Setup window
The following figure shows the Setup window that will pop-up when an user clicks on Setup > Setup devices and more.
The higlighletd box with the number 1 is used only when GPS is available at the node and refers to the node following the other node either in azimuth, elevation or both.
The highlighletd box with the number 2 is used when the option Static under the Choose node mobility label is chosen. In that case the user has the option to enter multiple coordinates that will become available next in the node Gimbal panel of the main window.
Main window
The following figure shows the main window where relevant information is displayed and user controls the available devices:
The enumerated panels of the main window are:
- Check connections panel (section Check connections)
- Ground gimbal control panel (section Ground gimbal)
- Drone gimbal control panel (section Drone gimbal)
- Sivers settings configuration panel (section Sivers settings)
- Power Angular Profile visualization panel (section Visualize PAP)
- GPS visualization panel (section Visualize GPS)
- Control measurements panel (section Control measurements)
- Terminal panel (section Terminal)
Check connections panel
This panel shows which of the devices of each node (ground and air) are connected to their respective host computers. The state for the connection between the device and the host computer could be False, True or None, and is assessed by the Check button.
The None value is used when a connection could not be checked and so the state of the connection is not known.
A wireless connection won't be allowed (the Connect button will not be available) until the user presses the Check button a first time.
The Connect button will be available for the user to establish a wireless connection between both nodes, even if no devices are connected to either host computer. However in that particular case, no functionality will be available as no devices are detected by the host computers of each node.
As a consequence of this, after the user sees the state of the connections under the Check connections Panel, any device that is not connected won't be available, and it is thus the choice of the user to press the Connect button immediately or review again the proper connections between the devices and their hosts and press the Connect button after the desired devices are connected to their host.
For implement changes to this behaviour of the GUI, see the section Dev connections.
Gimbals panel
The panels for the ground gimbal and the drone gimbal are identical if the Ronin RS2 was chosen for the drone node in the Setup Window. We will assume that is the case (the case when the user choose the Gremsy H16 gimbal is shown later in this section).
In the next subsections the components of the panel are shown.
Joystick
The components shown in the figure below allow the user to control the gimbal by moving it with respect to its current value.
The textbox is used so that the user can input the amount by which he wants to move the gimbal in the chosen direction. For example, if the user enters the value 56 and press the Up button, the gimbal will move +56 degrees in pitch.
Default value in textbox
If the user doesn't input any value in the textbox, the gimbal will move a default value of 10 degrees in the chosen direction.
Range of values admitted
For the yaw, the range of values accepted lies between -180 and 180. For the pitch the maximum and minimum value will be determined by the gimbal configuration. However, when the gimbal has payload, it is recommended to not enter pitch values that potentially can make the gimbal stuck due to the payload size.
Yaw, Pitch
The components shown in the figure below allow the user to control the gimbal by providing a yaw and pitch and a reference.
If Absolute radiobutton is chosen, the input values of yaw and pitch will be relative to the reference of the gimbal (the 0 degrees direction of the gimbal, i.e. the heading of the gimbal).
If Relative radiobutton is chosen, the input values of yaw and pitch will be relative to the last position of the gimbal.
Example
If the user inputs 0 in the Yaw text box and 0 in the Pitch text box, the gimbal won't move if the Relative radiobutton is chosen, or it will move to the reference of the gimbal if the Absolute radiobutton is chosen.
Available coordinates
The components in the figure below allow the user to move the gimbal to any of the coordinates that were input in the Setup window for the corresponding node.
In the texbox Node heading the user has to provide the heading of the gimbal (the direction of the reference of the gimbal).
Admitted values for Node heading
The admitted values are in the range 0-359, with 0 being the case when the reference of the gimbal is pointing to the North.
NOTE
The gimbal will NOT move if the user has NOT chosen the coordinates for both nodes (the dropdown menus next to the Available GND coordinates and Available drone coordinates labels). Alternatively, the user can choose among the available coordinates in one node (i.e. GND gimbal panel) and enter himself the coordinates for the other node (i.e. drone gimbal panel).
Input coordinates
The componentes in the figure below allow the user to move the gimbal to a specified coordinate.
The user must provide the latitude and longitude in decimal degrees (i.e. 62.2541144 and 2.6842464) and the height in meters. It also has to provide the Node heading as explained in the previous subsection.
Sivers settings panel
It is not possible to change the Sivers settings during a measurement. To change Sivers settings, first stop a measurement by pressing STOP, then press FINISH, and then procede to change the Sivers settings.
Power Angular Profile panel
The Power Angular Profile (PAP) is computed from the sensed Channel Impulse Response (CIR). The power of each and all delay bins is added to obtain the PAP. This is done for each of the beam angles.
The actual rate at which the PAP changes depends on the rate at which the channel changes. The visualization panel updates the displayed image each 100 ms, meaning that changes faster than 10 Hz will not be seen in the visualization panel.
GPS visualization panel
If the Start GPS visualization flag from the Threads menu is activated, the GPS visualization panel will plot the contents as threated in the periodical_gps_display_callback function of the GUI_A2G_MEAS.py file.
Control measurements panel
Enter a description for a measurement under the textbox available.
Press START to start a measurement.
Press STOP to stop a measurement. You can press again START, if you want to continue a long measurement.
Measurements
Each time the STOP button is clicked a new measurement file will be created. The filename is the date (up to the seconds precission) when the user pressed the button. To change this behaviour check the start_thread_receive_meas_data, stop_thread_receive_meas_data and finish_measurement functions of the a2gmeasurements.py file.
Press FINISH to finish a measurement.