drone-comms

A testbed for drone-server communications

Starting the simulator

Dronekit

home location - 14.079140, 100.609484

Run dronekit-sitl copter --home=14.079140,100.609484,584,353

This runs the SITL sim on port 5760 with the specified home location(lat,lng,alt,yaw).

(IMPORTANT) There is a version conflict for pymavlink with the dronekit sim (2.0.6) and mavproxy (2.3.4). A workaround is to

1. Install the reqs for dronekit sim - pip install dronekit-sitl
2. Install the reqs for mavproxy - pip install MAVProxy

Ardupilot

TODO

Scripts

(IMPORTANT) Requirements: Python 2.7

Pip packages: dronekit, dronekit-sitl(optional), MAVProxy

hello-drone.py

Run python hello-drone.py --connection_string-- to get a basic status message.

The connection_string can be USB, serial or network.

For example: python hello-drone.py tcp:127.0.0.1:5760 will connect to a SITL simulator running at port TCP 5760 on the local machine.

mission.py

Run python mission.py --connection_string-- --lattitude-- --longitude-- --drone_id-- to execute a mission to the specified destination.

The connection_string can be USB, serial or network.

CLI Arguments

1. connection_string
2. latitude
3. longitude
4. drone_id (optional)(default=1) This is to specify to use the simultor(id=2) or the real drone(id=1).

python mission.py --help for more info.

For use with GCS (Mission Planner) and the script

mavproxy.py --master tcp:127.0.0.1:5760 --out 127.0.0.1:14550 --out 127.0.0.1:14551 --aircraft S500

Use mavproxy to forward mavlink stream from 5760 to 14550 and 14551. In this case, the connection_string in the CLI args would be udp:127.0.0.1:14551.

NOTE: These streams are UDP only.

Development Environment

1. Start SIM
2. Start mavproxy.py
3. Connect with scripts

Starting Thrift server on own laptop

1. python ~/drone/drone-comms/drone/thrift/server.py udp:127.0.0.1:14550 --path /home/adam/drone/drone-comms/drone/thrift/gen-py

Starting Thrift delivery on laptop

1. python drone/thrift/delivery.py 14.076550 100.614012 5 --path /home/adam/drone/drone-comms/drone/thrift/gen-py --drone_id 1

Starting Thrift farm on laptop

1. python drone/thrift/farm.py "14.3,23.2 12.3,23.2" 5 --path /home/adam/drone/drone-comms/drone/thrift/gen-py --drone_id 3

2. python drone/thrift/farm.py "14.079013,100.609091 14.079751,100.60958130 14.079095,100.610117" --path /home/adam/drone/drone-comms/drone/thrift/gen-py --drone_id 3

Starting Thrift server on webserver for simulator

1. python ~/drone-comms/drone/thrift/server.py tcp:127.0.0.1:5760 --path /home/ubuntu/drone-comms/drone/thrift/gen-py