v4

What's Changed

• Add endpoint for raw telemetry tlog logging by @julled in #400
• Don't perform UART reset on shutdown by @niwhsa9 in #409
• meson: Replace deprecated get_pkgconfig_variable by @HTRamsey in #387
• README: Fix MAVLINK_ROUTERD_CONF_FILE documentation by @lopsided98 in #391
• CI: Fix binary problems in i686 by @jbeyerstedt in #404

New Contributors

• @HTRamsey made their first contribution in #387
• @lopsided98 made their first contribution in #391
• @niwhsa9 made their first contribution in #409
• @julled made their first contribution in #400

Full Changelog: v3...v4

mavlink-router 3

Summary

This is a big release following new features and several bug fixes. It's recommended that
users upgrade to this release for both ArduPilot and PX4 flight stacks.

A note on compatibility: for ArduPilot, due to the way the log stream over mavlink is handled, it's
recommended to set LOG_DISARMED=1 when the option to log only while armed is set
in mavlink-router.

Changes

Configuration file

• Rename the Filter option in the configuration file to AllowMsgIdOut to better indicate
  what that is doing. It also extends its handling to all kind of endpoint, fix corner cases
  and add proper documentation
• Add AllowSrcCompOut, AllowSrcSysOut, AllowMsgIdIn, AllowSrcCompIn, AllowSrcSysIn
  to allow messages based on system/component/message IDs.
• Add proper "sniffer" functionality: this was previously thought to be covered by the "eavesdrop"
  setting on Endpoint, but that had never been properly implemented. This is now implemented through
  a SnifferSysid in configuration file, pointing to a system id where to forward all traffic to.
• Add "redundant data links": the configuration section for the endpoint has a new Group
  setting. Endpoints with the same Group are considered to be connecting the same systems,
  thus acting as redundant data links. The routing of messages is then tweaked to avoid cycles
  between these endpoints

General

• Update mavlink module
• Improve debug log output
• Fix routing when sending messages to specific components
• Improve compatibility with musl
• Improve integration with github actions:
  • Cover more distros and C/C++ libraries, particularly musl.
  • Add artifacts and release binaries
• Fix polling for events leading to not handling some of them
• Improve installation instructions in the README, also covering more distros: Debian, Ubuntu,
  Fedora and Archlinux
• Enable IPv6
• Do not exit when client disconnects from TCP - just like new connections are accepted
  on the fly, also allow clients to disconnect without treating this as critical event. UART
  disconnection are still considered fatal as those should not normally happen.
• Set TCP_NODELAY on TCP to reduce latency
• Fix TCP reconnection logic
• Fix warnings when platform serial ports instead of USB-serial: there is not USB-related
  tweaks to do for those related to the latency
• Fix ArduPilot logging: do not ack and nack the same package
• Switch to meson as build system
• Use pre-generated mavlink library from its repository
• Adopt clang-format to have a uniform coding style throughout the codebase
• Improve how configuration is handled internally by mavlink-router which should avoid
  past mistakes
• Do not spread mavlink headers throughout the codebase, but rather use them from one place
• Fix crash when exiting due to log handlers needing to send info to the flight stack
• Add LogSystemId to set what is the system id we should handle logs for. This improves
  the handling of multiple FC connected to mavlink-router
• UDP-client: switch back to broadcast on inactivity. When using UDP this allows to change
  the GCS being used without worrying about IP changes due to using multiple devices.
• Fix error when launching mavlink-router with a non-existent log directory: the error was
  also misleading, pointing to "no free disk space"
• Reject messages on TCP when not connected

Thanks to all contributions and people involved in this release: Lucas De Marchi, Jannik Beyerstedt, Patrick José Pereira, olliw42, Pierre Kancir, bbworld, Julian Kent, Jonas Vautherin, DanielePettenuzzo, GerardHale, Guy Rodnay, Michael du Breuil, Ming Liu, OemerYilmazConsiderIt, Philipp Gorczak, Ryan Beall, Soof Golan, Stephen Dade, Windel Bouwman.

mavlink-router 2

• Misc bug fixes on handling error handling paths and general cleanups
• Log file is now changed to read-only when we are not saving flight stack
  log anymore
• New "LogMode" configuration to allow logging only when armed
• MavlinkDialect now defaults to "auto": we set it based on the flight stack:
  either ArduPilot or PX4
• Fix logging from vehicles with systemd ID not equal 1. We will now get the
  system ID from the first message heartbeat received with MAV_COMP_ID_AUTOPILOT1
  component ID
• Gracefully handle restarts, to reuse the same IP/port.
• Gracefully handle errors when the UART device disappears (e.g. when disconnecting
  a USB-serial dongle)
• Make mavlink-router compatible with musl libc
• Tweak USB-serial configuration to ask Linux to reduce the latency
• Add "Filter" configuration to endpoints: this allows endpoints to declare interest
  in only a subset of messages by specifying the message IDs. This allows reducing the
  the link traffic and thus mixing for e.g. low bandwidth links in a high bandwith
  network
• We now plunge a background sync() call every 1 second when logging to avoid losing
  log data - default OS configuration in Linux is 30 seconds.
• Always check CRC of the messages arriving independently of the link (UDP vs UART).
  Previously we would skip checking on UDP because the network layer guarantees we
  aren't receiving garbage and it's expected to have 1 message per packet. However
  we don't enforce the 1 message per packet and the source of the message
  could be unintentionally sending garbage when, for example it relays
  messages from other lossy links.
• New MinFreeSpace and MaxLogFiles configuration to control logging maximum size
  and rotation

v1

• Route mavlink messages between endpoints
• Support UART and UDP endpoints for flight stack (both ArduPilot and PX4) and UART, UDP and TCP endpoints for other components
• TCP endpoints are automatically added/removed upon connection
• Save flight stack logs for ArduPilot (binlog) and PX4 (ulog)
• Minimal/opportunistic parsing on MAVLink messages to avoid overhead