Fit the show to your venue

Setup environment

The next button in the show control panel you need to press is the Setup environment button, which helps you initialize your drone show on the map.

Setup environment

There are several basic configuration options you can set here, as detailed below thematically.

Setup show origin and show orientation

Show trajectories are always expressed in relative coordinates. To position your show in the real world, you need to define a geodetic origin and an orientation for your show (we are talking about outdoor shows here - for indoor shows the origin and the fixed orientation is usually fixed by the used positioning system).

The proposed show origin and orientation might be included in your .skyc show file, but it can be modified in Skybrush Live as well in several convenient ways:

  1. Right click somewhere on the map and use the context menu to place your show origin to the given point.

  2. Select the (yellow) convex hull of the trajectories in the Map panel and i) move it around by holding the left-mouse button down while navigating; ii) rotate it by pressing Alt while navigating with left-mouse button down.

  3. On the Environment settings dialog that pops up when you click on the Setup environment checklist entry.

Environment settings

On this dialog window you can enter explicit values for show orientation, origin and AMSL reference manually, or you can manipulate the show origin and orientation in several ways:

Show origin / Show orientation

Use these fields to exter explicit values for show origin and show orientation manually.

Magic wand

Try the magic wand button on the right side next to show origin and orientation property to auto-fit the show origin and orientation to the actual positions of your active drones seen by Skybrush Live. Note that the auto fit algorithm will assume that your drones are aligned with the show orientation according to the drone heading settings detailed below.

FILE→SHOW

Press this button to copy the show origin and orientation stored in your .skyc file into Live.

MAP→SHOW

Press this button to copy your current map origin and orientation (a tool for Flat-Earth measurements on the map, appearing as a coordinate system marker with 50m long red (X+) and green (Y+) axes) into your show origin and orientation.

SHOW→MAP

Press this button to copy the show origin and orientation into the map origin and orientation.

Setup desired drone headings on the ground

Besides the show origin and orientation you can also define the front direction of your drones (i.e. their heading on the ground) relative to global coordinates or relative to the show orientation.

Use the magic compass button on the right side next to the heading settings to calculate the common heading value from the average headings of the drones currently out on the field.

Setting up the desired heading of the drones is useful for safety validation purposes. Skybrush Live detects misaligned drones with bad orientation compared to the given settings with yellow warning or red error color in the heading column of the UAVs list and in the Setup takeoff area popup. Drone misalignment is typically caused by compass errors or drones placed on metals, wires or magnetized subsurface objects that might affect the estimation of drone orientation and thus flight stability.

Setup altitude reference

On the Environment settings popup window you can also choose between AHL- or AMSL- based altitude reference during the show.

If you use an RTK base station and you have high quality correction signals, we recommend to use absolute altitude in your flight (AMSL-based). In this case you need to setup the absolute altitude of the home/ground reference level manually.

Press the button on the right side of the AMSL reference text box to set the AMSL reference to the average absolute altitude of your active drones.

If you do not use an RTK system, relative (AHL-based) altitudes are preferred, as without RTK the AMSL values are poorly estimated and this can affect the takeoff and landing quality of your drones badly.

If you use an ArduCopter-based autopilot with EKF2, check the EK2_ALT_SOURCE parameter to setup your altitude calculation properly. With RTK, GPS altitude source is preferred, while without RTK barometer altitude source is preferred. If you use EKF3, set EK3_SRC1_POSZ instead. If you use more EKF3 lanes, also set the remaining EK3_SRCx_POSZ parameters as needed.

Enable RTK corrections

Finally, the Environment settings popup window can also be used to select your RTK correction data source to allow centimeter level positioning of your drones, but you can also set that up any time later on in the RTK Status toolbox item.

Check your setup on the map

If you succeed with all environmental settings, yellow triangles should appear on the map, showing the newly defined home positions of the show and a yellow polygon around the home positions indicating the convex hull of all trajectories.

If you cannot see these yellow mission items, enable them from the Mission info layer in the Layers panel and/or press the Zoom to Fit button.

Adapt show to venue

The next button in the show control panel is an optional step, available to Pro users only.

Adapt show to venue

Use the Adapt show to venue button if you need to redesign your drone show on the spot quickly, for example in the following cases:

  • you need a new takeoff grid arrangement on this specific venue, different from what has been designed in your show

  • you need to raise the takeoff altitude due to e.g. unexpectedly large trees that need to be avoided

  • you need to move or rotate the show relative to the takeoff grid slightly for better visibility for the audience

See the description of the Adapt show dialog for more details on usage.

adapting your show from Live recreates the entire takeoff and RTH phases of your show, keeping the net show content intact. Use this tool only if you know what you are doing and always validate your transformed show in Skybrush Viewer before flying it!