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# Virtual Flight Deck for UAVs
Web interface simulating a cockpit of an unmanned aerial vehicle, built with Akka, Play and ScalaJS.
This project is made of several subprojects:
- `vfd-main` contains the play application that serves the actual interface
- `vfd-dashboard` dynamic interface built with scalajs that displays real-time data from the drone
- `vfd-uav` communication backend for message exchange with drones
# Run
SBT is used as the build tool. However, the standard 'sbt run' procedure does not work as there seems
to be some problems with plugins used.
Hence, the general workflow is as follows:
1. start sbt in the base directory
2. enter 'project vfd-main'
3. enter 'run'
*Note: if this is the first time your run a play project throught sbt, be aware that you may need to wait a while as your computer downloads half the internet*
4. open localhost:9000 in a modern browser to see the application in action
5. make some changes
6. go to step 4 (the application is automatically recompiled)
Currently, standalone deployment and packaging of the application is not is broken.
# Developer Overview
The general idea of this project is to create a web interface for displaying live data from a drone.
The flow of such data can be summarized in a few points:
- Data is received and processed in the form of [MAVLink](http://qgroundcontrol.org/mavlink/start) messages.
- Messages arrive at a communication backend (implemented in vfd-uav). Currently, this is either a mock backend that generates random messages, or a serial connection using [flow](https://github.com/jodersky/flow) for low-level communication.
- These messages are then transferred through vfd-main to the interface via websockets.
- Messages are parsed by the front-end (the interface) and used to display virtual instrumentation.
- Currently, a custom set of MAVLink messages are used. Their definition is in mavlink/concise.xml
- The dialect definition is translated from xml into useable scala code by a plugin during the build (plugin is contained in /project).
Details on the dashboard interface:
- the frontend is a pure scalajs application using [scalatags](https://github.com/lihaoyi/scalatags) templating
- basically, vfd-main provides a websocket for communication and serves a page (see views.uav.scala.html) that contains a div with a loading message
- once loaded, the scalajs frontend replaces the content of said div with its insrumentation (see code in package vfd.dashboard.ui.*)
- messages are received by a websocket and stored in an observable "var"; this process uses [scala.rx](https://github.com/lihaoyi/scala.rx)
- panels observe the recieved messages and update their respective instruments and components
# License
Copyright (C) Jakob Odersky
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as
published by the Free Software Foundation.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
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