COMPONENT_INFORMATION: dynamic updates

[bkueng]

A new use-case for component information peripherals has come up: keeping track of attached smart batteries (name, serial number, etc.). This means we need to handle dynamic updates.
For that a new message is added that is broadcast at regular intervals (after an update), containing the minimal state (the CRC's) with which clients can detect updates and re-request the metadata.

[julianoes]

I think this makes sense.

[hamishwillee]

@auturgy Thoughts on this addition?

My first reaction was use an enum and broadcast for just the affected file. Was discussed in the dev call and this is not needed or desirable.

[hamishwillee]

As discussed in Dev call 20220216

• this seems a reasonable proposal for making component information dynamic.
• this might not be the best way of supplying this information though. The use case is smart batteries, so we could include the info in SMART_BATTERY_INFO.
• I am going to make this into Draft. @bkueng please either move back into active or close when you have made a decision on best approach.

@bkueng Just a thought, but is there any way that asset tracking like this could instead be done with COMPONENT_INFORMATION_BASIC? I guess you lose the association with the specific battery being attached but it feels like a more general approach.

[bkueng]

@bkueng Just a thought, but is there any way that asset tracking like this could instead be done with COMPONENT_INFORMATION_BASIC? I guess you lose the association with the specific battery being attached but it feels like a more general approach.

The challenge with that is that a single mavlink component needs to emit multiple sub-components and handle disconnects.

[hamishwillee]

Propose you close this, or use it for all the updates. As discussed in #1806 (comment) we're using a slightly different approach for dynamic updates.