Cockpit 1.0.0 release!

:tada: Big News from Blue Robotics! :rocket:

We’re ecstatic to announce the first stable release of Cockpit, our customizable ground control station!

cockpit-edit-gif

Unlike other control stations, Cockpit empowers you to create the perfect interface with its innovative widgets system. We don’t dictate the layout—you do, tailoring it to your exact needs!

You can choose from several options of HUDs, indicators, virtual horizons and others. You can even design multiple profiles, for different vehicles and missions! This flexibility will at some point make Cockpit the ideal choice for users of any vehicle type, and for those piloting ROVs, we are happy to say Cockpit is already fully-featured and have been rigorously tested by our team, who have been exclusively flying ROVs with it for the past 3 months.

But we’re not stopping at ROVs. Our next focus will be to better support the BlueBoat, so expect an increase of the amount of features added for rovers in the coming months, as we continue to refine and expand Cockpit’s capabilities. :sailboat:

One thing to note: Cockpit currently requires BlueOS on your vehicle, as it serves as the backend for telemetry and video. Cockpit is also available as an extension within BlueOS itself, making installation even easier directly from there.

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We already have a good amount of documentation available here. It’s still in development, but we’re working hard to make it perfect.

While we recommend using Cockpit on computers or laptops, as these are the platforms we test it in every day, we’ve received amazing reports from users controlling their ROVs with portable devices like Steam Decks! For that setup, we suggest using the Flatpak version of Cockpit.

Cockpit also supports any joystick controller :joystick: , with pre-installed calibrations for many popular models, including the Xbox Controller, DualShock 4, and DualSense.

Additionally, Cockpit fully supports recording videos directly on the top-side computer, including subtitle-based telemetry files. These recordings have fully customizable layouts, allowing you to choose which information to log and where it should be displayed. We have successfully tested it on FHD as well as
:movie_camera: 4K videos and invite you to also try it out!

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As always, all feedback is highly appreciated. We are making Cockpit for you, so your voice is important!

Ready to dive in? The binaries for installing on Linux, Mac, and Windows devices are available here.

It will be a pleasure to explore the oceans with you all.

Sea ya! :ocean:


Artwork “The First glimpse”: commissioned from Nina Pinhoo

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Really cool!! :star_struck: :raised_hands:

Quick question: would it be possible to create a custom layout and add a Python backend? I want to click a button and have it run my ROS2 code which moves the vehicle autonomously.

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We are adding support for generic HTTP requests as actions on Cockpit for this quarter, so you will be able to have an API on this python script and wait for those requests coming from Cockpit.

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Awesome! Looking forward to it!

@rafael.lehmkuhl Amazing work! You guys should all be very proud.

Is it possible to load missions created in other software (as shp or kml files, for example) into the mission planner?

Very exciting!

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Great work guys. Very excited to play with this.

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Hi @AndyM,

Not at the moment, 1.0.0 was released with the necessary functionality to pilot vehicles (with focus in ROVs). Advanced mission planning and loading / exporting missions or points will be something that we are going to work for now on, but it’ll probably take some time for a stable release to have it.

Totally understand @patrickelectric, and it’s already a great application.
Looking forward to the updates and in the meantime, many thanks!

Congratulations!!! :partying_face: :partying_face: :partying_face:

Can you tell me, how to get it?

Best regards

A query, I have installed this on both of my laptops - one windows, one Mac - and neither see the ROV through the installed cockpit app. What am I doing wrong?

Hey Marcus!
In this case you should open the main menu (left center on the screen), General, and set the correct IP.

IP for BlueOS 192.168.2.2?

You can either install it as a freestanding binary:

or as a BlueOS Extension, from the extensions manager :slight_smile:

Yep - either a static IP address (e.g. 192.168.2.2) or mDNS address (e.g. blueos.local) :slight_smile:

Thanks @EliotBR For some reason the default is set to: http://blueos-avahi.local

I am having more issues now as shown in the following video. These issues are:

  1. When starting up the program it wants to ‘switch user’ with no option to add or change user
  2. X-Box controller does not work even though it shows in the joystick configuration settings, yet the cockpit on BlueOS works immediately with the same controller

I get now connection to the ROV. 192.168.2.1. does not work. Where can I find the BueRov OS on the windows 10 computer?

Hi @dr_stony -
You can reach BlueOS at 192.168.2.2, or blueos.local, with your computer’s IP address configured to be 192.168.1.1 with subnet mask 255.255.255.0 .

I do not find a blueos.local on my computer and I get no connection to 192.168.2.2 or 192.168.1.1. I get no picture or other data. With QGround-Control everything is fine. How can I get the connection data from QGround-Control or the user folder? How does QGround-Control connect the ROV?

Is it correct to insert the IP in the fields pf general settings?