Weekly MAVLink call and coordination

[LorenzMeier]

Hi All,

Given the increased interest in standardization and MAVLink picking up more and more "micro-services" like the camera control standard, I believe a regular call would help. This is in particular necessary to coordinate efforts across different open source projects or vendors.

I would also like to facilitate the collaboration between different teams / groups and find common ground focused around technical merit. Calls and in-person meetings are essential to create the cohesion required for this.

I would propose a bi-weekly call, alternating between 09:00 a.m. CET / 15:00h Beijing / 17:00h Sydney time and 18:00 p.m. CET / 9 a.m. PST every 2nd Wednesday of the month.

I would also like to find a time for interested parties to meet at AUVSI Xponential early May in person.

Please leave feedback / suggestions in this thread.

---

Edited (Hamish). Dev Meeting Agenda/Notes in wiki: Home > Agenda

[ashirsat]

@LorenzMeier it would also be a good idea to have some sort of minutes or summary for the meeting that can be posted online so that if people miss the meeting they can get the updates

[markdjacobsen]

I am very glad to see this effort, and would love to join the conversation. I represent a number of different organizations in the U.S. government that use Mavlink-based systems. There is tremendous interest in open source drone technology in the U.S. government, and interoperability is one of our top requirements--which means we need high-quality protocols that can reliably span different teams and communities in the ecosystem. Mavlink is extremely important to our efforts, so I applaud an effort to coordinate on its future development. Count me in for AUVSI as well.

[hamishwillee]

@amilcarlucas Would be great to have your involvement.

[amilcarlucas]

Yes, I would like to participate

[WickedShell]

I should be able to make either of the call times, and I will be at AUVSI as well.

[keenanjohnson]

I would also be very glad to join the conversation and I'll also be around during AUVSI.

[auturgy]

I won't be at AUVSI but am glad to see this effort.

[LorenzMeier]

Thanks all for the feedback! I think I left enough time to comment for anybody interested initially - any comments on the times I proposed? Are they sensible or do we need something like a Doodle poll?

[TSC21]

I think a Doodle would be a good option yes.

[mrpollo]

Please join us for our first call on Wednesday, April 25th 2018, more info here https://mavlink.io/en/contributing/contributing.html#support

Everyone is welcome!

[auturgy]

I think the first meeting needs an agreed agenda prior to scheduling: developing the framework and ground rules seems to me to be critical to success, and needs to be done early. Arbitrarily determining a time without determining where the key players are is not a good start.

[mrpollo]

Thanks for the feedback @auturgy, we are trying to find the "key players," if this time doesn't work for you or others, please tell us what does work, and we will work it out as a group. I agree on the agenda; I'll post back with a link to contribute.

Everyone, this meeting should be seen as a "first step," we aren't claiming this first meeting is going to solve every problem for everyone, it will take time, effort and coordination to get this project where we all want it to be, let us get there together.

[WickedShell]

I'm confused by what happened to the scheduling of this call? It was originally proposed as a biweekly call, (or every second Wednesday which would make it a monthly call) with alternating times to help other timezones. A weekly call seems like to be more frequent then is needed, but I'm mostly looking to clarify where the timing changed/target frequency.

[keenanjohnson]

Is there going to be a meeting at AUVSI?

[auturgy]

So it seems this meeting occurred without an agenda being sent out, or any real attempt to put this in the view of the largest mavlink users.
Can I ask that when this is rescheduled, the agenda be distributed prior, and notifications be sent not only to Slack, but gitter and discuss.ardupilot.org

[ashirsat]

@LorenzMeier It might be a good idea to use eventbot in slack for setting up a devcall meeting so that users can add it to their local calendar as well

[LorenzMeier]

There was some confusion on the call - I specifically wanted to set up a Doodle so that we can find times that are non-discriminative. Consequently the call Ramon proposed was not an official MAVLink dev call and specs / direction were not discussed.

Here is the proper poll for the first official call:
https://doodle.com/poll/qmmprzpnr6z2hib4

Goal is to start in two weeks and then keep a weekly schedule on two time slots.

[LorenzMeier]

In terms of AUVSI XPONENTIAL Meetup: Here is the Doodle Poll for this:

https://doodle.com/poll/2gmtxcipv2ghhkup

[markdjacobsen]

Any chance we can get this nailed down? Thanks!

[LorenzMeier]

https://doodle.com/poll/2gmtxcipv2ghhkup

[LorenzMeier]

Link above has final time.

[magicrub]

Time is Tuesday, May 1st from 2:00pm to 3:30pm.

[LorenzMeier]

Just to make sure there is no confusion on location: Lobby of the Hyatt near the conference center (straight ahead of the main entrance)

[mrpollo]

To everyone who attended, can we please get a summary of what was discussed and the outcome? Would love to hear how the first meeting went.

[amilcarlucas]

When will the the meeting take place ??

[magicrub]

Topics from the latest meeting:

• pymavlink fork needs to be solved, deferred to next meeting
• using common.xml as without a dialect. (opposite model of ArduPilot)
• Start thinking about MAVLink v3 to become the protocol to rule them all (long term goal)
• create a CI test that all autopilots and GCSs must test against to be compliant and to ensure they stay that way in the future.
• MAVLink project, independent of any autopilot, must dictate stricter usage rules (example: describe how to set home or mission sync).
• how to solve the old-msg-trash. Version. Deprecation policy.
• Extensions are broken because it allows adding extra ones and you don't know if they're populated or not (always zero). We need a better trash collection scheme.
• WIPs should not be allowed: Proposed solution is to move any new ones to special file that is not normally included such as WIP/Experimental/RFC.xml file
• get stakeholders to attend.

[magicrub]

I won't be able to attend ether meeting this week while I'm traveling. @amilcarlucas and @WickedShell are you able to attend?

[amilcarlucas]

Can someone please post the meeting times in UTC?
There is one in the evening and one in the morning right?

[mrpollo]

Call times in UTC

Call 1: 7:00am UTC
Call 2: 4:00pm UTC

You can see the calendar and subscribe to any meetings here http://dev.px4.io/en/contribute/#calendar

[mrpollo]

Just a heads up, the mavlink call is bi-weekly, we don't have a call scheduled this week (W25).

[hamishwillee]

MAVLink meetings are scheduled for today. I plan on attending the one at 5pm AEST for first half hour (got another meeting at 5.30).

• Who else is going?
• Does anyone have any specific issues for the agenda? What I would like to discuss is:
  • We had a few new issues/suggestions that did not get responses this week. Would be good to get some eyes on them - e.g. Separate repository for XML files #934
  • More discussion on things like versioning for which we had a flurry of activity but have not progressed.

[auturgy]

I’ll be on the 5pm AEST call Regards, James

…

On 27 Jun 2018, at 10:45 am, Hamish Willee ***@***.***> wrote: MAVLink meetings are scheduled for today. I plan on attending the one at 5pm AEST for first half hour (got another meeting at 5.30). Who else is going? Does anyone have any specific issues for the agenda? What I would like to discuss is: We had a few new issues/suggestions that did not get responses this week. Would be good to get some eyes on them - e.g. #934 More discussion on things like versioning for which we had a flurry of activity but have not progressed. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[WickedShell]

I should be at that one. I'd suggest that RFC9 could probably use some discussion. (Possibly worth discussing path towards improving some languages generators, but I can't say I have time to actually work on making the required changes at the moment)

[hamishwillee]

MAVLink meeting Australia. I had to duck out early, but we covered:

1. RFC9
   • not sure why system time can't be used. That may not always be correct, but will always be consistent for the vehicle in terms of linear time, across reboots.
   • need to understand whether this can be added as MAVLink2 (prefer not to add in MAVLink1)
2. Java Parser
   • Current implementation requires changes that will mandate breaking changes.
   • Suggestions of changes have been met with silence. Impossible to progress without community interaction.
   • not clear if right people are seeing the discussions
   • stakeholders not clear - who is using parser, who can approve changes, who can contribute to parser
   • General feeling seemed to be that making breaking changes needed, so we need to identify stakeholders who can contribute/agree, then work on timing, notifications etc.
   • ACTION: @thomasgubler To take to next meeting to see if we have any interested parties.
3. We need process for sharing discussions across the two MAVLink meetings and between weeks.
   • General support for having a clear agenda and a scratchpad.
   • Action @mrpollo to set up google doc(s) for these in the Dronecode google drive. Share edit link with team for the scratchpad. [Don't you love getting agenda items from meetings you don't attend]

[amilcarlucas]

Sorry could not attend. Will have to wait two more weeks :(

[mrpollo]

@hamishwillee I think google docs is too restrictive for sharing minutes, my proposal is to use the discourse forum

The 2nd MAVLink call had some problems, Slack and Zoom were down for a while this morning, Liam, Thomas and myself were on the call.

[auturgy]

I think google doc is better, and more bipartisan. People shouldn’t need a login to your user forum to participate. Regards, James

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On 28 Jun 2018, at 2:28 am, Ramon Roche ***@***.***> wrote: @hamishwillee I think google docs is too restrictive for sharing minutes, my proposal is to use the discourse forum 2nd MAVLink call had some problems, Slack and Zoom where down for a while this morning, Liam, Thomas and myself where on the call. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[mrpollo]

I have no problem with that @auturgy, but whoever is taking minutes on each call should create the doc and share access to the group, we still need to post those minutes somewhere for distribution and archiving.

[dagar]

I don't feel that strongly about meeting minutes, but generally google docs isn't great for visibility. Over time the links end up lost or hard to find. If you post the content somewhere like discuss it ends up indexed by google.

I don't really see the problem with Dronecode discuss (you can login via github), but if it's not acceptable then I wouldn't be opposed to just dumping the notes straight to a github issue.

[auturgy]

I’m more interested in an agenda than minutes: outcomes can be readily input to GitHub either through issues or rfc. Without an agenda it’s hard to get buy in. Regards, James

…

On 28 Jun 2018, at 6:28 am, Daniel Agar ***@***.***> wrote: I don't feel that strongly about meeting minutes, but generally google docs isn't great for visibility. Over time the links end up lost or hard to find. If you post the content somewhere like discuss it ends up indexed by google. I don't really see the problem with Dronecode discuss (you can login via github), but if it's not acceptable then I wouldn't be opposed to just dumping the notes straight to a github issue. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[thomasgubler]

I don't really see the problem with Dronecode discuss (you can login via github), but if it's not acceptable then I wouldn't be opposed to just dumping the notes straight to a github issue.

https://github.com/mavlink/mavlink/wiki ?

[auturgy]

The focal point must be a neutral place. The DroneCode forum is not that place. I wish it was, but it isn’t.

…

On 28 Jun 2018, at 6:30 pm, Thomas Gubler ***@***.***> wrote: I don't really see the problem with Dronecode discuss (you can login via github), but if it's not acceptable then I wouldn't be opposed to just dumping the notes straight to a github issue. https://github.com/mavlink/mavlink/wiki ? — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[mrpollo]

Whatever the maintainer team feels most comfortable with is fine with me, I don't have any preference, GitHub wiki works. To summarize the proposal is to use google docs and host the links on mavlink/mavlink wiki. Is anyone else in favor of this? (or against).

[hamishwillee]

Sounds good to me.

• mavlink wiki for the agenda, linked to google docs for sharing discussion between the two meetings
• Might be nice to have the minutes summarised after the agenda, but that would depend on someone being happy to do that work.

[mrpollo]

Proposal for discussion topics on next week calls:

• Maintainers, responsibilities and overall project governance.
• Meeting health, meeting minutes, attendance, agendas, and where to publish
• Cross-call synergy.

I would love to hear more proposals from the interested parties, we have 1 week to come up with a good agenda, please don't wait until the very last minute.

[hamishwillee]

Sounds like a good set. I've created that first Agenda post here, seeded with above ideas. People can add their ideas there if they prefer.

[hamishwillee]

Thanks for meeting yesterday. I've added agenda for next week in wiki: https://github.com/mavlink/mavlink/wiki/20180725-Weekly-Meeting

@thomasgubler in the Meeting 2 the notes were

• main issue: need maintainers with clear responsibilities
• idea: committee 7 people, self nominated

Did you guys take a shot at guessing what you think those responsibilities of the above might be? (maintainers/committee members)?

• what is mavlink: is it language definitions or also a reference implementation

Did you come to conclusions on this?
IMO it is:

• over the wire package format,
• sub-protocol definitions
• minimum set of messages to support sub protocol definitions
• And this is what makes "common.xml"
• documentation
• test suite that validates implementations

I'd argue that while the generators/reference implementation in theory need not strictly speaking be part of the protocol, in practice

• if you don't have a reference it is very hard to validate that the assumptions behind the protocol design work.
• The reference implementation currently is the documentation of some aspects of the design
• It is needed to improve adoption. I guarantee that some people wouldn't use MAVLink if they had to write their own generator etc.

What about pymavlink fork

Also, was the state of the pymavlink fork discussed?

[hamishwillee]

MAVLink Meeting today! https://github.com/mavlink/mavlink/wiki/20180725-Weekly-Meeting

I hope all with actions are ready to discuss them.

[amilcarlucas]

Am I correct to assume that the meeting will take place in 7 hours?

[hamishwillee]

@amilcarlucas The dronecode calendar is linked near the top of this doc, and it says about 7 hours from right now. YOu should check that again!

Please update the Agenda here with any issues you particularly want unblocked.

[hamishwillee]

@amilcarlucas

You are a legend.

I just noticed that mavlink/mavlink has now switched to using the ArduPilot/pymavlink fork. This should make our lives a lot easier - and would not have been possible if you had not invested so much of your time in getting the two pymavlink forks in sync.

Thank you!

[LorenzMeier]

I've deleted mavlink/pymavlink to avoid it creating confusion.

[LorenzMeier]

For further coordination: Use the MAVLink mailing list:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mavlink