QGC 4.4 available for beta testing

Ground Control Software QGroundControl
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QGC 4.4-rc5 is now available for beta testing.

The list of Pull Requests (aka PRs) included in this release vs 4.3 can be seen in the release PR and I’ve also attempted to list the most relevant below.

  • Camera gimbal control screen (see below)
  • Camera tracking functionality (PR)
  • Firmware upload supports for Control Zero Classic (PR) and FMUv6x-RT ProductID (PR)
  • GPS: init fix for RTK F9P driver when GPS is connected to GCS (PR)
  • Joystick landing gear button support (PR)
  • Offline map settings dragging fix (PR)
  • Offline map fix for exported tile set file extention (PR)
  • Polygon edge lengths shown when dragging vertex (PR)
  • PID Tuning: charts remain visible on mobile (PR)
  • RemoteId: validates EU operator ID (PR)
  • Vehicle: display distance to next WP (PR)

How to Install

The release candidate 5 includes “Artifacts” including installers for Windows, Linux and MacOS. Herelink’s apk can be found here. To make it easier I have provided links below.

We cannot currently provide betas for beta testing on Siyi MK15 and MK32, etc but hope to in the future.

Testing the new Camera Gimbal controls

All testing is appreciated In particular we would like help testing out the first item, the new camera gimbal control screen. Below are instructions for how it should work.

  1. Ensure the autopilot is running ArduPilot Copter, Rover or Plane 4.5.2 (or higher)

  2. Setup a camera gimbal as described on the wiki and confirm it can be controlled using RC. We have instructions for controlling using Mission Planner here and here. Once beta testing is complete we will add more instructions for using QGC.

  3. Connect with QGC and confirm the new control tool bar appears along with live video. If you’ve never setup live-video with QGC before then it is likely both camera gimbal and QGC configuration is required which should be done outside the scope of this beta testing (e.g. let’s not confuse beta testing with first time setup issues).

    qgc-tools-bar-and-video-small
    qgc-tools-bar-and-video-small1554×970 375 KB

  4. Test the “Click-to-point” feature

    • Click on the video thumbnail to make it the main view (e.g. big video, small map)
    • Click on the Tool bar to display
    • Click on Settings, Enable on Screen Camera Control, Click to Point and enter the camera’s FOV
      qgc-click-to-point
    • Click on the video feed and confirm that the camera moves to point at what you click on

  5. Test the “click and drag” feature:

    • Click on the Tool bar to display
    • Click on Settings, Enable on Screen Camera Control, click and drag and enter a “Max speed”
      qgc-click-and-drag
    • Click and hold on the center of the video, move the mouse up, down, left and right and confirm the gimbal moves in the same direction as the mouse

  6. Test the other buttons on the tool bar

    • Yaw Lock / Yaw Follow: controls whether yaw is “locked” (e.g does not move with vehicle) or “follow” (moves with vehicles). This mostly only applies when using RC control.
    • Center: gimbal points forward and changes to “follow” (e.g. rotates with the vehicle)
    • Tilt 90: points straight down
    • Point Home: points towards home. You can test this by clicking on the QGC map (away from the vehicle) and selecting “Set home here”. When a slider appears move it to the right. Next select this “Point Home” button and the gimbal should attempt to point towards the new home location.
    • Retract: moves the gimbal to the angles in the MNTx_RETRACT_X (roll), Y (aka pitch), Z (aka yaw) parameters.

  7. Test triggering taking a picture using the right-side camera controls as shown below. Each time a picture is successfully taken the number at the bottom of the control should increase.

    qgc-takepic
    qgc-takepic571×601 110 KB

  8. Test ROI by ensuring the vehicle is flying, then click on the map and select “ROI at location”. A “ROI here” icon should appear on the map and the gimbal should point at the location. If you click on the “ROI here” icon you may “Cancel ROI” or “Edit Position”.

    qgc-roi-test
    qgc-roi-test574×596 37.1 KB

  9. Test support for multiple gimbals by connecting and configuring two gimbals (e.g. set MNT1_TYPE, MNT2_TYPE). Once connected a new “Select Gimbal” drop-down should appear on the tool bar. Note that unfortunately we’ve found a bug in AP that may make it impossible to setup two Siyi or ViewPro gimbals.
    image

Known Issues

Issues are being tracked on this QGC issue.

“Point Home” ROI can’t be cancelled, remains on map
“Point Home” appears not to use the correct altitude (camera points up or down)
Cannot trigger recording video from the camera controls

Reporting problems

All feedback both positive and negative is very welcome.

If you find issues please post them below or better yet, create a new topic within this category and ideally prefix it with “QGC 4.4” (or similar) so that I can quickly see if the report is related to this beta or not.

Thanks very much!

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My friends at iVue Robotics use gamepad controllers - and as I recall, they have to use Mission Planner because QGC doesn’t meet their needs for the gamepad.

I noticed some changes/improvements to gamepad support. I’ve brought this to the attention of Jacob Andrews of iVue Robotics. If time allows, I’m sure he’ll want to get involved in testing gamepad function.

As soon as Android versions are available, I’ll want to test them both on HereLink and an Android tablet.

There are custom versions of QGC such as the SiYi apps. (I think the version on HereLink is also slightly different.) I’m guessing that these custom versions will have to be re-written to take advantage of the new versions.

If you have any suggestions on how best to stay on top of the progress of these third-party versions, it would be really helpful and much appreciated.

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@jstroup1986 Just out of curiosity, what are the current limitations your friends see in QGC joystick support?

Indeed it used to be not so nice in the past, but it has been pretty stable and usable for some time already. This particular release included also additional support for camera control using joysticks, or gamepad controllers. It is not Ideal, you can only assign camera control to buttons, not joystick axis. But the usual xbox controller can be used, mapping to the “arrows” gimbal control, and to the rest of the buttons particular functions ( triggering camera, centering gimbal, gimbal follow/yaw mode, etc ). So even if the current support is not ideal, should be enough to be considered in production. Also, this release includes gimbal control clicking on screen, it works reasonably good so hopefully users will rely less on joystick for camera control and more on onscreen control, or a combination of both.

About Joystick and QGC in general, joystick support for general UAV control is supposed to be mature and tested too. Several GCS manufacturers out there rely on it as per my knowledge, using QGC Joystick functionality as main control, in an Android tablet with joysticks attached by USB. It is not the most common configuration for a handheld GCS, but it exists. It isn’t perfect though, and even today you still see commits being done about Joystick bugfixes. But the more it gets used the faster all those imperfections will arise, and potentially get solved.

I think QGC joystick support overall is going to improve in the short future too. For instance soon it will probably have support to use joystick axis for gimbal control too, and it will allow to use 2 joysticks, and they could be combined so one is main control and second is just gimbal control, etc. It will allow for interesting GCS setups.

Now, about specific GCS manufacturers, you are correct. It is very unlikely that QGC will support specific devices on its “official” versions anytime soon. That would be responsibility of each manufacturer, as they have been doing until now. And the best way to stay on top of this is to let the manufacturers know this is important for you as a user. If they receive a lot of reports from users caring about being updated with latest QGC, I am sure they will do their best to walk on that direction too.

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Herelink support is ready! See the description at the top for a link to the .apk file and a YouTube video that demonstrates pretty well how it can be installed.

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v4.4 release candidate 3 fixes video stream for Herelink:

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awesome team! Good job!

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@rmackay9
Did you find that videos cannot be displayed on Windows? Similar to this pr:

I found this problem in previous version, but I just tested bata1 and it is not fixed.I changed decodebin3 to decodebin3. Video will work fine, I tested with Viewpro A30pro and zingto cameras

e64c413a44cabf4826032659d0405d9
e64c413a44cabf4826032659d0405d91920×1080 161 KB

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I changed decodebin3 to decodebin.

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@rmackay9 I noticed a stability issue with the GCS control gimbal. It can always be controlled with Pitch, but yaw does not respond to commands. I’ve sent a test video in discord.

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@cuav_le your PR is towards QGC v5 based on Qt6. This thread concerns v4.4 on Qt5 based on the Stable_V4.4 branch.

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@david_sastre @rmackay9 Randy/David, got herelink video forwarding to laptop running QGC, MP no luck…sideloaded new herelink QGC, have gimbal dialogs, beginning testing…but have noticed one issue…I have the gimbal video record start/stop on a aux channel from herelink button…that works fine, but the red circle in QGC(MAVLink commmand I imagine) is not starting/stopping recording…it changes from circle to square and back, but I dont get a GCS message that the SIYI record is on or off, like I do with the aux switch…guess its a known issue, carefully reading above

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@hwurzburg,

Great, thanks for testing. I’ve also noticed the problem with the record video button not working and I’ve added it to the issue list. DavidS says he doesn’t have the problem but he’s not using the Siyi so he suggests there is an issue on the AP side in the CAMERA_INFORMATION messages “flags” field but here’s where we set the flags and xxx_CAPTURE_VIDEO is there… so more investigation required!

By the way could you test switching between HDMI1 and HDMI2? There’s a gear icon just near the camera controls that selects this. It works for JulianO but doesn’t work for me. I suspect an issue with the Japan version of the Herelink.

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switching gimbal vid from hdmi1 to 2 does not seem to work
click to point works on herelink with finger
click and drag does not
point to home works, dont know about alt just asmuth
center works after all of those on the bench…will hopefully get a chance on ROI flights this weekend

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Hi @hwurzburg,

Thanks again for the feedback. One interesting thing about ROI is that it can only be used once the vehicle is armed. This is a restriction that I think we will remove eventually.

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More test results…loaded on Win laptop and connected over herelink hotspot…click and drag on laptop sometimes moves the gimbal, weakly and sluggishly…not useable…other commands sometimes fail and get MAVLink cmd fail report…but work more often than not

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Hi @hwurzburg,

Thanks again for testing. I’ve also seen the movement issue when QGC on PC and QGC on herelink are running at the same time and I suspect the issue is that both are sending updated targets frequently and so they’re interfering with each other. I’ve added this to the issues list.

FYI @david_sastre

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yes, it is qt5 and it behaves similarly. I’ve solved it. There is a bug in qgc’s rtsp decoder that is compatible with h264. When I modify the camera to h265 video, it works perfectly. Thanks.

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Thanks for the feedback. Referring to the list here: QGC 4.4 Issues List · Issue #11559 · mavlink/qgroundcontrol · GitHub

  • About click and slide, when clicking, a timer starts and it sends periodic commands to the vehicle. I wonder if such “high” traffic is messing with it when relaying the telemetry from Herelink to MP. If this is problematic we could just remove click and slide. The concept is cool, but might be a headache in such situations, it really relies on nice link. Click and point is just a single command, so that is why that probably works fine.

  • Point HOME altitude and cancel, will take a look at it soon.

  • About video triggering and SIYI, my understanding is that it could be some status report missing from AP to QGC, so we will hold on this one until we know more.

Thanks!

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QGC-4.4 has been released!

The official release announcement is here and we will hopefully release the Herelink apk files shortly as well.