Is it possible to use all of the features of the ground control stations on a computer/tablet that never has internet access? CD/DVDs or other media can be used to provide information to the computer/tablet but it no information will flow from the computer/tablet to the internet. Here is what I see as features that require the internet
Firmware download for flashing to controller
satellite imagery
What else am I missing?
I’ve figured out how to download and flash latest stable firmware. I’m not so sure how I would provide the database of satellite imagery.
I’m pretty sure all these ground stations cache the satellite imagery. I’ve never used Mission Planner for flying any flights. But QGC does this and when I prepare a flight plan in the office with internet and go to the field I never have internet there - the docs are here that tells how to do it.
Oh, you asked about transferring to table or computer with no internet. This is easy with linux - the cache is stored in ~/.cache/qgcMapCache300. You can simply copy that to another computer with a DVD (or my preferred method) USB flash drive and it will work.
I have never run QGC on Windows so I don’t know where that is stored on Windows.
With mission planner we have to prefetch the maps in order to use them when not in wifi. However, if I can never connect then I have to somehow get the imagery I guesss using another computer with internet access and then transfer the files. But like you said I have to know where they are stored.
QGroundContol has always seemed to do that automatic, whether on Android or Linux. If the flight plan file is loaded in QGC in the office with internet, when I go to the field to fly the maps are all there. When I get to the field and start my tablet and QGC up, the map just appears on the screen with a “Q” on the map that shows the location of the ground station before I even boot the flight controller (tablet has GPS in it).
I guess I’ve never really thought about it, as it has always “just worked”. I do keep both my linux laptops in “sync” with each other and my linux desktop with rsync over SSH. I sync my entire home directory so it always gets the QGC config’s. The configs are stored in ~/.config, the cache is stored in ~/.cache. Any time I start one of them up it always has the same configs as the other computers. So I think it should be quite easy to do what you want with an insertable media of some sort to sync an internet connected machine with your non-internet machine, as the inserted media just does it manually with a disc, instead of automatically using rsync over the network.
Like I say, on linux this is trivial, on Windows I don’t know. Windows runs user programs with global privileges, Unix/Linux systems don’t. So Windows may be storing stuff in the registry or even the Windows or Program Files folder or something. It is very likely your QGroundControl.ini file (the configuration for QGC) is stored in Windows32 or whatever they call it. And that is one file that needs to be sync’d.
So I did a little digging in MP and found the location of the map data. I just have to do a test to see if I can just insert the files in that location and see if the imagery just appears. I wasn’t sure if the program kept track somewhere of what imagery it has. In that case just loading the data wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem unless you grab the file that tells it what imagery it has. I’ll look at it some more and test my procedure.
Any other concerns you would have with having a computer/tablet totally offline.