APSync for PX4

PX4 Autopilot
1

Is there an APSync version for the PX4 flight stack?

2

What is APSync? Please give more detail.

3

APSync is a software package that tends to exist in the Ardupilot counterpart (as of now) that simplifies the companion computer setup for drones. One of the notable feature (which I was interested in) was automatically setting up wifi hotspot etc for streaming telemetry and video over network. This would be a nice feature to have in the PX4 also if not there already. :slight_smile:

References:
http://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/apsync-intro.html

4

Aha! I donā€™t know of anything that would be similar. However, you could use MAVSDK for certain functionality on the companion or mavlink-router for dealing with forwarding MAVLink traffic. It all depends on what problem youā€™re exactly trying to accomplish.

Many people of course also use MAVROS to connect to ROS on a companion computer.

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5

APSync is a set of utilities pre-configured, it acts as a data broker using mavlink-router together with a few other services like MAVProxy, dflogger, APweb and, OpenKai. By becoming the glue that binds everything together it decreases the complexity of setting up a companion computer.

From APSync docs:

  • /dev/ttyTHS1 at baud 1500000 to communicate with the flight controller (on TX1/TX2)
  • UDP 127.0.0.1:14655 for MavProxy running on the companion computer
  • UDP 127.0.0.1:14556 for dflogger (writes dataflash logs to companion computer)
  • UDP 127.0.0.1:14755 for APweb (small configuration web service)
  • UDP 127.0.0.1:14765 for OpenKai (vision processing program, similar to ROS)
  • UDP 10.0.1.255:14765 for telemetry to Ground Station via wifi

IMHO itā€™s a really nice piece of software.

I agree with @JulianOes we can pretty much have a 1-to-1 replacement to anything on APSync using the MAVSDK, but the reality is we donā€™t have plans for this (correct me if Iā€™m wrong please), and thereā€™s still significant work to be done to get there. I donā€™t know that there are any open-source solutions to this problem in our community.

Having said that, if anyone sees the need for a companion computer ā€œkitā€ that simplifies operations, Iā€™m all up for it. I would just be very careful of not creating a ā€œcompetitionā€ with APSync, or a 1-to-1 replacement of APSync, just for the sake of having one. We are a different community with different needs. I would like to understand the use cases and understand the requirements before any resources are assigned to this.

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6

@rroche thank you for your clarification :slight_smile:

In my perspective, if we can integrate the MAVSDK and all the basic required ā€˜setupsā€™ for a companion computer (eg: auto hotspot, gstreaming, telemetry over network, etc) into a package, it can be easily used and installed by ā€˜anyoneā€™ who want to use MAVSDK to set up even their very first drone. In my view, it would accelerate the use-cases of MAVSDK to even a higher level.

7

It has been suggested that it wouldnā€™t take too much work to make it PX4 compatible, which would be nice.

8

Right, it would be great if APSync could be made compatible with PX4. I think this will depend a bit on how the standardisation of MAVLink progresses between ArduPilot and PX4.

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9

Yes, if that gets standardised, then a lot of areas become much easier!

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