mdCockpit

mdCockpit is our "All In One" base station software and supersedes all existing base station software tools.
It´s a multi language application (English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish) for Windows™ (2000, XP, Vista).

Program functions

  • A downlink decoder part including a downlink player, for decoding all real-time data sent by a drone and playback of recorded downlink data.
  • Evaluation of flight recorder information, stored on the SD-Card memory.
  • Constructing the waypoint programs for the new waypoint navigation feature.
  • Updating the drone’s firmware to new versions.

Program features

  • Easy to use, fully automatic “plug and play” device detection and configuration.
  • Support for different languages at runtime.
  • Pleasing design with many operating assistance, e.g. automatic data recording, resize-able dialogue window.
  • Warnings, status and flight assistance messages, using Windows-TTS speech synthesis (English only) for best pilot support.
  • 3D drone’s body behaviour simulations and the flight route simulation.
  • Exporting flight route to Google Earth™.
  • Assigning coordinates to the pictures of the onboard camera.
  • Automatic recording of all received information.
  • Informative and coloured status line with current information about the flight status, the battery level, the RC quality and the GPS signal-quality, as well as the display of the quality of the received data stream sent by the drone.
  • Hotkey program function selection.

Safety features

  • Battery estimation filters with periodic hints and warnings.
  • Detection of invalid multi drone receiving at the same channel.
  • Monitoring of RC quality, out of range and link quality warnings.
  • Monitoring of downlink quality, out of range and link quality warnings.
  • Monitoring of GPS quality, accuracy hints and warnings.
  • Recognition filters for possible exceeding wind load, danger warning.
  • Recognition filters for possible propulsion overload, danger warning.
  • Recognition filters for possible exceeding attitude of pitch and roll axis, danger warning.
  • Indication of the last known GPS position.
  • Real time export of the flight path to Google Earth™.
  • Automatic detecting of critical problems while analyzing flight recorder data.

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Screenshots

Flight display

  • Artificial horizon for viewing the current flight conditions, e.g. the pitch, roll and yaw angles as well as the flight general direction. With onboard video overlay.
  • Large, well readable displays for current flight conditions, like altitude or distance to the starting point of the flight, as well as the current speed of the drone.
  • Large compass for the display of the current flight direction with orientation marking.

Technical display

  • Detailed display of all received GPS information.
  • Graphical display of the engine speeds.
  • Display of RC channels and the signal quality.

      3D flight-tracking path

      • Real time evaluation of the flight information and conversion to a 3D graph.
      • Exact state information to every point of the flight.
      • Assistance for finding the drone after range excess.

          Real-time data export to Google Earth™

          • Exporting the flight route to Google Earth™, based on the GPS positions, every 15 seconds while flight.
          • Creating polygons in Google Earth™ to view the flight path.
          • Finding the drone if it was flown out of viewing range.

          Assigning coordinates to pictures

          • Taken pictures are stored as bitmaps on hard disk.
          • GPS position, flight direction, time, date and a picture number are merged by image overlay before saving.
          • The original image is stored at the camera’s SD-Card.
          • Additionally the GPS position and the picture parameters are stored in a text file.

          Settings and drone registry

          • Adjustable thresholds for different warnings and TTS speech synthesis options.
          • Waypoint coordinates and the last positions are stored in the registry.
          • These can be imported and evaluated e.g. in Google Maps™ or Google Earth™.
          • Assigning GPS positions to the taken pictures.

              Flight path simulations

              • Simulation of the flight path.
              • Viewing complete flight data for every record.
              • Rotating the graph for viewing the flight path at any possible angle.

              Export flight path to Google Earth™

              • Exporting the complete flight path to Google Earth™.
              • Creating polygons in Google to view the flight path.
              • Find buildings, trees or other possible obstacles.

              Drone body simulations

              • A nice and realistic 3D simulation of the drone’s body is animated by sensor data.
              • Step by step analysis of any flight situation in real time.
              • Display for engine data, attitude and commanding.

              Comparison and detail analysis

              • Different charts may be merged for comparsion, e.g. motor performance compared to battery, voltage or RC quality compared to distance.
              • Many functions, scrolling, zooming, copy and paste, enables generation of meaning full documentations. The 3D drone body bitmap may also be copied like all diagram bitmaps. The bitmaps may be used for inserting in other applications, like MS Word.

              Attitude

              • The three-axis attitude diagrams show the exact attitude information at every time point of the flight. This information is used for calculating the 3D drone body animation.
              • Auto-Zooming of focussed diagram simplifies handling.
              • The yellow hint window shows the exact information of the curve point under the mouse cursor.

              Altitude/Battery/Engine performance

              • The altitude diagram is used to generate the altitude profile of the flight. Differences between the GPS altitude and the barometric altitude are shown in comparison to the calculated altitude using all sensor data.
              • The lower diagram shows the battery voltage in comparison with the engine performance and the resulting temperature.

              Motors

              • Motor performance curves for every single engine.

              RC commanding

              • Analyzing the reaction of the drone related to commands.
              • The RC quality in relation to the distance between the pilot and the drone.
              • The detailed RC command status over all channels at the current time point.

              Accelerometers

              • The three-axis accelerometer allows analysing accelerations in any direction. This allows detecting collisions.
              • A FFT analysis option may be used to find vibrations, e.g. like caused by damaged rotors.

              Gyroscopes

              • Gyroscopes may be analysed using this diagrams.
              • Additional, a FFT analysis-option is available for the gyros. In this way, periodic small moves of the drone may be identified.

              Magnetometer

              • The graphs at this page show the measurements of the earth´s magnetic filed.
              • Calibration analysis.

              FC/NC states, flight modes

              • Several diagnostic-lines can be used for problem analysis and statistics.
              • It is possible to recognize the mode changes (INS, GPS, or WP) or guidance mode millisecond-exactly.

              SD-Card and recording statistics

              • A diagram with drone’s error signal lines are shown at this page.
              • Reports of SD-Card recording interval time, time code analysis.
              • Data analysing state reports.

              Automatic analysis and flight statistics

              • Maximum roll and pitch angles.
              • Maximum vehicle speed.
              • Maximum vehicle altitude.
              • Maximum vehicle distance.
              • Automatic RC signal analysis report.
              • Automatic GPS signal analysis report.
              • Battery analysis report.
              • Calibration analysis report.
              • Critical problems analysis report.
              Future Extensions
              • Integration of waypoint navigation editor (WNSL editor).
              • Integration of waypoint navigation pre flight simulator.
              Quality Assurance
              Because of our "Black Box" concept (miroSD card), we are able to do very accurate analyses.

              With our internal software tools we can do fully automatic quality assurance.

              While others do guesswork, we get reliable quality statements with just one click!