Mp on MacBook air M1

ArduCopter
1

Hi, i am about to buy a laptop for university and I was thinking of the MacBook air M1.
Does is work fine with Mission planner? (of course with parralles)
I am afraid of getting stupid errors like impossible connection to the pixhawk due to the lack of mavlink drivers for telemetry for example.

So is it safe to buy an M1 air to use mission planner ?
Thank you

2

In parallels over tcp it works fine. Don’t know if there could be probs with telemetry radio drivers.

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3

You’ll be running the ARM version of Windows. Mission Planner should work fine, but telemetry radio drivers can give you a headache.

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4

Yeah I will of course not use it if I can’t connect it to my drone. I saw that Q ground control should work fine as it is a native app.
With an adapter to let me plug the USB telemetry
I guess it will work .
What do you think?

( Is there a big difference between Qground control and mission planner?)

5

QGC and MP will both do the same job, but they do have different work flows. There are plenty of users who only use QGC. I use QGC on my iPad in the field, and I will use it on my macbook for tweaks or planning on a drone that is already running. But I use MP for building, primary setup and field work when I have a full size device with me.

The good news is that use of QGC, Mission Planner (and MavProxy) are not exclusive so you can try all of them and you are always free to change your mind.

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6

So yes it works with Parallels. Special windows build that you can get for free if you join the Windows testing program. It took me a long time to figure out the serial connections but yes it does work. I am using it with the RFD900 and Holybro Sik radios. I also use it with TCP and UDP connections for some of the other stuff I am doing.

I do carry a windows backup computer though. My work laptop is windows but I prefer to use my Macbook. Some of the data I deal with I have to use my work computer so I usually have that with me anyways.

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7

Thx for your response Allister,
I have a pc at home and might do the same thing as you.

8

Hi Areial Edge, I saw plenty of guy using MP on parallèles ( on this forum and on YouTube) who have problems with mavlink connection with their MacBook ( parralleles).
Are you sure It runs well?
Did you tried it?
Thx

9

There is a dev version of MP for mac. it’s fine for testing but it’s not ready for prime time yet. It’s tagged as beta, but it’s maybe more alpha.

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10

Hi @Aerial_Edge

Could you get the Holybro radios and the RFD900 working right away? I’m running an M2 Mac and can’t get any radios to run, all of them say in device manager that they have no drivers installed. Did you have to install a specific version of the drivers?

Thanks

11

FIXED: I found the Arm Windows version of the VCP driver here: https://ftdichip.com/drivers/vcp-drivers/ and was able to get it working by manually installing both the .inf files

12

Just a quick note using the M1 and downloading bin files over usb… use QGC on Mac M1 to grab your files from the drone if you’re getting timeout errors using MP on Parallels.

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