Category Archives: Software

Running Paparazzi on Windows

April 10, 2019 Gautier Hattenberger

Since there are many Windows users who like to try paparazzi on this popular OS and Microsoft introduced the possibility of running Ubuntu programs and tools on windows 10, now Paparazzi developer team is pleased to announce the initial release of the Windows10 support of Paparazzi.

The installation process is not so much different from the Linux, but you need some extra steps to install Ubuntu, and some more for using graphical interface and connecting to the aircraft via telemetry. This first release still retains the look and feel of its Linux sibling as currently it uses X Windows for rendering, so you need to install X server in order to have graphical interface.

Although its still on developing and you need some extra work to communicate with serial port, or stop process manually, … .But maybe it is better you install it yourself and give us the feedback, or if you can help to make it better, we will be happy!

Don’t hesitate to go through the wiki install page for Paparazzi on Windows 10 (thanks to Iman Shidareh).

Research, Software

UAV Network Intrusion Detection with Wavelet-based Signature Analysis

June 21, 2018 Gautier Hattenberger

This is a first step of a hybrid IDS method based on the analysis of spectral traffic and a robust controller / observer for the estimation of anomalies in UAV networks. This module is currently designed to observe the traffic between the drones and the Paparazzi GCS. It provides a statistic signature of the traffic which can later be used to determine the nature of the traffic. The module is tested in face of a DoS attack and the results are very promising!

Check out our paper for more details: https://hal-enac.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01652296

Release, Software

Secure Pprzlink released

March 26, 2018 Michal Podhradsky

The Paparazzi team is proud to announce a release of an encrypted version of pprzlink. The new secure Pprzlink uses a strong and fast cipher ChaCha20 with Poly1305 authenticator. For better security and user convenience, a variation of station-to-station key-exchange protocol is implemented, to allow seamless key-exchange between the UAV and the GCS.

Secure Pprzlink is backed by a formally verified cryptographic library HACL* (yes, the same library that is a part of new Mozilla Firefox).

Why should you care? Without encryption, anyone can listen to your drone communication, and can potentially send modified or outright “fake” commands to it, steering it of course, or causing it to crash. Using encrypted radio link is similar to using encrypted connection on internet, and should be a common practice.

Why is using a formally verified crypto library important? In short, cryptography is hard to do right, and formal methods help make sure that the encryption algorithms behave as intended. The short video below gives you a better idea:

Secure Pprzlink uses a formally verified cryptography library, but is not verified itself. However, it could be verified in the future, to provide additional guarantees.

How to use it? We prepared a wiki page with instructions and examples. In short, choose a secure link as your mode of communication when building the autopilot code, and the rest is handled automatically. Also, the GCS part of secure pprzlink is written in Rust, which is a memory-safe language, which guarantees that the code written in Rust is itself memory-safe and thus eliminates a large amount of possible software bugs.

Secure Pprzlink was created with the help of Galois, Senman and is currently used by AggieAir at Utah State University.

Give it a try and give us any feedback and ask questions on paparazzi gitter channel, or via paparazzi mailing list.

Wishing everyone happy (and secure) flying!

Community, Hardware, Release, Research, Software, Videos

Flying Parrot’s Disco aircraft with Paparazzi

February 24, 2017 Gautier Hattenberger 1 Comment

The Disco from Parrot is a fixed-wing aircraft designed for FPV with all the feature already available on their Bebop2, plus some extra things, like airspeed sensor, SBUS input and PWM outputs.

The autopilot itself is all integrated in a box called C.H.U.C.K. and it allows nice and easy flights with the SkyController2 and the Cockpitglasses, connected via Wifi.

Just like the Bebop and ARDrones, it is now possible to fly this drone using Paparazzi. Just connect to the plane, upload your code and you’re ready to go! Here is the video of the maiden flight:

More information are available on the wiki: http://wiki.paparazziuav.org/wiki/Disco

Special thanks to ArduPilot and Andrew Tridgell who implemented the driver for PWM output on this plane and his tips for debugging the Paparazzi version.

Community, Competition, Hardware, Software, Videos

DELFTACOPTER – Hybrid Drone on a Mission

September 20, 2016 Rich Burton

DELFTACOPTER, an electric, long range, transitioning autonomous delta-wing helicopter, is on a mission. What mission? In this case, it’s the 2016 Outback Medical Express challenge and the MAVLab Team at TUDelft has high hopes for their hybrid aircraft.

This year’s Outback Medical Express mission requires a UAV to pick up and bring back a blood sample of an ill-fated person called “Outback Joe” located at an inaccessible roughly known location 30 kilometer away remote location with unknown terrain.

Powered by PaparazziUAV, the DELFTACOPTER is also equipped with state of the art on-board stereoscopic wide field of view computer vision.

Property description	Value
Flight
Cruise speed	45 knots at 300 watt
Most efficient speed	35 knots at 230 watt
Maximum speed	50 knots
Physical
Weight	4kg
MTOW	4,5kg
Wing area	0,496 m2
Wing loading	8kg/m2
Span	1,54m
Length	0,6 m
Height	0,4m
Energy
Power usage in hover	280 watt
Main battery energy	10000mAh ~ 225 Wh
FTS battery energy	250mAh ~ 2Wh
RPM in forward flight	450 rpm
RPM in hovering flight	1550 rpm
Datalink
Datalink 1 protocol	Iridium satellite communication
Datalink 1 range	Global
Datalink 2 protocol	900 MHZ long range communication
Datalink 2 range	40km
Weather properties
Maximum wind speed	30kts
Maximum precipitation	Light rain

All the best to the MAVLab Team and their DELFTACOPTER during their Outback Challenge adventures.

Hardware, Software, Videos

Drones vs. Retro-gaming: fly with a Game Boy Classic

August 1, 2016 Gautier Hattenberger 38 Comments

Some time ago, I found my old Game Boy at my parents’ house. So the first thing that came to my mind was: can I fly a drone with this ? (and also where is my Mario Bros cartridge).

So I spend some time searching the web to see if I could find some idea to solve my problem. And if it seems that piloting unmanned aircraft with a Game Boy is not so common, you can find everything you need to program it!

But you can’t expect to go directly to an old custom serial com port to a wifi-based drone without some intermediate steps:

Finally, the Game Boy is just sending the bitmask corresponding to the buttons being pressed (with an Arduino and a FTDI to convert Game Link signals to USB), and a small program on the ground station converts this into actual commands for the drone (an ARDrone2 from Parrot with an extra GPS in my case).

The result is here:

See https://github.com/enacuavlab/PPRZonGB for more information and source code of this demo.

Community, Release, Software

Flying Robot Commander + PPRZLINK = Improved MultiMAV Management

April 11, 2016 Rich Burton

For those of us that use Paparazzi to fly multiple MAVs, the current GCS does a great job of managing and presenting just the right amount of information for safe flight. That being said, there’s always room for new tools. It’s my pleasure to introduce the Flying Robot Commander, a PPRZLINK enabled web application for managing multiple MAVs.

The Flying Robot Commander(FRC) is a Flask/python based RESTful web application that integrates with Paparazzi UAV via PPRZLINK. That’s right, you can now write python code to access/extend Paparazzi UAV capabilities (NOTE: one of the main complaints about the current Paparazzi GCS is that it’s written in ocaml). In addition to python, PPRZLINK also provides C and ocaml libraries for those that need them.

For more details related to the Flying Robot Commander, PPRZLINK and Paparazzi UAV in general, see the following links:

– Flying Robot Commander Github
– PPRZLINK Github
– Paparazzi Github
– Paparazzi Wiki

Community, Hardware, Software

Paparazzi UAV on Pixhawk teaser

March 1, 2016 Bart Remes

Hi all Open-Source enthusiasts,

Today we are happy to announce we’ll be adding an extra autopilot board to there long list of supported autopilots.

The Pixhawk autopilot board will be integrated in our next software release! The video shows the first flight with Paparazzi UAV on a Pixhawk, more videos will follow.

Why choose Paparazzi UAV?

If you are looking for an advanced, modular open-source autopilot which has features others can only dream of, you choose Paparazzi UAV.

We make it possible for you to choose the best software for your needs, on the hardware platforms that are right for your project.

Wishing you successful flights,
The Paparazzi dev team

Release, Software

Paparazzi V5.8 release

December 24, 2015 Piotr Esden-Tempski

Merry Christmas dear Paparazzians!

We are happy to announce the release of Paparazzi; v5.8, providing you with lots of new features and improvements!

Just to pick out a few:

ADS-B support
improved use of optic flow for velocity estimation
improved mavlink support
possibility to reduce RAM and Flash usage by compressing the sine table
this allowed us to add basic support for naze32, CC3D and CJMCU boards
flip mode for multicopters
INDI guidance loop
lots of improvements/additions for computer vision modules
high speed logging to SD Card via SPI
improve support for Bebop and add Bebop2
guided mode for rotorcrafts

For a detailed overview refer to the CHANGELOG. 🙂

If you are already using paparazzi with Git, to enjoy all improvements you can switch to this new version via:
git remote update && git checkout v5.8

If you are new to Paparazzi and want to join in flying with it, you can you can simply download a tarball or get the source code via:

git clone https://github.com/paparazzi/paparazzi.git -b v5.8

Community, Hardware, Research, Software

Multi-UAV flights for simultaneous meteorological measurements

December 4, 2015 Gautier Hattenberger 4 Comments

ENAC UAV Lab team and Meteo-France (CNRS-GAME and ENM) teams have spent several days at the Atmospheric Research Center of Lannemezan (in the south of France) in order to perform experiments for simultaneous meteorological measurements through multi-UAV flight.

This was part of a research project called VOLTIGE aimed at studying the formation of cloud and fog events. One of the planes is measuring the turbulence near the ground, a second plane is flying above the cloud or the fog with a radiation sensor and the last one is making a vertical profile of temperature, pressure and humidity up to 1500 meters AGL.

All the planes were controlled by Paparazzi UAV Apogee boards, with on-board logging on SD cards and navigation patterns triggered by sensors readings.

Paparazzi UAV Blog