Dashboard Configuration Parameters

Along with the aircraft model characteristics, you can specify the appearance of the rqt dashboard window, an avionics panel which appears each time you launch last_letter. The panel is made up of multiple gauges (which are grouped in 3 columns) and each gauge has a similar description, which uses the following parameters:

topic: The ROS topic which this gauge should be bound to. This can be any topic under the current roscore. Optionally, this can be a topic under the uav_name/dashboard topic directory. Available topics under this directory are: euler.x: Roll angle (in degrees) euler.y: Pitch angle (in degrees) euler.z: Yaw angle (in degrees) airspeed: Airspeed (in m/s) alpha: Angle of attack (in degrees) beta: Angle of sideslip (in degrees) climbRate: Climb rate (in m/s) altitude: GPS altitude (in m) rotorspeed: Propeller_1 rotational speed (in RPM)

length: The length of the arc of the gauge (in degrees).

end_angle: The angle at which the gauge reaches its maximum value. 0 angle is at “3 o’clock” in a full circle and the positive direction is counter-clockwise. Example: If you want the gauge to cap directly at 12 o’clock you should specify end_angle: 90.

min, max: The values of the gauge at its minimum and maximum point.

main_points: The number of tickmarks of the gauge.

warning: A list of pairs, which specify the interval at which the gauge flashes yellow, as a warning sign. Example: In order to make the gauge flash yellow between at [1000, 2000] and [6000, 7000] specify warning: [1000, 2000, 6000, 7000]. Leave empty ([]) for no warning interval.

danger: Similar to warning, but the gauge flashes red when the needle is in the specified interval.

multiplier (string): Text item, to depict the multiplier which should be used with the gauge reading.

units (string): Text item, which indicated the unit of the gauge quantity.

description (string): Text item, which carries a description of the quantity depicted in the gauge.