QGC / MP integration

[buzz]

Can anyone give me a brief or pointers on where the MP / QGC pricess is upto?   Is there a todo list  anywhere?

I've obviously seen there's a WIP branch here: https://github.com/diydrones/qgroundcontrol/commits/mp_merge   but it's not clear to me where it's up to, what the major desired milestones are,   any known TODOs, blockers,  or even what the overall end-game is wanting to look like ( eg, is the goal to get a QT based version of an app that looks and works like Mission Planner, or is the goal to just drag all the desirable features from MP into QGC, and leave it looking and behaving pretty-much as-is.? )

thanks,
Buzz.

[Meier Lorenz]

Hi Buzz,

There are currently two parallel threads, one driven jointly by me and Malcolmxxx and one by him exlusively.

Note that QGC by now has more or less feature parity with MP, just the usability lacks substantially behind.

The first thread is to hide most of the advanced features unless explicitely activated, so that QGC becomes more user friendly. That may involve adopting UI concepts that MP has, but its a general sweep, and we're looking at many more good examples and best practices. The end result won't look like MP, but it will be as easy or even easier to use.

The second thread is to optimize parts of QGC for APM. QGC has s parametric, procedural UI generstion capability which substantiall facilitates that process. In less technical terms: It will get you the usual parameter setup views MP and other GCS have.

What we haven't started yet, but what is also on the list is to polish the UI to make it look cleaner but also visually more attractive.

Any comments on this? If not, do you have feature requests?

I should have an updated build from master soon, which shows some of the progress.

-Lorenz



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[buzz]

thanks for the update, that info is helpful, my comments are in-line....

On 24 April 2013 16:44, Meier Lorenz <l...@inf.ethz.ch> wrote:

Hi Buzz,

There are currently two parallel threads, one driven jointly by me and Malcolmxxx and one by him exlusively.

are they in different branches, or something...? 
 

Note that QGC by now has more or less feature parity with MP, just the usability lacks substantially behind.

usability is a feature, so if it's substantially behind, then it's not feature-parity now, is it. <humor attempt>  :-)     
 

The first thread is to hide most of the advanced features unless explicitely activated, so that QGC becomes more user friendly. That may involve adopting UI concepts that MP has, but its a general sweep, and we're looking at many more good examples and best practices. The end result won't look like MP, but it will be as easy or even easier to use.

The second thread is to optimize parts of QGC for APM. QGC has s parametric, procedural UI generstion capability which substantiall facilitates that process. In less technical terms: It will get you the usual parameter setup views MP and other GCS have.

What we haven't started yet, but what is also on the list is to polish the UI to make it look cleaner but also visually more attractive.

Any comments on this? If not, do you have feature requests?

In general, my experiences with using QGC can be summarized with sentiments like "how do I do X", "that's a weird place for Y to be", "why did they put X under heading Y",  "all I want to do is Z", "why are their buttons scattered all over the place", "I'm sure there's a workflow for using this app, but I have no idea what it is".    

So, If I try to collect all my experiences into one or two UI design concerns, I'd probably say these two things need most love:

1 - There is no obvious heirarchy in the UI.      Yes, there are Tabs, and Menus, and Widgets, but no obvious "start here", "go to X next".  MP suffers from this a bit too ( no self-describing workflow for new users) , but at least it's got small set of really obvious task-oriented buttons that most users can understand easily.   

2 - too much terminology and distraction.  These words mean nothing useful to most average users ( like me) :  Operator,Engineer,Replay,Perspective, Widget, Log Player, Cache, Trails, Simulation,  Messages, Inspector,  Actuator Status,  Horizontal Situation,   Parameters, Plugins,  Console.  Remove all these things ( or hide them behind an Advanced tab or something), and put all the remaining visible clickable buttons together on the screen ( across the top?)  and that would simplify it a lot.   :-)

I'm not trying to sound like I'm complaining, I'm trying to point out the deficiencies I see, so please just consider this one persons [hopefully educated] opinion.

Buzz.

[Meier Lorenz]

Hi Buzz,

Thanks for the feedback. That pretty much matches my triage results.

-Lorenz

On Apr 24, 2013, at 9:27 AM, buzz <davi...@gmail.com<mailto:davi...@gmail.com>> wrote:

thanks for the update, that info is helpful, my comments are in-line....

On 24 April 2013 16:44, Meier Lorenz <l...@inf.ethz.ch<mailto:l...@inf.ethz.ch>> wrote:
Hi Buzz,

There are currently two parallel threads, one driven jointly by me and Malcolmxxx and one by him exlusively.
are they in different branches, or something...?


Note that QGC by now has more or less feature parity with MP, just the usability lacks substantially behind.
usability is a feature, so if it's substantially behind, then it's not feature-parity now, is it. <humor attempt> :-)


The first thread is to hide most of the advanced features unless explicitely activated, so that QGC becomes more user friendly. That may involve adopting UI concepts that MP has, but its a general sweep, and we're looking at many more good examples and best practices. The end result won't look like MP, but it will be as easy or even easier to use.

The second thread is to optimize parts of QGC for APM. QGC has s parametric, procedural UI generstion capability which substantiall facilitates that process. In less technical terms: It will get you the usual parameter setup views MP and other GCS have.

What we haven't started yet, but what is also on the list is to polish the UI to make it look cleaner but also visually more attractive.

Any comments on this? If not, do you have feature requests?

In general, my experiences with using QGC can be summarized with sentiments like "how do I do X", "that's a weird place for Y to be", "why did they put X under heading Y", "all I want to do is Z", "why are their buttons scattered all over the place", "I'm sure there's a workflow for using this app, but I have no idea what it is".

So, If I try to collect all my experiences into one or two UI design concerns, I'd probably say these two things need most love:

1 - There is no obvious heirarchy in the UI. Yes, there are Tabs, and Menus, and Widgets, but no obvious "start here", "go to X next". MP suffers from this a bit too ( no self-describing workflow for new users) , but at least it's got small set of really obvious task-oriented buttons that most users can understand easily.

2 - too much terminology and distraction. These words mean nothing useful to most average users ( like me) : Operator,Engineer,Replay,Perspective, Widget, Log Player, Cache, Trails, Simulation, Messages, Inspector, Actuator Status, Horizontal Situation, Parameters, Plugins, Console. Remove all these things ( or hide them behind an Advanced tab or something), and put all the remaining visible clickable buttons together on the screen ( across the top?) and that would simplify it a lot. :-)


I'm not trying to sound like I'm complaining, I'm trying to point out the deficiencies I see, so please just consider this one persons [hopefully educated] opinion.

Buzz.


I should have an updated build from master soon, which shows some of the progress.

-Lorenz



-------- Ursprüngliche Nachricht --------

Von: buzz <davi...@gmail.com<mailto:davi...@gmail.com>>
Datum:
An: drones-...@googlegroups.com<mailto:drones-...@googlegroups.com>

Betreff: [drones-discuss] QGC / MP integration


Can anyone give me a brief or pointers on where the MP / QGC pricess is upto? Is there a todo list anywhere?

I've obviously seen there's a WIP branch here: https://github.com/diydrones/qgroundcontrol/commits/mp_merge but it's not clear to me where it's up to, what the major desired milestones are, any known TODOs, blockers, or even what the overall end-game is wanting to look like ( eg, is the goal to get a QT based version of an app that looks and works like Mission Planner, or is the goal to just drag all the desirable features from MP into QGC, and leave it looking and behaving pretty-much as-is.? )

thanks,
Buzz.

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[Stefan Gofferje]

Lorenz,

if I may comment and give some feedback too...

On 04/24/2013 09:44 AM, Meier Lorenz wrote:
> Note that QGC by now has more or less feature parity with MP, just the usability lacks substantially behind.

I tend to disagree with that - the usability part. In my opinion there
are a few glitches in the UI but the general usability for me as a
tech-guy is substantially higher than that of MP.

For me that begins with the platform. QGC is cross-platform while MP
runs only on Windows. One of the recent updates broke compatibility with
Windows XP which is a major drawback for those Linux users which might
have an old XP-CD flying around somewhere which can run in a VM.

I find the MP UI partially laggy and I frequently encounter glitches in
the UI, like items being invisible until I change screens back and forth
a few times. Then, of course, comes my personal distaste for Microsoft
in general and their proprietary .NET library stuff.

All in all, I use MP because I have to because QGC is yet lacking
APM-specific features like firmware-management, hardware configuration
and so on. For day-to-day operations, I prefer QGC and it's debug
features have helped me significantly with my Arduino GCS project.

-Stefan

[Michael Carpenter]

Everything I'm doing is here: https://github.com/diydrones/qgroundcontrol in the branch mp_merge. I just submitted a pull request, so it hopefully will get pulled into master soon.

Most of what I've been doing so far has been configuration changes. I just submitted a pull request to get the new configuration setup into QGC master. At that point, you should be able to use QGC for initial hardware configuration, with hopefully a similar experience to what MP gives. There is still some work to be done making it a bit more friendly, but the core framework is now there that will allow for its use.

The goal is to have a Qt based replacement for MP to allow for cross-platform usage. Both MP and QGC have some good ideas in terms of the UI, but the end goal is to have an easy to use GCS. QGC has a really solid set of core features, and is very extensible in terms of what can be done with the GUI, so my work is to make it significantly easier to use, and add in features missing that MP has. The more usability feedback I see, the better it will get.

My intention is going to be to work parallel of the master branch on a specific feature or improvement, then once it is complete enough submit a pull request to the main branch. Watching when mp_merge pull requests get submitted is a good way to keep track of when it's a good idea to check out some of the new functionality. I can't promise mp_merge will at any point (except the moment I do a pull request) be stable enough for testing, other than if you're just curious of the current state of things. I would not recommend fly a mav with mp_merge. Either talk to me first, or wait for it to be merged into master.

 - Michael Carpenter

[Craig Elder]

I would like to re-iterate what our goals and intentions are here:

Merging Mission Planner with Q Ground Control is an initiative sponsored by 3D Robotics and lead by Michael Oborne.

The idea to make the next generation of a Ground Control Station with the ease of use of Mission Planner and the analysis tools of QGround Control readily available across as many operating systems as possible.  The whole idea is to make the user experience as easy and as natural as possible.  We want to add advanced features for planning and conducting surveys that are not currently available on either platform. 

The obvious choice is to incorporate the features of Mission Planner into QGC while retaining the current features of QGC including the Operator and Engineering views.  Michael Oborne will direct the transition and be a available as a resource for MAVlink and Mission Planner.  Craig will be available as a liaison to the hardware and flightcode development teams.  Lorenz will be available as a resource from ETH.

The long term intention is to take over maintenance and responsibility for Q Ground Control with some combination of people involved including ETH.   The exact arrangement of people and teams will be evaluated as the integration and implementation proceeds.

We should work towards having a stable version of code in the ardupilot github that can be used in the same way that either Mission Planner or QGC is used at the moment.  When the time comes that a stable version is ready, we'll have an installer available in the downloads section on the new Wordpress site.

Thanks,

Craig

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[buzz]

All,

I've just been poking around in the mp_merge_new branch ( I just compiled it and clicked around in the resulting app) , and I'd like to raise some further GUI improvments that I still see could make it better.....

* I like the big green simplified "Connect Link" icon.   :-)

* The entire app seems hobbled when it's not connected to something. 
     - clicking on the Mission map does nothing, right-clicking on the maps does nothing. ( dragging and scrolling work ok though). 
     - Simulation tab doesn't seem to do anything... at least I couldn't get anything meaningful to happen no matter what I tried .   - this might be user error, but I tried both "Activate Engine, and "start" and nothing visibly happened?  :-)  
     - Configuration -> Sensors is a blank screen.  so is Configuration->General Config, and Configuration ->  Advanced Config.      I couldn't tell what what supposed to be here ( as I'm not familiar with it ) .    Maybe pre-populate it with something ( example data?) , or just remove it from the app when it's empty?

* Dedicating an entire Tab/View in the application to "Simulation" supposes that it's as common a thing to do as the other tabs ( Mission, Flight, Plot, Configuration) , which I disagree with.   Most user/s will *never* simulate anything.  once they have a working set of "configuration" data ( ie their airframe flies properly )  they either prepare for a flight on the "mission" tab, or they actually fly it, on the "flight tab".       Maybe I misunderstand the purpose of the Simulation tab?        

* Similarly, the "Plot" tab is only used during the "tuning" phase of setting up and airframe, and getting the settings "dialed in".... so it's much more tightly associated with Configuration than anything else ( we've all done the "tweak an option, look at the graph" dance a *lot* I'm sure, so they should be in the same place, no?  )

Hope you see this as helpful feedback only.

Buzz.

[Stefan Gofferje]

Hi Lorenz,

something very basic - I can't seem to figure out how to activate the
MAVLink streams from Arducopter with QGC (tell AC to start sending
telemetry data). Tried a couple of times closing and reopening QGC and
went through the mens but nothing jumped my eye...

-Stefan