SLCAN and Mavlink COM Ports

ArduCopter
1

Hi,
When I connect my Pixhawk 6x FC on which the arducopter firmware is deployed I see 2 COM ports coming up in windows one containing ‘Mavlink’ and the other ‘SLCAN’ in their respective port names. When I connect with mission planner, I can connect with both of the ports.
In this documentation: https://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-slcan-f7h7.html it suggests to use SLCAN with Mavlink.
I had a doubt that since both the SERIAL ports are connected through 1 usb cable with my computer, will not there be data loss if I try to send data from both the serial ports simultaneously?
I can connect to 2 gcs softwares at the same time, one with the mavlink port and the other with the SLCAN port which is basically a Mavlink port unless configured for SLCAN. If I start communication from both the gcs softwares, will not there be any communication issue due to both the serial ports using the same usb cable to communicate with mu computer?

Can someone help me understand this?

Thanks,
Sayan

2

SLCAN Port is for SLCAN, not MAVLink.

Use a single serial MAVLink port for multiple GCS by using a MAVLink port multiplexer like mavproxy

Only by doing so will things work as expected.

Being creative and using different serial ports will allow both gcs to preset inconsistent data and confuse the hell out of you.

3

Thanks for the information Amilcar!

4

Just one query, is there any internal multiplexer in ardupilot that takes care of the communication when both the ports are used as MAVLink , so that there is no data loss? Suppose with one port I set a specific set of parameters and with other some other parameters, will it work without any data loss?

5

Data loss is not an issue.

State inconsistencies are.

6

Did not understand fully what state inconsistencies are. Can you give some examples of those inconsistencies?