Battery Protocol
MAVLink provides a number of messages for providing battery information:
BATTERY_STATUS: Battery status information that changes regularly:
- Emitted for both "dumb" and "smart" batteries at around 0.5 Hz (for each battery).
- Some batteries may provide fault and mode information in this message.
INFO
BATTERY_STATUSis expected to be superseded by BATTERY_STATUS_V2. For more information see RFC 0018 - Improved Battery Status Reporting.BATTERY_INFO: Battery information that changes rarely, if ever (e.g. device name):
- Emit on connection and/or when requested using MAV_CMD_REQUEST_MESSAGE.
The messages should be sent individually for each battery in the system (the messages have an instance id field that is used to identify the corresponding battery). It is up to the GCS to provide an appropriate mechanism that allows the user to assess the aggregate battery status on systems that have multiple batteries.
INFO
There is no standardized mechanism to report the "aggregate" battery state on a multi-battery system. A GCS is expected to provide enough information from the individual battery reports to allow a user to make a reasonable assessment of vehicle battery status.
Message/Enum Summary
| Message | Description |
|---|---|
| BATTERY_STATUS | Battery message used for frequent status update - e.g. of current capacity, voltages, faults, etc. |
| BATTERY_INFO (WIP) | Smart battery message used for invariant or infrequently changing data - e.g. battery name, battery full/empty capacity and voltages etc. |
| Enum | Description |
|---|---|
| MAV_BATTERY_FAULT | Fault/health indications. |
| MAV_BATTERY_MODE | Smart battery mode. |
Battery Components
Batteries that are connected to a flight controller via a non-MAVLink bus are treated as part of the flight controller component. Specifically, the battery messages are emitted with the autopilot system and component ids, and the MAV_TYPE for the type of vehicle.
Smart batteries that are distinct components on the MAVLink network must:
- emit a HEARTBEAT with
HEARTBEAT.type=MAV_TYPE_BATTERY -have a unique component ID within the MAVLink system. MAV_COMP_ID_BATTERY and MAV_COMP_ID_BATTERY2 should be used by default for the first two battery instances. Subsequent instances can use any spare/unused ID.
INFO
Ground stations (and other components) that are interested in battery messages should differentiate batteries based on BATTERY_STATUS.id/BATTERY_INFO.id.
A Note on SYS_STATUS
SYS_STATUS contains three battery information fields: voltage_battery, current_battery, battery_remaining.
On a single-battery system these usually provide the same information as the BATTERY_STATUS message.
On multi-battery systems the values are not standardised, and depend on the flight stack and/or flight stack configuration. For example, a system may report the same information as the first BATTERY_STATUS, allow the user to configure which battery is reported (i.e. with a parameter), report the battery with the lowest remaining capacity.
INFO
GCS should not rely on the value of SYS_STATUS. However it cannot be removed because it is used for battery reporting on many legacy systems (e.g. On-screen displays).