Logs

On each launch, the server creates a log of all the messages sent by the aircraft. This log can be used to analyse flight data and to replay the flight.

Format

The log files are stored in the var/logs/ folder (under PAPARAZZI_HOME). A log is splitted in two files:

• A .log file, an XML file, which contains a copy of the whole configuration (airframes, flight plans, ...).
• A .data file, an ascii file, which contains the list of the received messages. Each message is time-stamped in seconds since the creation of the file and marked with the id of the sending aircraft.

The basename of these two files is the same and is build from the date and time at the creation.

The lines of the .data file are formatted according to the message description listed in the conf/messages.xml file. For example, the following line

3.300 6 GPS 3 36028551 481359212 899 18500 0 -8 960 31 0

contains a GPS message received at time 3.3s, from aircraft 6. According the GPS message description:

<message name="GPS" ID="8">
    <field name="mode"   type="uint8" unit="byte_mask"></field>
    <field name="utm_east"  type="int32" unit="cm"></field>
    <field name="utm_north"  type="int32" unit="cm"></field>
    <field name="course" type="int16" unit="decideg"></field>
    <field name="alt"    type="int32" unit="cm"></field>
    ...
</message>

UTM position is 360285.51m east, 4813592.12m north, course is 89.9° (east), altitude is 185m, ... Note that the appropriate messages.xml description, i.e. the one which has been used while the log was created, is itself stored in the associated .log file. It may differ from the current one installed in your conf/ folder.

Note: The .data files may be huge (about 4M per hour with a standard telemetry configuration). They can be efficiently compressed. The tools described in the next sections handle most of the compressed format (.zip, .gz, .bz2, ...). The bzip2 compression seems to perform better than others on these files.

Data Plotting

Data stored in log files can be plotted with the Plotter (sw/logalizer/plot or launchable from the Paparazzi Center). This tool can plot data from different logs in the same window and data from the same log in different windows. It also offers to export the track as a KML file for Google Earth.

Replay

A flight can be replayed with the Log Flight Player (sw/logalizer/play, launchable from the Paparazzi Center). This agent then is a substitute for the Data Link agent and will send over the bus the messages which had been send by the aircraft while the log was recorded.

Note: While replaying a log, it is a good idea to disable a new log creation from the server (-n option). Also when doing a log replay it is very valuable to launch the messages window as well.