I am curious if one telemetry transmitter on an aircraft can be received by multiple computers on the ground. Only one would need to have control over the aircraft, but the other one or two would need to be receiving GPS, power, heading, and artificial horizon info.
This is for the purpose of redundancy, and while it might seem overboard, its for a moderately long range flight and we want all bases covered, so that search and recovery teams can monitor the planes position independent from the pilots ground station.
The telemetry I am talking about would be coming from either a pixhawk or an apm 2.6 with the usual 3DR telemetry radio sets.
As I understand it is not possible as it is a bidirectional connection.
But Pixhawk has two telemetry Ports. You can have two Radios. Or the second to an Osd and with videotransmitter to Ground. Or repeat the Signal from gcs to the rescue teams… Or build some Hardware based on a teensy givs you a Lot of serial Ports
Thanks for the help, i don’t think any of the hardware solutions will work for us. At this point I will probably just use a remote desktop program for simplicity.
Is there a way to forward the serial signal? I would guess that brings back the problem of having two computers trying to communicate with one board.
Hi, I am facing similar problem so i thought i would post in this thread rather than duplicating this topic. I have two computers quite nearby actually, one team is for manual control and the other for automatic routing and stuff. but sharing a single screen and gcs is a bit hectic. Is there any way to read the same mavlink signal by two gcs running on seperate or even single computer with multiple screens? only the auto fly guy will need to control through the GCS the other guy only needs to see the six basic flight instruments and the video feed. if you know of any GCS that have the six basic instrument pack with video feed a bit like the cessna 172 in xplane kinda setup that would be great to know. thanks.
Thank you for your reply. the observer will have the rc transmitter so he can fly manually if he wants, meanwhile one guy can monitor flight data coming in through telemetry under “quick or status tabs along with the map” and modify autonomous sections of the flight plan if needed. to achieve this i have a seperate screen attached, i can pop out the hud display and live video feed through that with no hud (data on hud is a little complex and hard to see in direct sunlight for the manual pilot) but the gauges panel i cannot seem to pop out to place on the other screen as i do with the hud. With the live feed in the hud the artificial horizon also disappears. if possible to add the bank indicator and artificial horizon in the gauges panel and enable the gauges panel to pop out to be placed on a seperate screen that would be the perfect solution in my case i guess. but i don’t know how to get around doing that. That said, I have to thank you for the great effort you have put into building this superb GCS .
Thank you that was a great help. Also on the gauges front is it a possibility that gauges panel can be added for those more accustomed to flying in general aviation aircraft and simulator. I found one layout from a GCS that is very neat and minimalistic if you can have a look into this please. but his doesn’t seem to work with mavlink.
I’ll also chime in on the same thread with a similar comment, we have been using a setup recently and have been issuing commands from three different instances of MP/ GCS to a single aircraft and everything seems to work. the sys_id of all the gcs are the same, and we are not currently enforcing that on the pixhawk.
@Michael_Oborne do you see any potential issues with multiple instances issuing commands? And do you see any issues in enforcing sys_id with multiple instances running the same sys_id?
Having two connected but nothing else should cause no issue, the issue will only come if both gcss try and send commands that require acknowledgement. But if both observe only, I don’t see any issue.
Just flown a 90 minute endurance test, with dual GCS. One was connected via RFD modem and another connected via and LTE modem. On the air Telem1 and Telem2 ports were used to connect the two modem.
It worked perfectly.
I uploaded the mission from one and downloaded it to the other. But the main use is for backup. (If 868 link is lost, still can take over the control from the LTE)
So I just tried doing this and as soon as my RFD connected to my Mission planner laptop my QGC Android controller lost connection - Andras are you able to share a little more?
SYSID_MYGCS: 255 for Mission planner.
SYSID_ENFORCE: 0
SYSID_THISMAV: 1
see notes below.
On Android changed QGC - MAVLINK SYSTEM ID to 254 - In Application settings - > Mavlink →
Ground Station.
These are the setting that worked for me, hopefully will work for others
Steve
SYSID_MYGCS: My ground station number
Allows setting an individual MAVLink system id for this vehicle to distinguish it from others on the same network
Range
1 - 255
Note: This parameter is for advanced users
Allows restricting radio overrides to only come from my ground station
Values
Value Meaning
255 Mission Planner and DroidPlanner
252 AP Planner 2
And
SYSID_ENFORCE: GCS sysid enforcement
Note: This parameter is for advanced users
This controls whether packets from other than the expected GCS system ID will be accepted
Values
Value Meaning
0 NotEnforced
1 Enforced
SYSID_THISMAV: MAVLink system ID of this vehicle
Note: This parameter is for advanced users
Allows setting an individual MAVLink system id for this vehicle to distinguish it from others on the same network
