Paparazzi Center

The Paparazzi Center is a graphical interface for configuring the drones and managing the various paparazzi tools.

The drop-down on the top right corner select which set of aircrafts will be used.

Current aircraft is choosen via the top left drop-down. The id on the left of the aircraft name is the uniq identifier of the aircraft among the set, between 0 and 255.

../_images/pprz_center_conf.svg

Configuration tab

The left side of this tab is dedicated to the configuration of the aircraft.

An aircraft is composed of an airframe, a flight plan, some settings, a radio and a telemetry configuration file. These concepts are explained later.

For now, remember that you can select other files, or edit the current file with the button.

Note

The Edit button open the file with gedit by default. You can change it via File->Edit Settings->Text Editor.

Once the aircraft is configured, the firmware can be build for a target.

Some usual targets are:

  • sim: This basic fixedwing simulator has no IMU simulation or any sensor models (noise, bias, etc) and is mainly intended to validate your flight plan logic.

  • nps: NPS is a more advanced rotorcraft and fixedwing simulator with sensor models and commonly uses JSBSim as FDM (Flight Dynamic Model).

  • ap: This is for a real autopilot.

If the selected target is not a simulator, you can choose how you want to upload the firmware to your autopilot, then flash it.

Compilation output is shown in the console below.

Operation tab

../_images/pprz_center_operation.png

Sessions are a collection of tools with their arguments. Sessions are saved in .*control_panel.xml files. The left side drop-down select which control panel you are using.

Once a session is launched, the tools are listed below. Each tool can be stopped/restarted, and removed from the list.

The buttons above the tools list apply to all tools.

Tools can be added to the current session with the Add tools button. Don’t forget to save the session if you want to keep this tool for next time!

The output of the tools is shown in the text area below.

Console panel

Now, lets launch a Flight Simulation!