AR.Pro 2.1 -<>- Full V1 & V2 Drone Support

[ShellDude]

Working on 2.0.22 -- had hoped to have it out yesterday ... looking more like Saturday or Sunday at this point.

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  ! Happy Holidays from Shellware
  	* This update is available for all Gingerbread and above devices
  	* More HUD optimizations
  	* GPS max altitude cannot exceed drone max altitude
  	* Created Land Maneuver
  	* Created Takeoff Maneuver
  	* Added Maneuver to waypoint options
  	* Show waypoints actionbar item even if not flying
  	* Take off if not flying when waypoint or destination is activated

[ShellDude]

Testing went really well with 2.0.22 today. Will be pushing the publish button tonight.


Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/v/bYtNEoG3VME

[TheBigE]

Hi Shell, your videos would improve 100% if you had some audio with them explaining what you are accomplishing. Keep up the good work Shell.

[ShellDude]

I roll like my drone... Silently

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[ShellDude]

2.1.1 teaser (with creative commons music)


Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/v/ePiD6GnyjDY

[ShellDude]

Been working on 2.1.2 … lotsa little enhancements in this release… still a couple days out.

device-2014-01-03-002432.png

Change Log (thus far):

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  % Version 2.1.2
  	* This update is available for all Gingerbread and above devices
  	* Added preferences for Action Bar Collapse behavior
  	* Added preference for overriding local storage directory
  	* Added Record button to sliding options tab
  	* Added Calibrate Magneto button to sliding options tab
  	* Ensure Action Bar is visible if any new message is pending
  	* Slowed down main control loop rate to keep V1 drones from crashing
  	* Combined Yaw button now consumes touch event
  	* Auto Record regardless of USB or android storage

[quadricopter]

Shell, I have recently downloaded a version of AR PRO, with the intention of using it with my PS3 / Nexus 7 setup.
I realize you have been routinely updating the firmware to improve the overall flight characteristics of AR Pro, but I was wondering if you may do a tutorial explaining how the PS3 controls may be mapped to the AR PRO software.
I haven't read each and every post since the introduction of the software, but remember reading that patching and such was not necessarily required with the introduction of the more recent Parrot firmware applications. Having that be the case, would it be possible for you to update the Infrastructure Wi-Fi enable your AR.Drone with AR.Pro for Android video you made back in Feb. 2011 to possibly an updated version which may have eliminated some of the steps, but more importantly specifically show how you have gone about the mapping process of the PS3 game controller to your AR. PRO software. It certainly would be greatly appreciated, and may very well help others like myself who are not as familiar with the various mapping options you have incorporated into the software itself.
Then again, maybe I simply missed something in the translation of your Youtube video. :- )
Happy New Year, may it be prosperous to one and all!

Best Regards,

[pki79]

Hi.

I started to use this great app.

I have two tabletts, SGT2 7" and SGN 8". The drone is equipped with a sirf III gps via CP2102 chip.

The shown position and autonomous flight functions with the freeflight app are very stable and good. With your app the position of the drone is very unstable, it jumps over 50m from second to second. Sometimes there are even dropouts of the fix.

On the SGT the funcion to swipe the screen between map and cam does not work. The swipe works, the overlays get changed but the view remains the same (map or cam). I can switch to map by going to the settings and back. After this i have not managed to get back to the cam view.

On the SGN (note) in the settings menu the button which should open the googlemap to save the offline map the button is greyed out, can not be pressed. I can launch the google maps app myself from the android menu and save the offline maps.

On both tablets there are times the right screen joystick (altitude and rotation) is not working. The joy is working on the screen but the drone is not responding.

On the SGT the flight time display shows the last digit in a new row :-/

How to about a misson?

Pressing the landing button would make the drone land and start over again.

[ShellDude]

Shell, I have recently downloaded a version of AR PRO, with the intention of using it with my PS3 / Nexus 7 setup.
I realize you have been routinely updating the firmware to improve the overall flight characteristics of AR Pro, but I was wondering if you may do a tutorial explaining how the PS3 controls may be mapped to the AR PRO software.
I haven't read each and every post since the introduction of the software, but remember reading that patching and such was not necessarily required with the introduction of the more recent Parrot firmware applications. Having that be the case, would it be possible for you to update the Infrastructure Wi-Fi enable your AR.Drone with AR.Pro for Android video you made back in Feb. 2011 to possibly an updated version which may have eliminated some of the steps, but more importantly specifically show how you have gone about the mapping process of the PS3 game controller to your AR. PRO software. It certainly would be greatly appreciated, and may very well help others like myself who are not as familiar with the various mapping options you have incorporated into the software itself.
Then again, maybe I simply missed something in the translation of your Youtube video. :- )
Happy New Year, may it be prosperous to one and all!

Best Regards,

I can put something together around modifying the key maps, no problem.

Regarding the old infrastructure patch… I really should remove that video (and related posts on my website) as they are no longer necessary (assuming you're using the 1.7.4 or greater drone firmware). To connect your drone as an infrastructure client using current firmware it is simply a matter of connecting to the drone in its default state, going into Network Preferences, changing the SSID to the SSID you want your drone to connect to (must broadcast its SSID and be unsecured), setting the Drone Wi-Fi Mode to Infrastructure Client, and rebooting the drone. When it boots back up it will automatically connect to the specified SSID. If you run into problems you must hard reset your drone using the pin hole reset button in the battery tray.

Should note that you may also have to change your drone's IP address (Network Prefs IP address setting) while connected prior to rebooting too. The drone only does static IP and must have an address that is on the same subnet as your access point's DHCP server subnet -- but not in the range/scope to prevent collisions.

[ShellDude]

I'm going to break this one up as it touches on quite a few areas …. some of which I'm unable to currently reproduce.

I have two tabletts, SGT2 7" and SGN 8". The drone is equipped with a sirf III gps via CP2102 chip.

Just to verify … SGT2 is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 and the SGN is the original Note? Unfortunately I do not have either, but I do test with an original Galaxy Tab 10". Please let me know more about your SGT2 and SGN. What version of Android are you running on them? Is it a custom ROM? Any other "special" software running such as task killers / etc?

The shown position and autonomous flight functions with the freeflight app are very stable and good. With your app the position of the drone is very unstable, it jumps over 50m from second to second.

50m from second to second? Doing some basic metric to english translation that means that the drone is travelling over 100 mph! AR.Pro does not use the drone's onboard guidance logic. It uses basic geometry logic I built that runs on your Android. When calculating bearing I use an "initial bearing" calculation and revisit every 10 or so milliseconds… this gives the impression of the drone traveling on an arc when going decent distances. If the "jump" you're referring to is altitude related then this is likely a result of AR.Pro reacting to the altitude values being provided by the drone's ultrasound/barometric sensor.

I have considered using the GPS altitude instead but haven't gotten around to it yet. Thanks for the reminder!

Sometimes there are even dropouts of the fix.

By dropouts on the fix are you referring to the GPS fix? FYI -- AR.Pro relies on the fix data provided by the drone. If your num sats/hdop values drop to zero that is because the drone told AR.Pro. My software is merely reporting on what it is told by the drone / gps. Perhaps Freeflight reports at a slower rate which would reduce the likelihood of you seeing a brief drop.

On the SGT the funcion to swipe the screen between map and cam does not work. The swipe works, the overlays get changed but the view remains the same (map or cam). I can switch to map by going to the settings and back. After this i have not managed to get back to the cam view.

I am able to recreate this on my old Lenovo A2107AH (ICS) and my even older Dell Streak 7 (HC 3.2) and will see about getting it addressed. I believe this is a compatibility issue with Gingerbread, ICS and Honeycomb devices. I don't think it is hardware related as it works fine on my old Xoom (wingray) running Kitkat.

On the SGN (note) in the settings menu the button which should open the googlemap to save the offline map the button is greyed out, can not be pressed. I can launch the google maps app myself from the android menu and save the offline maps.

"Setup Offline Map" is only available when you are NOT connected to your drone. I did this because 99% of the time if you are connected to your drone you are connected to its private network with no access to the internet -- it is kind of hard to cache a map if you can't get to it. Setup an offline map only when connected to a publicly routable network and not already connected to your drone.

On both tablets there are times the right screen joystick (altitude and rotation) is not working. The joy is working on the screen but the drone is not responding.

I have received this feedback a couple times in the past. It appears to only happen to some Samsung Galaxy based devices. Basically, I rely on the sensor data loop to drive updating control values. For some reason it appears that from time to time the onSensorChanged() event does not consistently fire for these devices. I have some ideas on how to address it and will prioritize it.

On the SGT the flight time display shows the last digit in a new row :-/

This is a result of me skinning the backgrounds in v2.1.2. I thought I had covered all densities (I spent a good two hours bouncing from device to device, emulator to emulator, ensuring I got the view bounds correct but it sounds like I may be a couple pixels off on your SGT. Would it be possible for you to send a screenshot to shell@shellware.com? I'll get this fixed just as soon as I know how many pixels (likely just a couple) I need to shift things.

How to about a misson?

Would be a separate app. There is already multiplayer (dogfight) code inside of AR.Pro but I have it disabled because of Bluetooth / Wi-Fi interoperability issues.

Pressing the landing button would make the drone land and start over again.

Do you know you can long press the Waypoint selector in the top action bar to change the active waypoint? It will cycle through each of them.

Hope this helps, and thanks again for all the great feedback!
Shell

[quadricopter]

[Regarding the old infrastructure patch… I really should remove that video (and related posts on my website) as they are no longer necessary (assuming you're using the 1.7.4 or greater drone firmware). To connect your drone as an infrastructure client using current firmware it is simply a matter of connecting to the drone in its default state, going into Network Preferences, changing the SSID to the SSID you want your drone to connect to (must broadcast its SSID and be unsecured), setting the Drone Wi-Fi Mode to Infrastructure Client, and rebooting the drone. When it boots back up it will automatically connect to the specified SSID. If you run into problems you must hard reset your drone using the pin hole reset button in the battery tray.

Should note that you may also have to change your drone's IP address (Network Prefs IP address setting) while connected prior to rebooting too. The drone only does static IP and must have an address that is on the same subnet as your access point's DHCP server subnet -- but not in the range/scope to prevent collisions.]



Thank you, Shell. I look forward to your video tutorial, as I must honestly admit I'm not completely onboard with the technical jargon commonly used to explain the issue at hand, and means of enabling the Wi-Fi process upon startup, along with specific steps necessary to configuring the App to its full potential, and ultimately use the PS3 to control the AR Drone. Hence, my request for a video tutorial outlining the required steps to accomplish the task. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, as I find it works especially well for me.

I would however like to mention as POI, I'm presently using a rooted Nexus 7 tablet running the latest Android software, and use the SixAxis software to pair the PS3 to the tablet.
While I have found success mapping the PS3 controller to AR Freeflight 2.4.10, following an online video tutorial, I would much rather take the opportunity to do so using your AR.PRO, for obvious reasons.

Thanks again, for your quick response, Shell. I will patiently await your instructional video which I'm sure will be most helpful and possibly prompt others to purchase this fine software you have made available. : )

Regards,

[ShellDude]

I'll see about putting something together tonight.

On that note, I am about to push 2.1.2.2 out to Google Play. I have reworked control inputs in this version which should resolve the latent sensor issue mentioned previously.

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  % Version 2.1.2.2
  _ 2013-01-04
  ! Bugfix Release
  	* This update is available for all Gingerbread and above devices
  	* Refactored onSensorChanged() listener logic

pki79, this should resolve the below issue you reported:

On both tablets there are times the right screen joystick (altitude and rotation) is not working. The joy is working on the screen but the drone is not responding.

Please send me that screenshot of the flight counter and I'll get it fixed too.

[ShellDude]

2.1.2.4 was just released…. fixing the map/flight view overlay issues on pre JB devices.

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  % Version 2.1.2.4
  _ 2013-01-05
  ! Performance Mode Map View
  	* Addressed Map View overlaying Flight View issue common among pre-Jellybean devices
  	* Added a Performance Mode checkbox in preferences for those that do not have problems with the map view slider
  % Version 2.1.2.3
  _ 2013-01-05
  ! Internal Release
  	* Refactored SlidingDrawer and GoogleMap rendering logic

[ShellDude]

Got my V2 drone going again finally, today. Had a broken leg for the past week or two and had been relying on a V1 for testing. I noticed my new collapsing action bar exposes a funky banded section in the action bar's place…. will have to work on that one…. weird thing is it works just fine with the V1…. go figure.

[ShellDude]

Pushing 2.1.2.6 tonight

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  % Version 2.1.2.6
  _ 2013-01-08
  ! Newer New Icon 
  	* Resize OpenGL surface (video) matrix on onSurfaceChanged
  	* Added preference for disabling ephemeris download/upload
  	* Added Master Rate Control (10% to 150%) preference
  	* Fixed record animation
  	* Show Options tab in Dual stick mode
  	* Zero out Options tab opacity in General Prefs to hide it
  	* TODO: base bearing to origin off of lon/lat when FR connected
  	* TODO: base altitude off of FR when connected
    * TODO: Fix auto USB download when GPS connected
	* TODO: Install Italian localization (due this week) 
	* TODO: Custom Maneuvers