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Lyrebird

Logs & Troubleshooting

Flight logging

Section titled “Flight logging”

Lyrebird logs flight data in JSONL format.

Storage locations are checked in order:

  1. Removable microSD card: Lyrebird/FlightLogs/YYYY-MM-DD/HH-mm-ss_<drone>.jsonl
  2. Documents folder: Documents/lyrebird/FlightLogs/YYYY-MM-DD/
  3. App-external fallback: Android/data/<pkg>/files/FlightLogs/YYYY-MM-DD/

DJI SDK TXT flight records are copied to Lyrebird/DJI_FlightRecords/ on app launch and after landing so they survive app reinstalls.

Troubleshooting

Section titled “Troubleshooting”

Connection refused:

  • Verify the Lyrebird app is running on the RC (servers start on launch).
  • Check the RC is on the same LAN as the GS.
  • Test with curl http://{RC_IP}:8080/config and nc {RC_IP} 8081.

Drone does not respond to navigation commands:

  • Press Enable Virtual Stick in the app or call /send/enableVirtualStick.
  • Check isManualOverrideActive in telemetry; call /send/deactivateManualOverride if needed.

App shows “No drone detected” while a DJI app sees the aircraft:

The RC connects to Android as a USB accessory, and only one app can hold it open at a time. Opening DJI Fly (or any other DJI app) takes it: Lyrebird’s SDK still registers, but no product appears, so the aircraft link reads as dead — and the DJI app seeing the drone makes it look like Lyrebird’s fault.

  • Close the other DJI app yourself — swipe it out of Recents, or use App info → Force stop. The home screen notices this state and says so; its button is Re-open app, which is the half it can do reliably (a fresh process re-attaches the SDK to the freed accessory).
  • Order matters: close the other app first, then press Re-open. Re-opening while it still holds the accessory changes nothing, and the app says so again rather than pretending to have fixed it.
  • Android will not kill a foreground app, and some OEM builds (OnePlus/ColorOS seen on the bench) restart DJI Fly in the background — it re-took the RC mid-session even after both approaches. On bench phones, disable DJI Fly’s auto-start or keep it uninstalled.
  • When Android asks which app should open the RC, choose Lyrebird and Always, so the chooser does not hand it to DJI Fly next time.
  • Re-plugging the RC’s USB-C cable also re-attaches the accessory.
  • Over MAVLink this state is visible from the ground station as heartbeats with nothing else: python GroundStation/Python/test_scripts/field_check.py <RC_IP> reports telemetry arriving but no batteryLevel/attitude.

Video not connecting:

  • Start the video-test stack with docker compose -f GroundStation/video_test/compose.yaml up -d --build.
  • Open http://localhost:8090 and verify the phone telemetry connection is active.
  • Check MediaMTX paths with curl http://localhost:9997/v3/paths/list.
  • Prefer clean 5 GHz Wi-Fi channels for multiple simultaneous video publishers.
  • If the surface encoder is enabled, inspect the dashboard webRtc.activeCamera, webRtc.outputFps, webRtc.recoveryCount, and MediaMTX inboundFramesInError. Disable lb_whip_surface_h264_encoder in the app settings and restart to compare against the standard encoder.
  • A black or frozen surface stream usually points to the camera-surface/MediaCodec handoff rather than WHEP. The standard WHIP encoder is the fallback for aircraft or Android devices where the experimental path is not stable.

Android build:

Terminal window
cd LyrebirdApp/android-sdk-v5-as
./gradlew :app:compileCurrentV5DebugKotlin
./gradlew :app:assembleCurrentV5Debug

Project structure

Section titled “Project structure”
Lyrebird/
├── LyrebirdApp/
│   ├── android-sdk-v5-as/               # Main Android project (open this in Android Studio)
│   │   └── local.properties             # Place AIRCRAFT_API_KEY here
│   ├── lyrebird-app/                 # Lyrebird Android app (com.lyrebird.rc)
│   │   └── src/main/
│   │       └── java/com/lyrebird/rc/
│   │           ├── FlightDeckActivity.kt
│   │           ├── controller/          # DroneController, PID, autonomy helpers
│   │           ├── logger/              # Flight and DJI record logging
│   │           ├── server/              # HTTP, telemetry, and discovery services
│   │           └── webrtc/              # WHIP/WebRTC video publishing
│   └── android-sdk-v5-uxsdk/            # DJI UXSDK UI components
└── GroundStation/
    ├── Python/
    │   ├── lyrebird_groundstation/    # Canonical DJI client (HTTP + TCP telemetry)
    │   ├── djiInterfaceSafety.py        # Legacy import shim for lyrebird_groundstation.safety
    │   └── test_scripts/                # Authority and capture/download test scripts
    ├── Dockerfile                       # ros:lyrical (or jazzy/humble) + CycloneDDS container
    ├── entrypoint.sh                    # Container entry point
    ├── run_docker.sh                    # Docker run helper
    ├── video_test/                      # MediaMTX + multi-drone video dashboard
    │   └── compose.yaml                 # MediaMTX + dashboard compose stack
    └── ROS/
        ├── lyrebird_controller/       # ROS 2 control + telemetry node
        ├── lyrebird_videofeed/        # Video feed node
        └── lyrebird_bringup/          # Launch files and config