Concepts

Ground SDK is composed of 3 modules:

• groundsdk: SDK API and its implementation,

• arsdkengine: SDK engines based on ARSDK,

• sdkcore: native code wrapper.

The application should only use groundsdk module. Furthermore, all classes and interfaces located inside the internal package of groundsdk module should not be used by the application.

Main entry point is the class GroundSdk, which provides API to access Drone and RemoteControl objects. GroundSdk maintains a list of known and available drones and remote controls.

The application can obtain an instance of GroundSdk by requesting a new session. It may create as many sessions as deemed appropriate; however each session must also be closed when not needed anymore. Groundsdk internal engine is started when the first GroundSdk session is created and stopped when the last GroundSdk session is closed.

Drone and RemoteControl classes

The Drone class represents a drone of any model. It is uniquely identified by a persistent UID and has a name and a current state.

Similarly, the RemoteControl class represent a remote control of any model. It is uniquely identified by a persistent UID, and has a name and a current state.

Those 2 classes are also containers of component objects representing parts of the drone or remote control. A component has properties storing the current state and information of the represented element and provides methods to act on it.

There are 3 types of components:

• Instrument: components that provides telemetry information,

• Peripheral: components for accessory functions,

• PilotingItf: components that allows to pilot the drone (and as such are not available for remote controls).

Each drone and remote control features a subset of all available components. For example if a drone has a GPS it will contains the Gps instrument. Some components are available when the device (drone or remote control) is disconnected, some only when the device is connected.

Facilities

Ground SDK also provides a set of global services that the application can access. Such services are represented by the Facility class.

An example of facility is FirmwareManager that handle the download of firmware updates from a cloud server. Another example of facility is AutoConnection. This facility connects a remote control or a drone as soon as it is available.

Notifications

The application can receive a notification when the state or properties of a component or facility change, by using accessor method that accept an observer object, represented by Ref.Observer interface, and return a reference to the component, through the Ref class.

The registered observer is called when the component becomes available, when its state or properties change, and when it becomes unavailable.

The returned reference can be used to unregister the observer. The reference is linked to the GroundSdk session from which it has been requested; it is also closed automatically when the session gets closed. Once the reference is closed, the observer is unregistered and won’t receive any further change notifications.

Configuration

GroundSdk can be configured by adding specific declarations in the application resources.

Below is groundsdk config.xml. Any config value may be overridden by the application in its own config.xml file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <!-- Application key -->
    <string name="gsdk_application_key"/>

    <!-- Tells whether connection using local wifi is enabled -->
    <bool name="gsdk_wifi_enabled">true</bool>

    <!-- Tells whether connection using usb device (i.e. Sky Controller) is enabled -->
    <bool name="gsdk_usb_enabled">true</bool>

    <!-- Tells whether connection using ethernet device is enabled -->
    <bool name="gsdk_ethernet_enabled">true</bool>

    <!-- Tells whether connection using "Usb Debug Bridge" is enabled -->
    <bool name="gsdk_usb_debug_enabled">false</bool>

    <!-- Tells whether dev tool box is enabled -->
    <bool name="gsdk_dev_toolbox_enabled">false</bool>

    <!-- Tells whether drone settings ares stored locally and sent to the drone when connecting. Values are:
         OFF: don't store offline settings
         MODEL: store settings, values are shared for all devices of the same model -->
    <string name="gsdk_offline_settings_mode">MODEL</string>

    <!-- Tells whether GroundSdk USB/RC accessory bootstrap activity is enabled. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_rc_accessory_bootstrap_activity_enabled">true</bool>

    <!-- Tells whether GPS ephemeris synchronization is enabled. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_ephemeris_sync_enabled">true</bool>
    <!-- Tells whether crash report synchronization is enabled. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_crash_report_enabled">true</bool>

    <!-- Space quota for crash report synchronization, in bytes. Value 0 disables quota.
         Quota is checked when groundsdk first starts. Eldest crash report files are deleted until the total size
         of all collected crash report files is lower than this quota. -->
    <integer name="gsdk_crash_report_quota">0</integer>

    <!-- Tells whether device firmware synchronization is enabled. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_firmware_enabled">true</bool>

    <!-- Alternate firmware server to use. Empty to use the default server. -->
    <string name="gsdk_firmware_server"/>

    <!-- Tells whether blackbox synchronization is enabled. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_blackbox_enabled">true</bool>

    <!-- Space quota for blackbox synchronization, in bytes. Value 0 disables quota.
         Quota is checked when groundsdk first starts. Eldest blackbox files are deleted until the total size
         of all collected blackbox files is lower than this quota. -->
    <integer name="gsdk_blackbox_quota">0</integer>

    <!-- Folder in the application directory on external storage where blackboxes are copied.
         Empty to disable copy to public folder. -->
    <string name="gsdk_blackbox_public_folder"/>

    <!-- Tells whether flight data synchronization is enabled. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_flight_data_enabled">true</bool>

    <!-- Space quota for flight data synchronization, in bytes. Value 0 disables quota.
         Quota is checked when groundsdk first starts. Eldest flight data files are deleted until the total size
         of all collected flight data files is lower than this quota. -->
    <integer name="gsdk_flight_data_quota">0</integer>

    <!-- Tells whether flight log and event log support is enabled. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_flight_log_enabled">true</bool>

    <!-- Flight log server to use. An empty value will disable flight log upload on server, and event log generation and
         upload. -->
    <string name="gsdk_flight_log_server"/>

    <!-- Space quota for flight log and event log synchronization, in bytes. Value 0 disables quota.
         Quota is checked when groundsdk first starts. Eldest flight log files are deleted until the total size
         of all collected flight log files is lower than this quota. -->
    <integer name="gsdk_flight_log_quota">0</integer>

    <!-- Tells whether flight camera record support is enabled. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_flight_camera_record_enabled">true</bool>

    <!-- Flight camera record server to use. An empty value will disable flight camera record upload on server, and
    event log generation and upload. -->
    <string name="gsdk_flight_camera_record_server"/>

    <!-- Space quota for flight camera record synchronization, in bytes. Value 0 disables quota.
         Quota is checked when groundsdk first starts. Eldest flight camera record files are deleted until the total
         size of all collected flight camera record files is lower than this quota. -->
    <integer name="gsdk_flight_camera_record_quota">0</integer>

    <!-- Tells whether GUTMA log support is enabled. Note that this feature depends on flight log support. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_gutma_log_enabled">true</bool>

    <!-- Space quota for GUTMA log synchronization, in bytes. Value 0 disables quota.
         Quota is checked when groundsdk first starts. Eldest GUTMA log files are deleted until the total size
         of all collected GUTMA log files is lower than this quota. -->
    <integer name="gsdk_gutma_log_quota">0</integer>

    <!-- Tells whether video decoding is enabled. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_video_decoding_enabled">true</bool>

    <!-- Defines the set of device models to be supported.
         Leaving this value empty commands GroundSdk to support all known device models; otherwise, GroundSdk will
         explicitly ignore any device whose model is not listed in this array.
         Each item in the array must be the name from either the Drone.Model or the RemoteControl.Model enum, in
         upper-case. For instance:
         <item>ANAFI_4K</item>
         <item>SKYCONTROLLER_3</item>
         ... -->
    <string-array name="gsdk_supported_devices"/>

    <!-- Tells whether automatic devices connection will be started automatically each time the first GroundSdk session
         is started. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_auto_connection_at_startup">false</bool>

    <!-- Tells whether wifi access point country will automatically be selected by reverse geocoding system location.
         If true:
         - the wifi country setting is changed each time a new country is detected from the current location, and it
         cannot be changed from the API
         - the environment is forced to outdoor, and it cannot be changed from the API. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_auto_select_wifi_country">true</bool>

    <!-- Default country code that will be returned by the reverse geocoder.
         Empty to not return a default country code. -->
    <string name="gsdk_reverse_geocoder_default_country_code"/>

    <!-- Maximum size for the in-memory cache gsdk maintains for media thumbnails, in bytes. -->
    <integer name="gsdk_media_thumbnail_cache_size">0</integer>

    <!-- Whether to cancel current thumbnail fetch request in case all requesting clients have canceled their own
         request for the corresponding thumbnail. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_media_thumbnail_fetch_cancelable">true</bool>

    <!-- Defines the order in which thumbnails are fetched.
         When true, thumbnails are fetched in the order they are requested.
         When false, the latest requested thumbnail is fetched in priority. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_media_thumbnail_fetch_fair">true</bool>

    <!-- Allows fetching multiple thumbnails concurrently and/or in parallel. -->
    <bool name="gsdk_media_thumbnail_fetch_parallel">false</bool>

    <!-- Implementation of FcrConverter interface used to anonymized raw picture taken by the drone.
     Empty will deactivate the FCR upload. -->
    <string name="gsdk_fcr_anonymizer_fqn"/>

</resources>