Streaming of data from uThere "Ground Control" UAS software to Tesseract Sensors monitoring system.
9/3/2013
Developer + support contact: jim@uthere.com 1-800 545 4114
Data about plane location and camera pan / tilt / targeting can be transmitted over the internet from uThere Ground Control ("GC") to Tesseract Sensors systems.
Data is sent in very simple XML text format using UDP packets.
<xml>
</xml><UAV>
<Time>2013-08-26 17:09:11.7667Z</Time>
<UAVID>65383</UAVID>
<Latitude>32.88472496</Latitude>
<Longitude>-117.10146653</Longitude>
<Altitude>168.6</Altitude>
<Heading>3.4</Heading>
<Pitch>-67.6</Pitch>
<Roll>81.9</Roll>
<CameraHeading>296.1</CameraHeading>
<CameraPitch>-9.6</CameraPitch>
<CameraZoom>1.00</CameraZoom>
<TargetLatitude>32.88492889</TargetLatitude>
<TargetLongitude>-117.10251750</TargetLongitude>
</UAV>
"NaN" will appear in place of values where they are invalid / unknown.
Angles and Lat/Lon in degrees.
Altitude in meters.
PTZ "heading" is camera direction relative to earth, degrees true.
PTZ Latitude/Longitude is the location that the camera is pointed at.
It will be easy to add additional parameters, to switch to a more efficient binary format if needed, and to handle two-way communication between Tesseract systems and GC.
Download and install the latest uThere Ground Control software if you haven't already. [download]
Open the following file in a text editor:
C:\Users\<your user name>\Documents\Uthere\Ground Control\Configuration\Master\tesseractSensors.xml
Setting the value of "remote_ground_send_to_address" to desired IP address and port.
Set "remote_ground_send_interval" to desired interval between packets.
Save the file.
Run Ground Control
File: Configuration: Select.... "tesseractSensors.xml"
Open up any uThere flight data file (".utd"). (File: Open, or just drag the file on top of the splash screen).
GC will begin sending UDP packets as soon as the file is opened. The data sent will correspond to that at the "time cursor" in the strip chart window. The same values will be repeated until you press "Play" at bottom right of screen to playback the data, enter a different time at the bottom right, or click somewhere on the strip chart display to move the time cursor. (The quick tour of GC might be helpful.)
Here is a good example data file, which was recorded during a flight test of "Point of Interest" automatic camera tracking. In this data, Ruby kept a pan/tilt mounted camera centered on the home location as it loitered for most of the flight. http://uthere.com/client/tesseract/pan_tilt_POI_flight_test_data.utd
When the "tesseractSensors.xml" configuration is loaded in Ground Control, it will automatically attempt to transmit UDP packets to configured IP address and port whenever connected to a plane via the transceiver.
Edit tesseractSensors.xml, or File: Configuration: Select: "default.xml" configuration instead.
Create the following directory path if it doesn't already exist:
C:\Users\<your user name>\Documents\Uthere\Ground Control\Logs
A text file will be generated in that directory every time GC is started. It will include debug output from the UDP packet sender.