The Ground Control Station (GCS), while secondary to the main mission allows for several useful functions in support of the drone. A GSC can connect to the drone in several ways:

• via USB cable,
• through a serial wireless link (e.g., using an Xbee pair of transceivers)
• through TCP/IP (more exactly UDP/IP) for example by using a pair of WiFi transceivers

Functions

• During the mission a GCS allows the operator to view the current status of the drone. Technically, all parameters sent periodically through MAVLink are accessible to GCS, but some are clearly more useful than others, for example, the current drone position, altitude, battery state, GPS state, status (e.g, mission abort), etc.
• During a mission a GCS allows the operator to issue commands to a drone (e.g., abort mission, go to this location, land, etc.)
• During the setup stage, a GCS allows for firmware update, calibration and setting of many parameters in a drone (failsafe modes, flight modes, mission waypoints, etc.)
• After a mission, a GCS can replay a log file for detailed analysis of the mission.
• After a mission, a GCS allows the retrieval (and erasure) of log files from the autopilot.
• Optionally, a GCS may also allow you to graph various variables from the log files of the autopilot. These graphs can be irreplaceable for debugging misbehaviour.

GCS Options

There are several GCS options available:

• ​Mission Planner is the "official" GCS for our autopilot. It has full functionality except for support for multiple drones and a live view of the MAVLink messages received. It is open source, and only runs in Windows. ​Older versions.
• ​QGroundControl is an open source GCS that has more features than the mission planner, including support for multiple drones. It is very flexible, allowing for multiple view setups to accommodate different user needs. It is multi-platform (Windows/MAC/Linux).
• ​MAVProxy is a fully functional GCS for UAVs. It is command line based, but has full support for the MAVLink protocol. Additionally, it allows for multiple other GCSs to be "proxied" through MAVProxy. It's is written 100% in python, and hence multi-platform.
• ​APM Planner is the successor of Mission Planner, and according to the author, an offshoot of Mission Planner and QGroundControl. It is currently in beta stage. It supports multiple drones and it is multi-platform.