QGroundControl

QGroundControl is one of the main Ground Control Station (GCS) currently available to work with autopilots compatible with MAVLink, including PX4 and ArduPilot.

To implement this project, QGroundControl was chosen as GCS because it provides easy and direct use for beginners, in addition to offering experienced users support for advanced features in complete flight control and vehicle configurations with PX4.

Moreover, QGroundControl is one of the most stable ECSs in relation to the others, has a simple and efficient interface and is available in several operating systems, such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android and iOS.

System Requirements

QGroundControl can run normally on most modern computers. A computer with an i5 and at least 8 GB of RAM will perform well for all applications in the program. For a better experience, it is advisable to have the operating system in its latest stable version.

Installation

  • Windows
    • Install QGroundControl for 64-bit versions of Windows Vista or later:
      1. Download the installer QGroundControl.exe
      2. Double-click the downloaded executable to open the installer
  • Mac OS X
    • Installing QGroundControl on Mac OS 10.10 or later:
      1. Download QGroundControl.dmg
      2. Double-click the downloaded .dmg file
      3. Move your the $ QGroundControl application to your Application folder
  • Ubuntu

Ubuntu has a serial modem manager that interferes with applications involving robotics that use a serial (or USB serial) port. Before installing QGroundControl, is necessary to remove such serial modem manager and grant its user the permissions to access the serial port. You also need to install GStreamer to enable video streaming.

  • Before installing QGroundControl for the first time:

  1. On the command prompt type:

    sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER
sudo apt-get remove modemmanager -y
sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-libav -y

  2. Logout and login again to enable the change to user permissions.

  • To install QGroundControl for Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS or later:

  1. Download QGroundControl.AppImage

  2. Install and run Install using the terminal commands:

    cd Downloads
chmod +x ./QGroundControl.AppImage
./QGroundControl.AppImage

Tip

The last command line is not necessary if the user goes to the file manager, search for the downloaded QGroundControl file and double-click it.