20200610 Dev Meeting

Agenda

General:

• Update from relevant previous calls
• Tagged: issues, PR.

Notes

Call 1

• Gimbal manager discussion. How to resolve contention from different systems

  • General consensus was that intent is a good way of prioritising things first, rather than component.
  • Ideally should have rules that don't require customisation. If they must be tuned by system designer, then needs to be clear mechanisms to set those rules in an independent mavlink gimbal.
  • Even if you have intent (.e.g smart shot, user, mission) as priority, still possible to have multiple things with same intent, but it is much less likely and bigger problem than this API.
  • Julian has enough to progress this.

• Hamish Command: Clarify progress reporting

  • Propose: Cancel long operations. Use same command to cancel by preference. No concurrency. No restart - so must cancel to start operation again.
  • Note, affects common: add MAV_CMD_DO_UPGRADE command #1382
  • Lorenz - use another message to cancel, add message id to cancel.
  • AI Hamish to push through. IN PROGRESS: https://github.com/mavlink/mavlink/pull/1401

• Nicolas de Palezieux COMPONENT_INFORMATION: add actual_compid field #1394 - How to get component metadata for non-MAVLink components.

  • julian - General problem will come up again - e.g. integrated Gimbal/camera should emit messages from both component IDs, but mavlink sequence numbers behaviour doesn't support this.
  • Doing it via component information metadata will take a long time, and is likely too heavyweight for them to implement. [and doesn't solve the big picture problem]
  • Agree to accept PR for now. It's WIP. But we should keep metadata solution as an option going forward. HW added comment https://github.com/mavlink/mavlink/pull/1394

• Julian - Using Component Information to query autopilot support

  • Don going to create PR.
  • Agree command/mission metadata can be same BUT split the definitions.
  • Json definitions to be in mavlink tree.

• Xtrack - propose remove the specific yaw/System yaw so only have centre>centre and tangent > centre. Other options make no sense for FW: (discussion here: MAV_CMD_NAV_LOITER_TIME: add Heading Required field)

  • JamesP suggests Xtrack angle from loiter radius to track between centres. NaN means "system do whatever it wants".
  • AI Hamish to document.

• Joe/Lorenz - MAVLink and NAT.

  • Basic discussion doc created (not ready for wider sharing). Looks like it can be iterated. Joe/Lorenz continuing to discuss and Joe working on implementation.
  • Addresses bigger space than Joe needs.

• Common Flight Modes

  • Needs a real implementation and message definitions to progress.
  • This is important for compatibility, but we need to discuss priority (main drivers that kicked this off no longer exist).
  • Parked while we discuss/until someone picks it up.

• Not discussed:

  • Deprecate all non MISSION_*_INT usage #1389 - FYI will be progressing this.
  • FOR NEXT Week - check out Ardupilot Alerts

Attendees: HamishW, JulianO, Lorenz, JamesP, Jonas, BazookaJoe,