Herelink Mavlink data with Companion Computer

HereLink
1

Hello all,

I have been trying to connect my Raspberry Pi to the Herelink UART port and exchange heartbeats between the gcs and rpi using pymavlink. I am able to connect to my Cubeblack with missionplanner using the 5.8Ghz hotspot.
However with Rpi I am not able to detect any serial data or the heartbeats on the UART port of air unit.
I am using the two reference codes from mavlink.io
Code on gcs side:
#####################################################
from pymavlink import mavutil
import time
master = mavutil.mavlink_connection(‘udp:0.0.0.0:14550’)

msg = None
while True:
master.mav.heartbeat_send(mavutil.mavlink.MAV_TYPE_GCS,mavutil.mavlink.MAV_AUTOPILOT_INVALID, 0, 0, 0)
try:
msg = master.recv_match()
except:
pass
print(msg)
time.sleep(1)
####################################

Code on RPi:
####################################
from pymavlink import mavutil
import time

master = mavutil.mavlink_connection(’/dev/ttyAMA0’,baud=57600)

msg = None
while True:
master.mav.heartbeat_send(mavutil.mavlink.MAV_TYPE_ONBOARD_CONTROLLER,mavutil.mavlink.MAV_AUTOPILOT_INVALID, 0, 0, 0)
try:
msg = master.recv_match()
except:
pass
print(msg)
time.sleep(1)

####################################

Can someone guide me on how to properly implement this?

2

Update:

So when I try the air unit connecting with my Cubeblack I am able to connect successfully, and if I swap the UART cable with a USB to ftdi and connect to my PC during that session I am able to see all the heartbeats or any mavlink messages being sent from the gcs python script but messages from the air unit are not being received.

@philip could you please help me out to properly implement this handshake/initialization procedure.

My end goal is to control a camera payload which has its control and command protocol (not supporting mavlink or sbus using herelink. I plan to send custom mavlink messages containing the protocol bytes which some microcontroller on the air unit can parse and send the data over to the payload. I think it’d be convenient for having payload command and control on the same device as the one displaying it.

1 Like
3

Any updates on this topic?

4

Maybe a little late but here is my 2 cents.

To work correctly , the RPI UART need to be ttyAMA0, in order to do this toy need to disable Bluetooth (on the boot file) and make sure the console is not enabled on the serial port with raspi.config (or with the GUI configure).