webflight-gamepad

This is a plugin for the browser-based AR.Drone ground control station webflight that lets you fly your drone with a joystick or gamepad.

How it works

The plugin uses the still-pretty-alpha Gamepad API for web browsers. Current Firefox & Chromium/Chrome are supported. You may test with a connected gamepad on this site.

The first connected gamepad is used to control the drone. It gets activated, once a button on the pad is pressed.

Custom commands & controls may be configured in ardone-webflight's config.js (see below).

default controls

these may be mapped differently depending on your device. I recommend testing the button layout here first, and configuring your own button layout (see below).

control	function
LS	altitude & yaw
RS	pitch & roll
LB	takeoff
RB	land
Button 1 / A	switch cameras
Button 2 / B	hover / stop current motion
Button 3 / Y	flip (front)
Button 4 / X	flat trim
Button 9	disable emergency (enable takeoff again eg after a crash)

Installing & activating the plugin

You will need the ardrone-webflight and webflight-gamepad repos:

git clone git://github.com/eschnou/ardrone-webflight.git
git clone git://github.com/noerw/webflight-gamepad.git

To install adrone-webflight, see the respective repo.

Link webflight-gamepad into webflight's plugins directory, or add it as a git submodule:

cd ardrone-webflight/plugins
ln -s ../../webflight-gamepad gamepad

Add pilot and gamepad to the plugins array in config.js, so it looks something like this:

plugins: [
  "video-stream"  // Display the video as a native h264 stream decoded in JS
  , "hud"         // Display the artificial horizon, altimeter, compass, etc.
  , "pilot"       // Pilot the drone with the keyboard
  , "gamepad"     // Pilot the drone with a joystick/gamepad
]

configuration

All controls may be remapped in webflights' main configuration file. Also, custom commands (eg. for other plugins) may be added!

The default configuration looks like this, and is merged with the config.gamepad object in ardrone-webflight/config.js:

{
  // hover when no input is given after delay seconds
  autoStabilize: { enabled: true, delay: 0.15 },
  // controller mapping
  controls: {
    yaw:      { axis: 0, invert: false, deadZone: 0.1, maxSpeed: 1 },
    altitude: { axis: 1, invert: false, deadZone: 0.1, maxSpeed: 1 },
    roll:     { axis: 2, invert: false, deadZone: 0.1, maxSpeed: 0.4 },
    pitch:    { axis: 3, invert: false, deadZone: 0.1, maxSpeed: 0.4 },
    disableEmergency: 8,
    switchCams: 0,
    hover:      1,
    flip:       2,
    flatTrim:   3,
    takeoff:    6,
    land:       7
  },
  // add custom commands
  customCommands: []
}

autoStabilize

When autoStabilize is enabled, the drone will automatically hover once you the sticks let go after the specified delay.

custom commands

To define a custom command, add an object with the following structure to the gamepad.customCommands array:

{
  button: 7,
  command: { path: '/pilot/animate', payload: { action: 'flipBack' } }
}

This adds a backflip animation to button 7. Any websocket message may be sent this way to the node server!

License

Published under the apache license 2.0.

---

Originially written by wiseman, updated & extended by noerw