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Drone autopilot connector
Say which drone or flight controller. Get MATLAB connected over MAVLink and reading its data.
Drone autopilot connector is a free AI skill for the job "Build and ship software". Give the instructions to an AI assistant that supports the required files and tools, then review its output.
Free · No account · BSD 2 Clause licence · Made by MathWorks · Level: advanced
Made by MathWorks. See the original on GitHub; we copied it as it is, with its licence.
What it does
MATLAB talking to your drone in a few minutes. You name the flight controller, such as PX4 or ArduPilot, and get a working MAVLink link over UDP, with MATLAB acting as the ground station. The skill gives a fixed order of steps, because getting the order wrong fails without any error. First create the message dialect. Then open the UDP link. Then run a timer that sends heartbeats so the autopilot keeps listening. Finally find the connected client and confirm data is arriving. It suits simulators (SITL) and real hardware on a network. Reading parameters, mission upload and offline log parsing are outside it.
You give it
- Which autopilot you use, PX4 or ArduPilot
- IP address and UDP port
- MATLAB with MAVLink support
- Simulator or hardware details (optional)
You get
- Connection code in the right order
- A running heartbeat timer
- Confirmation that the client is found
- A link ready for reading flight data
Use it when
- You want MATLAB to connect to a PX4 simulator.
- Your ground station code never gets a reply from the autopilot.
- You need a heartbeat that keeps the link alive.
- You are testing against ArduPilot on a network.
How to use it
- Add it to your AI once: download it and add the folder to Claude, ChatGPT or Codex as a skill.
- Ask for the job in your own words. Your AI opens the skill when it fits.
- It works best when your AI can run MATLAB and reach a PX4 or ArduPilot autopilot.