QGroundControl Tutorial

QGroundControl Tutorial

FOR DOCUMENTATION ON QGROUNDCONTROL PLEASE GO HERE

The ground station we will be using for communication and monitoring of your UAV is called QGroundControl. The installers for QGroundControl (for each operating system) can be found here on the aa241x website.

Please make sure to do all of the steps before flying!

This tutorial is broken up into 3 parts:

• Installing Firmware and Connecting - THIS IS ONLY REQUIRED IF YOU WANT TO REINSTALL THE DEFAULT PX4 FIRMWARE (at this point you should all be moving to using the AA241x version of PX4)
• Pixhawk Configurations
• Fly Window

You will need to have the correct drivers installed in order to be able to connect to the pixhawk, and this of course once again depends on operating system.

Windows:

• if you have installed the development environment, you will be good to go on the drivers so don't worry
• USB drivers can be found here
• if you are running windows 8 you may find yourself needing to follow these instructions

Mac:

• for those of you running Snow Leopard / Lion you'll need to install the FTDI drivers required
  • if that doesn't work: a bit of a hack, but install APMPlanner 2.0 which will also install the necessary drivers and then you will be set to go

Installing Firmware and Connecting

For your first flights using the Bixler, you will be using the default PX4 firmware which will be installed using QGroundControl. You will also need to configure several aspects of the hardware. To guide you through the process please follow these steps:

1. Download and install QGroundControl from these installers.

2. On the initial screen shown below, press UPGRADE and follow the instructions to install the PX4 firmware.

   Completed installation:

3. Make sure your Pixhawk is still plugged in and add a communications link to connect to the pixhawk.

   In the top right, select on add link, or go to File -> Manage Communications Links to open the comms link manager. On the following screen select add

   Then fill out the information for your link.

   Notes on link connections:

   • Link menu should automatically fill in the correct COM port (usb-modem for you mac folks), if it does not, you can find it in the device manager
   • Make sure you have selected the correct baud rate
     • Hardwired connections to the pixhawk have baud rates of 115200
     • Wireless connections to the pixhawk (through the 3DR radio) have baud rates of 57600
   • QGroundControl may sometimes take a while to display all the information once a link is established

4. Connect to the pixhawk by selecting Connect in the top right. Should get to the Setup window:

Pixhawk Configurations

Now that you have the firmware installed and are connected to the Pixhawk, you will need to do initial configurations of the hardware. The Setup window has the following tabs:

• Summary - a quick overview of the status of the hardware and software
• Firmware - used to upload new firmware to the Pixhawk
• Airframe - define the airframe configuration being flown
• Radio - configure the r/c radio
• Flight Modes - configure flight mode switches on the r/c radio
• Sensors - calibrate sensors
• Power - define battery information being used
• Safety - safety
• Parameters - list of all parameters that can be modified and sent to autopilot that are used as constants

Most of these tabs will only need to be visited during the initial setup. During normal use, the Parameters tab will be the most useful to you.

1. Airframe tab: select your desired airframe (in this case HobbyKing Bixler 1/2).

2. Radio tab: calibrate your r/c radio by clicking on the calibrate button and following the onscreen instructions. If it prompts you, configure a switch for Main Mode only.

   Press skip for the following setup options in the configuration:

   • flaps
   • aux1
   • aux2

You only need to set the main mode switch.

![](images/radio_config.PNG)

3. Flight Modes tab: Ensure that you have Main Mode set to Channel 5. If you screen looks like the following: drag and drop the Main Mode box to Channel 5. Your screen should look like the following:

   If you are interested in using the other modes to see what they do, feel free to drag other modes to channel 6 (and 7 for those of you using a 7 channel remote).

   Find out more about what the flight modes mean here

4. Sensors tab: For each sensor click on that sensor and follow the onscreen instructions for calibration. Do this once the pixhawk has been installed into your airframe! Sensor calibration teaches the autopilot the orientations of your sensors and their behavior characteristics, in order to provide accurate state estimations.

   Note: skip these until your pixhawk is mounted into your airframe.

   • Compass - more of an art than anything, here is a great video
   • Gryoscope - just let it sit flat face up
   • Accelerometer - set the Pixhawk on each side as instructed.

   Here, you must rest the vehicle on each of its six sides. First, let it sit normally on the table or floor. When it indicates that this is complete, put it in any of the remaining five orientations. The order in which you do these is not important. You want to put the vehicle upside down, and let it calibrate. Then nose down (hold it up), nose up, right side up, left side up.

   • Airspeed - calibrates static and dynamic pressure. You will first let it sit in an area with no airflow and then once prompted you will have to create airflow for the sensor.

5. Power tab: For the Bixler batteries make sure the cell count is 3, the max voltage is 4.2 and the min voltage is 3.4V.

6. Safety and Parameters: no need to change anything here at the moment.

Now that you have everything setup, you are all ready to start flying.

Fly Window

This is just a quick overview of different elements of the fly window.

The default window is the following:

The main view on this window is your horizon.

• AS and GS on left hand side are airspeed and ground speed
• h on right hand side is your altitude (absolute or above ground depending on gps connection)
• the horizontal lines in the center give you pitch angle
• the angled marks at the top give you your roll angle
• the compass wheel at the bottom gives you heading

Up along the top bar you also have some important information. From left to right:

• the bull horn is a list of messages from the autopilot
• the little plane tells you your autopilot is configured for a plane (if this is a quadcopter, you need to revisit your initial setup!)
• the satellite icon is the GPS status: green for connected and red for not connected (when it is connected it also tells you the number of satellites it is connected to)
• the battery icon is the current battery voltage
• text next to it tells you the arming status of the autopilot
• Finally the last bit of text tells you the flight mode you are in

I recommend adding 2 important "widgets" from the Advanced -> Tool Widgets -> menu:

• Mavlink Inspector - allows you to see all of the mavlink messages live (you will eventually have 32 variables you can see here)
• Map view - just shows you a map of your location