Google Elevation Graph. It also shows you the length of the trip.
  • Support for all Mission commands (except proper support for ROI)

As for the waypoint numbering when using conditional waypoints, it get’s out of sync. I’ll see what we can do to fix that.

UAV position can be updated by re-downloading the mission. That said, it could be handle better, and with AC3.2 supporting mission requests for only one item, request for home position can be less demanding.

Survey Tool and better mission planning improvements are a focus for the next few releases.

Joystick support is in the code (but hidden) The original support used was pixhawk.ethz.ch/mavlink/#MANUAL_CONTROL It might be worth adding that into APM.

Thanks for the input

4

is there a georef images option in APM planner at all? Ctrl-F does not seem to do anything, and the docs for mission planner seem to get mixed right in, so I cannot tell for sure if this feature is available or not.

5

Hi billbonney !

QUESTION: When is “Automatic grid pattern generation” gonna be included? We all use Mac here and are desperate for this feature.

Rod

6

Joystick support is in the latest daily build. But it needs testing before we know how well it works. Be warned if you decide to take a look that it may have issues.

If you do test please report back your experiences

7

Hey.

When will the Survey tool be available for the APM planner 2.0 version? Us Mac users need it desperately :slight_smile:

Regards,
Martin