I want to develop a swarm of 10 drone. For this I intend to use the Pixhawk 2 as a flight controller. The development of the software is a company that will take care of it but the question that I often ask myself: “how can you communicate with the pixhawk from the software?” And I’m not able to answer it …
Hi,
Pixhawk runs a software called flight stack. One of the two main flight stacks is Ardupilot. You can communicate with pixhawk via a communication protocol called MAVLink. You can communicate with pixhawk using a software tool called Ground Control Station (GCS). On windows there is Mission Planner. On linux there is APM Planner and QGroundControl. These tools communicate with pixhawk physically via a USB cable, and using MAVLink protocol. You can also write your own code to communicate with pixhawk via UART using MAVLink protocol.
I hope this answers your question.
Clearly you are articulate and succinct in your response. There are many blogs, forums, articles and videos out there, but I am not aware of anyone maintaining a living eBook on the whole subject. It is just too dynamic, and many people I speak with are all-to-assuming that everyone understands what they are talking about.
Perhaps something for you to consider?
We need a reference that is constantly updated, and not only explains what and why, but also how.
I would not hesitate to pay for such a reference.
(Yes, I am new to this and struggling to learn builds on my own.)
all the communication between pixhawk and external devices such as your ground control station is done with Mavlink, the protocol uses parameters to identify the intended vehicle so with a point to multi-point network infrastructure vehicles will only react to instructions intended for them. Mavlink is also capable of simple network routing allowing you to relay messages or directly address the individual Mavlink enabled components of a vehicle. To get swarming setup you need to decide how you will communicate with the multiple vehicles, and find or design a gcs to generate the specific commands for each vehicle. I think Mission Planner support’s simple follow the leader type swarming, but nothing like that Intel swarm display. The vehicles themselves don’t care one way or the other about swarming and need no modification or parameter change other than to be sure they each have a unique vehicle id number
When I last used Mission Planner, I hit the Ctrl + F to bring up the advanced menu… I saw a button called SWARM in there. Not sure what it does or if it’s fully functional, but you may want to take a look at that.
This has not been not a swarm control yet. But you can control multiple drones on the same screen using PixHawk with Andruav as in this video https://youtu.be/To3sngcdvh4.
If you are interested we can work together to make it more suitable for your purpose.
Regards,
M. Hefny
One way to communicate is through MavLink many persons say than this is easy. Other way is use
mini USB
hal.console -> print(message to company)
hal.console -> write(message to company)
hal.console -> read(message from company)
UART PORT A
hal.uartA -> print(message to company)
hal.uartA -> write(message to company)
hal.uartA -> read(message from company)
More over, you can use ports uartB, uartC and uartD. But, you need to configure this ports in mission Planner (or APM planner) without protocol (-1). I recommend upload the next sketch if you want to try by this way.
./waf build --target examples/UART_test --upload
By this way you can communicate each PixHawk with one computer aboard and each computer communicate (via wifi or other ) at one computer (Master).
Hello my friend, is it possible that we can speak on the phone, I have a similar set up and would love to have your help on some projects we have, can we set up a meeting on the phone?
Hello, I would like to have a communication with you regarding the same. Can we have some way of communication? Here I found that you have message settings disabled. Can you please message me at your convenience so that we can communicate.