QGC 4.4 available for beta testing

Ground Control Software QGroundControl
21

Hi.

I run Mission Planner with ExpressLRS Airport without any problems so I tried to connect QGC with out any response. Mission Planner connects with 4800 baud and works well.
Here is my settings on QGC.
Regards //YB

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@david_sastre @rmackay9 Thank you very much for your great contribution.

SIYI team has finished our tests for QGC 4.4 (Android) by following a standard SIYI procedure for app tests. Below are our feedback.

Testing Device:

  • SIYI MK15 Handheld Ground Station
  • SIYI ZT6 Mini Dual Sensor Optical Pod
  1. Pitch and yaw gimbal control is ok, but click and drag response is slow and inaccurate. See the video: https://youtu.be/RUXuQ6g-_Uc
  2. Photo capture and video record do not work. QGC disconnected: photo and record do not work. QGC connected: photo and record buttons disappeared, no control either. See the video: https://youtu.be/6b6dTZHKqSw
  3. These commands are working well. Center, Tilt 90, Retract, YAW Follow / YAW Lock
  4. Release Control / Acquire Control works well. But it seems like we can still control the gimbal after using the command Release Control. Or we mis-understood this command? See the video: https://youtu.be/NsnkMGpheJo
  5. Zoom function stay untested. Our engineers did not find the zoom button or commands. Kindly guide.
  6. The multi-sensors (Thermal, etc.) do not work, I believe that this part may need extra development.
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23

Thanks for the feedback @SIYI

  • Click and drag: It is confirmed to not be nice on touch screens. It seems it only works nicely on desktop. We understand the issue, and it will be addressed.

  • Photo capture and video: Those have not been modified heavily lately. Those rely on mavlink camera protocol. For Siyi A8, Ardupilot implemented this mavlink camera protocol on its driver, and I think it works fine.

I am not familiarized with your ZT6, but assuming it talks directly with QGC, it needs to implement mavlink camera protocol, and if it talks through Ardupilot, The driver should be implemented in the autopilot side. Of course there could be some bugs on QGC side, but several mavlink cameras are confirmed to work just fine with QGC for a long time.

  • Release/acquire control: unless somebody else is in control, when you attempt to control a gimbal QGC will automatically acquire control. If somebody else is in control of the gimbal, you will first see a popup warning about the control ownership changed.

Basically if there is only one element able to control the gimbal ( GCS/Pilot ), that release/acquire control doesn’t matter. That is why it can be hidden optionally.

  • Zoom: The scope of this release never included this front, so it is expected. It could be done for sure, now we have everything at the mavlink level to associate gimbals and cameras, so besides zoom control we could adjust gimbal sensitivity based on zoom, etc. But it would require extra development.

  • Multisensors: Same as above. However, mavlink camera protocol supports this, you can make it work with it. Using mavlink camera protocol you can expose any parameter you like, main sensor among them.

There is room for improvement on this front too, but having support on your camera for that at the mavlink level will probably ease the ground for whatever we do next.

Thanks!

1 Like
24

Hi @SIYI (and @david_sastre),

Thanks for the feedback.

  1. I agree with @david_sastre that it’s a known issue so hopefully in a future release we can improve
  2. I agree that Photo capture and video record do not work reliably. @hwurzburg and I have both seen this and from my investigation it appears to be that QGC is requiring the camera support “modes” but AP handles this internally. I hope we can fix this on the AP (e.g. by faking mode support) or QGC side (e.g. remove the requirement for supporting modes)
  3. great!
  4. AP supports the release control/acquire control but actually doesn’t enforce it which is why you can still control the gimbal. I hope to fix this in future AP releases
  5. QGC doesn’t support zoom yet, hopefully in the future.
  6. QGC doesn’t support setting the active lens yet. hopefully in the future.

In general, I don’t think the short-term solution to these issues is for Siyi to improve its mavlink support. Instead I think the solution is for QGC (and AP in some cases) to improve its ability to send camera and video control commands to the autopilot which in-turn controls the camera. There is already some work going on here to do this.

2 Likes
25

Hello Randy -

I’ve just this week gotten one of my Herelinks off the shelf and into a new copter build.

I hadn’t used one in over 6 months. So I began doing firmware updates for the Air Unit and the Ground Unit.

I was thinking/hoping that the update would incorporate the latest version of QGC - but after the update it’s still on V4.0.8. (Solex wasn’t updated either.)

Would you happen to know if CubePilot intends that it’s customers load a new .APK for upgrades to QGC for HereLink?

As info - I noticed that Solex has a “check for new version” and “update to new version” options. So upgrading to the new version of Solex was super easy. I wonder if QGC could have this functionality.

26

Hi @jstroup1986,

The standard build for Herelink does not yet included the latest version of QGC. I’ve heard from them that this is on the project plan but I don’t know when that will happen.

Until then, it’s relatively easy to upgrade the herelink manually to 4.4 and we’ve put instructions here on the AP wiki. This video also shows the basic process although it’s not specific to this QGC-4.4 release.

Adding a firmware update button to QGC sounds like a great idea and surely it has been raised before but I don’t see any issue in the QGC issues list.

2 Likes
27

Hi,
my observations are:

Setup:

  • SIYI MK15
  • SIYI ZR10
  • SIYI AI module (ver2)
  • Pixhawk 6X
  1. Icon for camera and menu comes up as expected.
  2. When tapping on screen, camera position indicator at top next to icon changes accordingly, yet camera doe not move.
  3. All the different buttons (I.e. “Center”, “Tilt 90”, “Point Home”…) do not respond with camera movement, but do show up at top bar next to camera icon.
    When pressing various of those buttons I get a “Vehicle did not respond to command: MAC_CMD_DO_GIMBAL_MANAGER_PITCHYAW” message popping up.

Tanks for your ongoing great effort. Much appreciated.

1 Like