Dronecode is excited to announce the creation DroneCore, our new open-source MAVLink Library for the PX4 flight stack.
DroneCore is the best way to integrate with PX4 over MAVLink!
The library provides a simple core API for managing one or more vehicles, providing programmatic access to vehicle information and telemetry, and control over missions, movement and other operations. Developers can extend the library using plugins to add any other required MAVLink API.
The library has already been employed by DroneCode members to solve many important integration use cases:
- AirMap used DroneCore to integrate with their air traffic services as part of the recent U-space traffic management demo, and will shortly be able to make these services available to all PX4 users.
- The Yuneec H520 Hexacopter uses DroneCore to integrate with its camera and gimbal via MAVLink.
In both cases, the users have benefited from having a stable, efficient, consistent and well-tested integration layer to target. They’ve also been able to take advantage of the extensible design and permissive BSD license to customise the APIs as they needed!
At the time of writing DroneCore only has a C++ API. By our first release, we hope to have wrapper layers for Python, Android, and iOS generated using gRPC. At that point, developers will be able to create applications for vehicle-based companion computers, ground-based GCS, mobile devices, and cloud-based service delivery – using the most appropriate programming language for their implementation.
The library is still in the early stage of development, but already has enough documentation to get started and active support channels.
Check it out – we welcome your interest and contribution!