AIRSIM and QGROUNDCONTROL HITL

QGroundControl
1

Hello everyone
I am trying to set up a HITL configuration using a PIXHAWK 2.4.8, PX4 last release, QGROUNDCONTROL, AIRSIM, RC Taranis and LINUX 18.4. The only connection between PIXHAWK and computer is the USB cable.
I am able to put the AIRSIM (unreal environment) up and running and fly a generic quadrotor, but I am not able to connect the QGROUND control, which stay issuing the following warning: “waiting vehicle connection”.
The online documentation says that is possible to connect QGROUND control in HILT using AIRSIM, but I do not know what I am missing to make it works.
Has anyone a advice how I can connect the QGC in an setup as described above?
Thank you in advance.

2

Hello everybody
An update about the issue.
I was able to put QGC up and running with Airsim in HITL.
There are in fact two ways to do that:
One is to connect the Telemetry port to a USB a set QGC to serial com. This works, but it interferes in the simulation, as consequence it is not a good option.
The second way is thorugh UDP port. According to online documentation it should be straightforward, but I have found that it requires to change the airsim setting file.
The parameter I have changed was “LocalHostIp”.
It was 127.0.0.1 and I changed to 127.0.0.2.
Now the setup is working fine.

3

I’m glad you solved it. I do this several different ways:

  • Use a set of telemetry radios, one radio connected to the Pixhawk 4’s TELEM1 port and the other radio connected to the computer running QGC via USB and create a new Connection in QGC’s Comm Links for the radio. The radio on the computer side shows up as a serial port.

  • Create a new Connection in QGC’s Comm Links to talk to AirSim on port 14550 (this port number is set in the AirSIm settings.json file in the QgcPort parameter). This allows QGC to talk to AirSim without requiring a separate data path from the Pixhawk TELEM1 port to the computer that QGC is running on.

I haven’t tried this yet, but I also believe it would be possible to use a 3.3V USB serial cable with the serial side connected to the Pixhawk’s TELEM1 port and the USB side to the computer that is running QGC.