Tutorials¶
Note
In this tutorial you will learn how to work with Dronemap Planner with Gapter drone and SITL Simulaor
For any query, please feel free to post your questions in the Gaitech EDU Forum
Start Dronemap Planner¶
The first thing, you need to start Dronemap Planner on your local machine or your cloud server as explained in the tutorial Setup and Configuration. Using command line, go to the folder where Dronemap Planner jar file is located, and execute the following command
java -jar dronemap-planner.jar dronemap-config.xml
then, you should be able to see all the Dronemap Planner services started as illustrated in the following figure (output might be slightly different based on version):
Note
Take note of the IP address of your server machine where Dronemap Planner is executed as you will need it later for creating a MAVLink output stream from the drone the cloud.
Using SITL Simulator¶
The SITL (software in the loop) simulator allows you to emulate Ardupilot drones without the need for a hardware. As Gapter uses the Pixhawk autopilot powered by Ardupilot, you can use STIL to emulate Gapter drone and work with Dronemap Planner.
Warning
First, of all make sure that you have SITL installed on your computer. SITL can be installed on Linux or Windows.
Note
In this tutorial assumes that you are familiar with SITL simulator. If you are not, you need to see the tutorials available on the SITL page in particular, it is recommended that you perform Copter SITL/MAVProxy Tutorial
For a quick introduction about SITL, you can watch our tutorial videos on MAVLink Tutorials
Execute SITL simulator. If you are using Gaitech Virtual Machine, you can try this command:
cd ~/ardupilot/ArduCopter
sim_vehicle.sh --console --map --aircraft test
You should see an output similar to the following:
The next step is to add a MAVLink output stream from the drone to the cloud server. For this, you need to know the IP address of your server machine.
Let us assume that it is 192.168.1.10. Remember that in the dronemap-config.xml configuration file of the tutorial Setup and Configuration, the port number of the UDP server of the MAVLink protocol was set to the default value 14550. So, we will use this port to send the MAVLink stream from the drone to the server.
In the terminal command of SITL simulator, write the following instruction to add a new output stream:
output add 192.168.1.10:14550
Warning
Replace the IP address with the correct one of your cloud server where Dronemap Planner is running.
You should see an output similar to the following:
At this stage, the drone should be streaming its status using the MAVLink protocol to the cloud server and you are now able to control and monitor it using the Dronemap Planner Web interface