Flight Mode App Hack by Dronie!

[YuneecHCali]

Beagles have such a crazy sound to em...I had one named mustard. Okay yea I am going to need many betas.

 

[McLongShaft]

I'd be happy to pay! Nothing good is free in life anyway. Count me in

 

[Jimmylee]

Hello guy's as per the request of a member I've now moved this thread to it's own section as not to step on ERICS toes.

Recently I've had a lot of down time and I'm in the process of reverse engineering the Flight Mode App (App used to fly our Typhoon H). Today I asked several members to post changes they would like made to the app and have enough interest to invest the time into this project and perhaps piss off Yunnec a bit lol . Please add functions you would love to see. I'm almost positive yes intact positive I'm not suppose to be doing this but hey to **** with em they all copy each anyway.

Dronie

I think your having a pipe dream, and I'll be the first to apologize if I am wrong.

Since Yuneec has not and probably will not release a API then the H will
never accept any commands that are not already programmed into it.

Can you write your own API and if so will the H accept it or even have the
memory and circuitry to allow multiple commands and true anonymous flight.

Probably not, it was not in Yuneec's design.

I am certainly not and expert on this so enlighten us on your plans

 

[YuneecHCali]

Jimmy,

Just because Yuneec has not released the API does not mean it's impossible for just about everything to be messed around with. I'm fully able to write an API and certainly qualified to do so although I'm not one to toot my own horn.

I'll enlighten you when I decide what direction I want to take this in.

Cheers,
Dronie

 

[anthony h-ellary]

id look at beta testing for you

 

[methodus]

Hi YuneecHCali,

I already implemented the most of the API of the cameras in my own app (Typhoon Camera, available in the Play Store). Maybe we could team up to develop a better app not only for the H but also for the Q.

I also checked the firmware of the H and also the apps which are available in the store and I understood it quite well... nothing very complicated in it. The most interesting part could be the UARTController which communicates with the drone. My aim since my very beginning of programming for the drone: connect a smartphone to the radio instead of the camera to also gather the telemetrics and the live stream from there. This would allow much higher distances with smartphones.

Would you like to team up?

 

[Jimmylee]

Jimmy,

Just because Yuneec has not released the API does not mean it's impossible for just about everything to be messed around with. I'm fully able to write an API and certainly qualified to do so although I'm not one to toot my own horn.

I'll enlighten you when I decide what direction I want to take this in.

Cheers,
Dronie

No problem, your right anything can be messed around with.
That don't mean you will be successful or if its possible.

You where asking users what features they wanted and even talking prices.

Sounds like the carriage before the horse to me. That's some tooting going on!

 

[methodus]

That don't mean you will be successful or if its possible.

You where asking users what features they wanted and even taking prices.

First of all: it's possible and I have proven it at least for the camera connection. However, creating a custom flight mode app is much more work, much more testing and much more risk. Imagine, the app crashes during flight and the copter loses any control and crashes. I don't want to be liable for that.

 

[Air One]

I am on board for buying the app, there is a great deal of work ahead to get this up and running, tested and re tested. We will all be watching and waiting to see what you come up with. Keep us posted.

 

[YuneecHCali]

Thank you for your input methodus...yes it's going to be a long road.

 

[banned user]

Hello,
great idea, I will encourage it and eventually be prone to pay it if the price range is what you are suggesting.
Well about the app itself it seems there is a bit of confusion about a flight planner and a full control app. Those are two very different things, the first being an almost easy task, while the second is a very complex, high end program. Do you have any experience on that last?
As a longtime drone (multirotors and fixed wings) firmware tester I'm prone to test something but my TH is not disposable.
I did hope that someone *really experienced* in flight controller firmware would eventually propose something more flexible than the original firmware.

I mean:
- max bank angle selectable (= max speed)
- a better yaw control, which actually is almost unuseful in what I meas to be a yaw control. First of all proportional, to be able to refine the flying path
- camera multiple shots, e.g. each 1, 2 ,5 seconds etc. Useful for mapping.
- camera will remember last settings after reboot and especially after wifi loss
- dark screen in case of wifi loss. Sometimes having the last good shot could lead to a delay, before the loss is perceived: very dangerous.
- panic condition. The copter will fly only stabilized without compass and everything that could lead to issues, in case of compass issues etc.
- obstacle avoidance with selectable trigger distance and even switchable, so only distance and warnigs are working. That could be useful while recording videos close to rocks, to know the exact distance, but could be dangerous if the avoidance is triggered and the copter flies backwards, if there are trees close at back (yes high risk task, but anyway ...)
- RTH selectable between absolute (copter return to takeoff point), or relative to controller, like now
- a clock! switchable

About flight planner would be nice to have:
- real WP navigation, with stops, trigger actions (take pictures, start/stop video, loiter, watch at ..., RTH, land etc.)
- what happens in case of control link loss: selectable between RTH and continue the mission (this could be a feature of the control firmware too)
- selectable speed
- simulator!

About camera, but that is probaly off topics here I would like a multiple exposure feature (bracketing) and eventually a HDR feature.

Will come with more as soon as I recall them.
Best regards,
Ric

Great list..in addition to the selectable RTH I believe google maps has descriptions of what is water and what is land, so if an RTH to the controller was selected it could also be programmed not to land in water.

 

[YuneecHCali]

mweir,

That's a very creative suggestion.

 

[Jimmylee]

First of all: it's possible and I have proven it at least for the camera connection. However, creating a custom flight mode app is much more work, much more testing and much more risk. Imagine, the app crashes during flight and the copter loses any control and crashes. I don't want to be liable for that.

Sending a one time command to change camera settings is not even close to writing a API to control the drone.

Are you able to change any camera settings other than what Yuneec allows, NO!, because that API would have to be uploaded to
the camera or drone.
Yuneec H is a closed system so unless you want to write your own firmware and SDK/API also you might get somewhere.

 

[alsey7]

dont want to rain on your Parade but never going to happen. Like Jimmy said without the SDK this project is dead in water. and lets say you are able to come up with a whole new Flight appliaction I would never use it the risk is to high it crashes your H Yuneec will not cover unless YuneecHCali has 100% guaranteed that the program will not crash and will replace your H took much risk

 

[methodus]

Are you able to change any camera settings other than what Yuneec allows

YES!

My researches found out, that it's for instance possible to set the image sharpness of JPGs with a hidden command, which is not provided by the ST16 and the ST10+. This is only one command, but it takes plenty of time to find this out. Anyway, there are more commands to find out. You are right, that it's a closed system and we need to reverse engineer the firmwares. However, in many cases it is not required to create NEW commands to create NEW features. For instance, I implemented a FPV feature for the ST10+

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Further features I am working on are exposure bracketing and intervalometer. These will also work without new commands.

As I said, I do not touch the FlightMode app on the remote. This is way to risky.

 

[Hunter_Michael]

Dennis, nice way to get FPV on cardboard. How is the latency and could you add a live stream to YouTube or Facebook with your app?

 

[Jimmylee]

YES!

My researches found out, that it's for instance possible to set the image sharpness of JPGs with a hidden command, which is not provided by the ST16 and the ST10+. This is only one command, but it takes plenty of time to find this out. Anyway, there are more commands to find out. You are right, that it's a closed system and we need to reverse engineer the firmwares. However, in many cases it is not required to create NEW commands to create NEW features. For instance, I implemented a FPV feature for the ST10+

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Further features I am working on are exposure bracketing and intervalometer. These will also work without new commands.

As I said, I do not touch the FlightMode app on the remote. This is way to risky.

Nice job at finding these hidden commands, I have no doubt there are
commands that are embedded in the firmware that Yuneec chose not to use or make available.

If you could find enough hidden commands over and above what Yuneec has made
available you could make a nice mission App like Litchi.

My point is though like the DJI drones without being able to upload a series
of commands to the buffer for the drone to act on it will have to send the
commands one by one and probably not worth the trouble.

But if your having fun that is what counts for you, and who knows, you may stumble on something
that we did not know was there!

 

[methodus]

Latency is the same as on the radio. There is a small drawback: the range of the smartphone wifi is limited to approx. 150m, while you will get much further with the radio. This is the only reason I would generally modify the FlightMode app.

Live streaming to facebook or youtube is on my backlog, but other features will come first. There are too many ;-)

 

[YuneecHCali]

Wow...I see a lot of doubt here! Guy's there is more to this then I'm willing to get into let's just say I had a hand in doing something with the development. I'm not going to go into details for obvious reasons.

Dronie

 

[hatfield]

I would pay.