VBar Control flight analyzer support

Hello VBar users!

My name is Linus Larsson, I'm currently developing VBar Control flight analyzer, a program for reading the logs from your VBar Control and present them in a graphical manner. The program is free to use.

At the moment supported platforms are Windows 7 and up. Sorry, no Mac version yet. Current version is only in English language. Full info on the homepage.

Please download and try out. This thread will be the official support thread here at vstabi.info

This is a community project, and I have technical support from Mikado. It's fully open source and hosted on github. Link on the homepage.

Download at http://linlar.org/vbc



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/24/2015 02:41PM by RV.

Hello Linus,
Congratulations, great job! Just installed your Software, NIS did not trust it so far, I was the 6th community member to install but this very likely to change soon . So far it is very intuitiv and well made. I like the idea to make a choice to only show logs with a used capacity greater than 1/4. A few minor remarks:
- Maybe the numbers and letters in the graphs could be a bit larger
- When closing the program and reopen after disconnecting VBarControl I noticed it still has the data to replay. Is this stored automatically in your program?
I also use the very extensive LogviewStudio and GNU Dataexplorer which I like very much. But your program is kind of a "tailor-made suit" exclusively for VBarControl. Please go on like that, I will like to give feedback!
Greetings from Germany,
Frank

Frank_Ha Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Congratulations, great job!
Thanks!

> - Maybe the numbers and letters in the graphs
> could be a bit larger
Noted. There are other small GUI issues which can be better. I have worked on this for the next version.

> - When closing the program and reopen after
> disconnecting VBarControl I noticed it still has
> the data to replay. Is this stored automatically
> in your program?
Yes!

The program has its own database. The Control rotates the logs for UI and General VBar log, so they will dissapear eventually (20 flights per model). My program takes care of that and stores the data indefinitely. You will be able to pull up UI data from every flight you have ever done if you unload to the analyzer regulary.

It is mentioned in the FAQ which file on your computer is the database, you can delete this if you want to start over, but you will perhaps lose VBar logs and UI logs.

/Linus

Just get aware of the the fact that there is a dynamic zoom in the graph, that is great, wanted to add this as a "wannahave". Will have to take a look at the helifreak topic! Just visited your donation link!
Frank Ha

Would it be possible to add the option of simply tracking model and flight time (date, time, duration) from the VBar logs to this software for those of us who do not have the battery/UI sensor?

I'd simply love to have a list (table) of:

Model
Flight Date
Start Time
Finish Time
Duration

And maybe a summary page and/or graphic chart with averages, totals per model, perhaps last flight date, frequency flown.

This would make it easy to keep track of flights for maintenance, etc.

Thank you!

Hi Pfeil,

Technically, you could maybe do something like that using only the VBar log. Since this is the only log file you get without the sensor. It is not all a bad idea.

However... It would require some substantial rework/addition to the program. It would also be possible to lose flights since VBar logs are rotated in the transmitter. This goes a little bit against my goals for the analyzer, I want everything to just work. Every single time.

No promises, but I will at least check up what would be required to implement this.

/Linus

----

After having giving this some thought, it just wouldn't be a good experience. There would be no way to distinguish actual flights from setup powerups. The flighttime would be incorrect (Startup to shutdown of VBar isn't flight time).

So for now, no, I will not implement this.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/29/2015 09:13PM by Lussarn.

Hi Linus. I have run into an issue. I am getting a list index out of range error. If I delete the file it hangs on it loads no problem. I will post a screen shot.

Judging from the screenshot, This is a VBar log file. Can you send me this file so I can check it out, you hopefully didn't delete it.

Email me at linus.larsson@gmail.com, attach the file.

/Linus



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2015 08:13AM by Lussarn.

Email sent.

There is a new bugfix release out v2.7.2, download from homepage

Only fix is a sanity check on the import of vbar logs, if you don't have a problem you don't need it.

/Linus



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2015 09:48PM by Lussarn.

Thanks Linus that took care of it.

I can see the difficulty, but what about adding a simple filter to eliminate usage less than x secs. In my case, for example, once I have set up a model, I virtually only ever use the VBar to fly. I wouldn't mind editing out extraneous, non-flight usage records though.

I was thinking of a simple parser that would pull the information and append it to a text (tab-separated or XLS-style) so that the records for each model would be retained even if the entry in the VBar log gets deleted. Basically, it would check each entry for:

If longer than x sec then check if exists, if not, append to file.

Not sure how hard that would be to do but it would sure beat manually tracking flights.

Yes, you are correct that it can be done to some extent... It's not hard to implement, but even if I do it correctly there would be lose ends, and lose ends means support...

I'm in the middle of a major code cleanup at the moment, which will make it easier to implement new functionality. I'll have to think this over if there is any way for this to be implemented. May I ask why you don't run UI sensors. I can see the problem on Oxy 3 etc, and perhaps the largest helicopters like speed birds.

The rumor is there will be ESCs in the future that will have builtin vcontrol telemetry protocol. I have no more info than anybody else on this, so I'm just following the rumor though...

NEW MAJOR RELEASE!

Hello all current and future analyzer users! I have completed a new major release of the VBar Control flight analyzer, this time version 3.0.0.

Download from homepage
http://linlar.org/vbc

New features

Screenshot UI window
Screenshoting from the UI window, with scaling, perfect when uploading to internet boards.

Screenshoted in analyzer 3

Model Window:
Personalize your analyzer with the model window with image and information. Possibility to screenshot from here too. Will look something like this

Screenshoted in analyzer 3

Text to flight logs
more info on this on homepage but looks like this


There is also a major code cleanup and small bugfixes here and there



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/08/2015 02:49AM by Lussarn.

Hi Linus !
I Like it very much, this is a very nice feature for the VBC, keep up the good works... I'll visit the donation link for shure...

/regards
Kurt

Thank you, much appreciated

/Linus

Seems like I had a small bug in the release. I messed up the weekly graph where models and batteries have been switched when asking the database..

It's not critical and have been fixed. I'm waiting a few days for a bugfix release if something else pops up.

/Linus

Works great!

regards (EN) / Gruss (DE)

Rainer Vetter

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Posting and answering - please use a PC and a standard keyboard. Answer all questions fully, take the needed time, don't forget probably requested attachments.

Für Posts und Antworten bitte einen PC und eine richtige Taststaur benutzen sowie alle Fragen vollständig abarbeiten. Nehmt Euch Zeit, beantwortet Rückfragen in Ruhe und vollständig.
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Für Einzelkommunikation bitte ausschließlich Email verwenden! - PN, Messenger, Chat usw. werden nicht bearbeitet.
For single user communication please send a email only! PM, Messenger, Chat etc. won't be read.

Small bugfix release v3.0.1. Only change is the weekly graph now funtioning correctly

Download at homepage
http://www.linlar.org/vbc

/Linus

A little bit about my roadmap for the analyzer

The plan have always been to go multiplatform, that is OSX and Linux support for the analyzer. Unfortunately I've come to the conclusion that my current choice of GUI framework (WXWidgets) will not do. It is multiplatform which is why I choosed it to begin with, but after using it I have found have various bugs on different platforms. The final straw was when the screenshoting just didn't work on Mac equiped with retina screens.

I'm not releasing anything halfbaked so I have decided to switch GUI framework to QT instead. That means some work, there is quite a bit of GUI code in the analyzer. The upside is that QT is much easier to work with (I had not used either WX or QT when starting this project and I made the wrong choice). So far I have ported the Main window 90%, Ui window 100%, model info window 50% so it's coming along nicely. This is just a couple of days of work actually.

Next big version will hopefully look and work the same as the current version but lots of under the hood changes of course. And hopefully a OSX version will follow when I feel the program is stable enough.

I don't know if I will package a Linux version or just have instructions on have to get it running from source. It's fairly easy for someone who knows there way around Linux. I actually use Linux as my main development platform now that it works 100%., been a hardcore Linux user for the last 15 years or so.

/Linus





Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2015 10:44AM by Lussarn.

Hi,

waiting for the OS X version

Cheers

Eddi

Born to fly ...
forced to work.

Hallo
Erstmal möchte ich sagen ein super Program, Danke dafür.
Ich habe da ur ein kleines Problem, leider kann ich den UILog bei mir nicht sehen. Der Button Show ist nicht vorhanden.
Weiß da jemand Rat für mich? Habe ich was nicht richtig eingestellt ??
Lieben Dank

Hi
Du musst in der vbarcontrol auch das loggen einschalten (daran hatte ich auch nicht gedacht :-))

Sven

OH Mann ich Danke Dir vielmals war natürlich aus geschaltet
Werde es jetzt noch mal testen

Hello!

About that Mac version of the Analyzer, it's pretty much done. All that is needed are some testing. Anybody up for helping me out with that? OSX 10.6 64bit is supported. The program is as good as done, but I need too heck the distribution, do I supply all libraries needed to acually run the program etc?

PM me if you would like to help out!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/23/2015 04:55PM by Lussarn.

Hi again,

I would want to test on the Mac, service (at) mikado-heli (dot) de

OS X 10.11.1 (always current).

Kind regards

Eddi

Born to fly ...
forced to work.

Email sent edward! Thx!

Hi,

thanks, will look into it today, hopefully.

Cheers

Eddi

Born to fly ...
forced to work.

Hi Linus,

works properly with 10.11.1 ... no issues. If you need to know anything specific, let me know.

Things I found at the first use:

. full screen mode, if you click on logs, it opens more full screen windows, can get confusing
. add pic to heli ... once there is a pic, no means to remove it, only to load a new one
. columns on main screen could use captions (Id, Date, Battery Name, Model Name, Flight Time, Capacity, Used Capacity and so on, also what you get when you click on this or that Show)
. make widths of columns adjustable or automatically adjust so no ... appear (at the moment in the date/time-column, at least on the Mac)
. individual U/I logs could use units (A, rpm, W, %)
. events (like sensor out of range, anything critical or dangerous) could be marked in the individual U/I logs, as an overlay of the timeline, you already seem to highlight some in the flight logs
. File/Import from VBar Control could use a button in the main screen, or you make it the Connection Button if green

Kind regards

Eddi

Born to fly ...
forced to work.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/2015 08:40AM by Eddi E. aus G..