MP Extra command line not working

Ground Control Software Mission Planner
1

I have Mission Planner installed on Windows10. The SITL works fine, however I can’t get any extra commands to work. I’ve followed the instructions step by step. I’m trying to get an external serial device working using: --serial2=uart:COM6:115200. I’m using Serial Protocol 28 - scripting
Here is the SITL output:
Setting SIM_SPEEDUP=1.000000
Home: -35.363352 149.165241 alt=587.060000m hdg=0.000000
Starting sketch ‘Rover’
Starting SITL input
Using Irlock at port : 9005
bind port 5760 for 0
Serial port 0 on TCP port 5760
bind port 5762 for 2
Serial port 2 on TCP port 5762
UART connection COM6:115200
MKFIFO failed with No such file or directory
MKFIFO failed with No such file or directory
validate_structures:476: Validating structures
New connection on serial port 0
MKFIFO failed with No such file or directory
MKFIFO failed with No such file or directory
MKFIFO failed with No such file or directory
Failed to open (COM6): No such file or directory
MKFIFO failed with No such file or directory

Changing the Protocol to 5 - GPS gives different information, trying more frequently to make a connection, but unsuccessfully:
Setting SIM_SPEEDUP=1.000000
Home: -35.363352 149.165241 alt=587.060000m hdg=0.000000
Starting sketch ‘Rover’
Starting SITL input
Using Irlock at port : 9005
bind port 5760 for 0
Serial port 0 on TCP port 5760
bind port 5762 for 2
Serial port 2 on TCP port 5762
UART connection COM6:115200
MKFIFO failed with No such file or directory
MKFIFO failed with No such file or directory
validate_structures:476: Validating structures
New connection on serial port 0
UART connection COM6:115200
UART connection COM6:115200
UART connection COM6:115200
Failed to open (COM6): No such file or directory

Thoughts anyone?

2

Cygwin will let you access it as /dev/ttyS26 (called COM27 by Windows).

3

Thanks Michael. I’ll give that a try.

The documentation says “Mission Planner itself can also run SITL simulations using the current master branch of ArduPilot”. I presumed this meant that the Mission Planner SITL worked independently of the other SITL options in the docs. Do I have to do the Cygwin installation before I run the Mission Planner SITL?

Will your solution work with a WSL setup as well?

4
  1. MP downloads a precompiled SITL (latest master and latest stable) which includes the running dll’s for Cygwin.
  2. If you want to use WSL, you can do it as well, just set up a WSL environment start a simulation and connector to it with MP.
5

Thanks to both of you for your assistance.

I already had setup the WSL environment so I continued with that platform. Out-of-the-box, WSL did not have a driver for my Prolific USB-Serial adapter. It was a frustrating process for a Linux newbie, because I could see the Prolific device attached to Ubuntu, but no communication and no /dev/ttyUSB port. Eventually determined that the Prolific driver was not loading. So … attached device, no driver, no luck. Grrr.

Some time later (okay maybe a lot of time … uh, learning Ubuntu) I found the answer. The workaround was to create a new Ubuntu distro that included the PL2303 driver for the adapter, following these instructions: WSL support · dorssel/usbipd-win Wiki · GitHub. Finally serial communication with my device via SITL. Yay!

Hope this info is useful to others.

Thanks again!