Flight Guide Ground Control Station (for INAV) – Cross Platform Mission Planner (Windows,Androids,iOS)

[beymaxios]

Flight Guide Ground Control Station for INAV

Guys Please checkout my new project for INAV Light weight ground station application i have built works with Desktops, Androids and iOS Devices

Now no Dependency on MAVlink or Ardupilot .

https://github.com/beymaxios/flight-guide

[sensei-hacker]

That looks like a cool project. Particularly because it's compatible with Android.

You wrote:

Over the years, whenever I felt the need for a Ground Control Station while using INAV, the common suggestion from the community was:

"Just move to ArduPilot or PX4."

Nobody told you the ground station for INAV is MWP? That's the answer I would think you would hear from anyone in the INAV community, or from the INAV documentation.

Unless it becomes an official INAV project, it would probably be best to switch the order of the words in the name. Something like "Maxios Ground Control for INAV".

[beymaxios]

Okay 👍 thanks i will change the Name , thanks for advice.
my goal is to make gcs available across all devices and mwp tools is only for desktop upto my knowledge

[beymaxios]

@sensei-hacker Thanks for pointing that out.

I've renamed the project to "Flight Guide" to avoid confusion with official INAV software. The repository and releases have been updated accordingly.

Appreciate the clarification!

[Skuppersixseven]

This is great thank you for taking the time to develop. This is exactly what I’m waiting for. I’m not super techy so I would love to try it out if you need a beta tester and are willing to walk me through it. Be happy to do a quick video on my channel as well if we can get it solid demo. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyB_D_CxxVoITFqNShBVykQ

[beymaxios]

okay , just give me day or 2 i will upload a demo video , i have already planned a video but haven't got the time to record yet due to some busy schedule these days.
will surely upload a detailed video and will also ping /tag you in the same

[Skuppersixseven]

SUper cool!- I have a windows emulator on my Mac so I was able to run the simulation mode. EXCELLENT! I guess all I need is to run it on my iPad and an idiots guide on how to set that up if you can assist ill run her at the field asap - cheers!

[beymaxios]

I am open to any assistance needed, please mention what i can help you with , I would glad to help you

[Skuppersixseven]

Cool. - Could you provide a step by step how to get this to run and connect on an iPad? I have a radiomaster TX16s Max MKIII, U flay using a mate F406 Wing in INAV 9.01

[beymaxios]

It currently doesn’t support comms over elrs yet , you must have a telemetry module, that supports transparent data exchange. Not configured to any specific protocol like MAVLink.

I am using micoAir Lr-900 Module, then you using ttl module configure baudrate to 115200 to both ground unit and air unit.

now connect Air unit to fc like anyother sensor like opt flow etc , 5V GND TX to RX and RX to TX.
Then connect drone to inav configurator
Go to ports tab select the uart you connected sensor to the enabled MSP just like we do for osd and don’t forget to check baudrate to be 115200 as well match to our lora modules.

Then you are fine to go connect you quad wirelessly now.

Connect usb connection to ground module install its drivers identify the com port and hit connect you window app with connect also for android the process is same, it will just ask usb permission additionally.

For iOS devices the thing changes a but since IOS webkit doesn’t allow webserial or USBserial , i have used websocket server using esp32 microcontroller.

But for now if you want to test, start with any windows or android device . In the meantime i will upload full video on how to setup esp32 for our connection, how to create webserver how to load wifi firmware that connects to iOS devices hotspot and every details.

For reference of lora modules please check the link

https://micoair.com/radio_telemetry_lr900f/

You can use any other lora modules that provides a transparent transmission
Like this one

[sensei-hacker]

MSP communication over mLRS would be great to have. Being protocol-aware allows the radio link to work better.

It can be lower latency by sending the message immediately as soon as it gets the last byte of the message, rather than waiting around to see if more byes are coming.

It can have better range / reliability because one missing radio packet means just one dropped message, rather than two. (The end of one and the beginning of another).

[beymaxios]

MSP communication over mLRS would be great to have. Being protocol-aware allows the radio link to work better.

It can be lower latency by sending the message immediately as soon as it gets the last byte of the message, rather than waiting around to see if more byes are coming.

It can have better range / reliability because one missing radio packet means just one dropped message, rather than two. (The end of one and the beginning of another).

Thanks for the suggestion — agreed, making the link protocol-aware is the right direction, especially for LoRa-based transport.

Currently, the GCS already builds and sends complete MSP packets (not arbitrary byte chunks), and I’ve structured the communication layer to support transport abstraction (Serial / WebSocket / ESP32 bridge). So at the application layer, MSP is already treated as a message.

That said, the current limitation is that the transport layer (especially over LoRa) still behaves as a byte stream. This means:

• MSP packets may get split across multiple radio frames
• Packet loss can still corrupt message boundaries
• Latency depends on how the underlying link buffers data

I haven’t been able to test with mLRS hardware yet, so I haven’t integrated or validated a true protocol-aware radio layer. If anyone from the community has mLRS hardware, it would be great to experiment with that path.

As a next step, I’m planning to move toward transport-level MSP framing (treating each MSP message as an atomic unit before transmission), which should address the latency and reliability points you mentioned.

Happy to collaborate further on this if you have suggestions or reference implementations.

[Skuppersixseven]

Excellent! - I am excited to try this out. Currently testing the radiomaster AX12 and its a pain to setup up. I believe you final product will make life easier for many people. Ill get back into touch with next steps TY!

[beymaxios]

can you connect LoRa Module using usb-c type with AX-12 ?
i don't know if that's allowed with AX012 or not . because if the usb allowed then you can have simple usb communication to installed app just like any other android device.

but there is a way , which is using esp-32 the way i have used to connect it to IOS devices (please read the full instructions out there on repo to know more about it) , make the esp32 a webserver and bridge between lora module and webserver , that bridge will receive the MSP traffic from drone and transmit it over a WebSocket , then AX-12 already have browser chrome , you can access it from there.

but the only catch here is this GCS requires internet to load maps , so you have create common hotspot from your phone , then AX-12 and ESP-32 will both connect to it , then install network analyzer app https://apps.apple.com/us/app/network-analyzer-pro/id557405467 that will give you IP assigned to ESP-32 ,simply user that IP in AX-12 'chrome and Boom you are connected.

[Skuppersixseven]

Here there!
I’m traveling but will look into those when return. I am planning on using my TX16s max so it’s best to look at it from that platform

[sensei-hacker]

There are currently three other people developing three other GCS for INAV.

I bet if two or three of you put your heads together, combined forces, you could make it really great. I'm going to point then to this thread.

[beymaxios]

Happy to connect and see where efforts can be combined rather than duplicated.