Thanks for the clarification. I am now testing the combination of BlueOS (Raspberry pi 4B)+picamera+ pixhawk FC (ardusub 4.1.2) on my mac (cockpit APP).
I got both telemetry and video following your guide.
The thing is, the video stream is not as smooth as the old companion/QGC combination.
Whenever I move the camera a bit, the video screen freezes and may need seconds to reload the video. Any reason on this or any solution to make the video stream smoother?
Now I’m connecting the Pi 4B directly to Mac on ethernet and the pixhawk FC on the Pi 4B via USB.
Hi Patrick, just tried cockpit APP on my RPi 4B (Ubuntu 22.04LTS), after all the initial setup, cockpit is working well with vehicle connected and video streaming.
Yet as I mentioned above (on Mac), the video stream is not smooth either.
Everytime I move the camera, the video looks like it got stuck and can only come back to a normal screen with new frames after seconds.
Have you ever encounted the same issue in video streaming? Would it work if I change my camera or it is the configuration somewhere? thanks
I think the Cockpit is a great software for the BlueROV design, and gives it a lot more potential and more custom possibility for ROVs than QGC, which were design more for UAS systems.
I’m installing the Cockpit on my ROV and soon on another one for testing.
There are two things that I would like to see as extra or fixed feature.
Upper and lower bar bigger. It depends on the computer screen. When you have a small screen like 13" it can be difficult to see the data. Especially when you are out at the ocean, a lot of things going on, bright sun etc.
Dive log. It’s really cool that you can name the mission and video record. But to have dive log, like bottom time, maximum depth, temperature etc. and total dive time would be an awesome feature and similar to professional ROV´s.
Looking forward to getting to know Cockpit software better, and congratulation to all who are using this awesome technology.
Here’s an overview video of how to use Cockpit! Shoutout to the Blue Robotics team (@tony-white) for working closely with me and showing me the ropes of the newest ground control station on the market!
Hi @harshmattoo9909 -
Cockpit only supports USB gamepads/joysticks, not an RC transmitter secondary option (via SBUS) like QGroundControl. I don’t believe support for this is planned, as in general we’ve not found much utility in using an RC transmitter! With a cellular connection, range of an RC transmitter is dramatically exceeded…
Hi @harshmattoo9909 -
On reviewing your question, I realized you may be referring to the RC mode 1 / 2 / 3 that is available for selection in QGround Control?
While it isn’t possible to simply select one of these modes, you can configure the joystick axis to control the vehicle however you’d like! The default is mode 3, but changing the axis mapping to control the vehicle as you’d prefer is easy to configure - just click the drop-down next to each axis in the table view within Cockpit.
We actually released some mission planning functionalities already. We consider them to be still in a Beta phase, but we were able to try them consistently.
You can find this part on Menu>Mission Planning.
The whole experience of creating the mission (in the mission planning view) and them going to the Map widget to execute it is still way less than ideal, and there are visual bugs to be fixed, but if you can try and give us some feedback already it will help a lot!
One feedback off the bat I can give is that I would love to have control over LAT and LONG co-ordinates like mission planner offers. I would love to have the utility of importing mission plans from QGC and Mission Planner into Cockpit. I’ll bring some more as I keep testing it with the BlueBoat.
Hi @harshmattoo9909
As noted in the original post, Cockpit is initially intended for use with ArduSub and the BlueROV2 - while full support for the BlueBoat is planned in the future! Mission planning will definitely be a huge upgrade!
Right-click on the desktop and select Display settings.
Scroll down and click on Graphics settings.
In the Graphics performance preference section, you can choose apps to customize. This allows you to set which GPU (High Performance or Integrated) is used for specific applications, like Chrome.
Click on Browse if the app is not listed, then select the executable file of the program.
Once the app is listed, you can click on Options to open the menu shown in the screenshot. From there, you can change the GPU preference and toggle Optimizations for windowed games.
Remember, only the Chrome browser is supported when using the extension - if you don’t want to use Chrome, use the standalone version!
I can’t get the stand alone version to work properly. The video lags. The best result so far is on a mac in the browser. Haven’t had any success with making the PC prioritize the software either in the graphics or cpu.
Is there a way to make the x-box controller to keep control in Cockpit while having another window active? It is not acceptable that I can’t tweak the sonar software without loosing control.
About the video, could you activate the “stats for nerds” in the widget configuration? It will help you understand what exactly is happening.
About application performance itself, I would take a look at Tony’s comment that highlights how to make sure GPU is prioritized.
About the joystick, if you want to have Cockpit in one tab and the sonar software on another tab, just make sure they are in different Chrome windows. You can alt-tab between the windows without problems, as long as you don’t minimize the window where Cockpit is or change to another tab inside this same window.
