Previously MAVLink data streams recorded by QGC would use a fixed block size of the maximum MAVLink message length and fill in only the bytes written by the message. This wasted space, make manual parsing difficult, and broke compatibility with scripts provided in the MAVLink project (issue #174).

This patch alters logging to output only a packed data stream (64-bit big endian unix timestamp in microseconds since epoch + MAVLink message) instead of the unpacked data stream previously output. Additionally the previous logging code used the system endianness for packing in the timestamp, this has now been switched to always be big endian regardless of platform. All the documentation specifies big endian, so the code now follows the docs here.

Additionally data playback has been modified to playback both the new packed data streams as well as the old data streams, even those with improper endianness for their timestamps.

Finally, a variety of bugs have been fixed, along with some additional features and user experience changes, hopefully for the better. All existing functionality has been preserved as well.

Fixed race issues in config upload, tested to be reliable now - board startup scripts now need the other half of testing

Addition of requestReset to LinkInterface, to allow MavLinkProtocol to detect when connected, but at the wrong baud rate, request a reset.

Changed many functions in the abstract *Link classes to be const. This facilitates setting other functions as const. The metadata for specific links are reset when the links are added.

The details on the success/errors for the MAVLink protocols are now shown for each link as tooltips that are updated every 5s. Values are currently wrong and unsure why as of yet.

Changed many functions in the abstract *Link classes to be const. This facilitates setting other functions as const. The metadata for specific links are reset when the links are added.

The details on the success/errors for the MAVLink protocols are now shown for each link as tooltips that are updated every 5s. Values are currently wrong and unsure why as of yet.

Addition of requesting status updates from APM, if APM is in a state with no status updates, this will request them

The reason for this is, because the last change in the file structure is buggy, it was only written the message length of the buffer to the file and missed to add the length for the timestamp.
For fixing this problem it would be possible to insert something like

len += sizeof(quint64);

after:

int len = mavlink_msg_to_send_buffer(buf+sizeof(quint64), &message);

But I think a consistent file structure has more adavatages for a logfile over a more compressed structure.
E.g. it would be necessary to go through all packages to proceed a jump during a replay.
Additional the LogPlayer was not updated during the last 7 month since the logfile structure was changed (even it was buggy)...

If filesize is really a problem I would recommend to change the logfile handling in a way of writting a temporary consistend
logfile and compress it afterwards (QCompress) like done by many programs

Refactored part of MAVLinkProtocol::receiveBytes() as I was trying to debug within it. Nothing major, though I did remove an unnecessary loop.

Code changes to reflect new header information (sysid, compid, timestamp) in protobuf messages. Added protobuf message timeout; old messages will not be visualized. Fixed getParameterValue in ParamManager; the method can segfault if the component id or parameter id is not valid.

Enabled visualization of point cloud data via Protocol Buffers serialization and extended_mavlink_message.