feat(inputs.mavlink): Add plugin #16780

chrisdalke · 2025-04-14T01:26:30Z

Summary

Add a Mavlink input plugin.

The mavlink plugin connects to a MavLink-compatible flight controller such as as ArduPilot or PX4. and translates all incoming messages into metrics.

The purpose of this plugin is to allow Telegraf to be used to ingest live flight metrics from unmanned systems (drones, planes, boats, etc.)

Telegraf is already often used on flight computers (eg a Raspberry Pi) to collect system metrics for drones and it would be valuable to extend this to also provide a convenient way to record flight telemetry.

Checklist

No AI generated code was used in this PR

Related issues

resolves #16220
superseeds #16221

srebhan

Thanks for the update @chrisdalke! Some smaller comments and suggestions...

plugins/inputs/mavlink/README.md

plugins/inputs/mavlink/sample.conf

plugins/inputs/mavlink/mavlink.go

plugins/inputs/mavlink/mavlink_test.go

…mavlink-input-plugin

go.sum

plugins/inputs/mavlink/README.md

plugins/inputs/mavlink/sample.conf

plugins/inputs/mavlink/mavlink.go

srebhan

@chrisdalke thanks for the update! I have one suggestion to move the whole metric handling into convertFrameToMetric as this simplifies the code IMO. Other than that, please bring back the "large amout of metrics" warning and check the remaining comments... We are almost there.

srebhan · 2025-05-05T11:44:54Z

plugins/inputs/mavlink/README.md

+For example, the message
+[ATTITUDE](https://mavlink.io/en/messages/common.html#ATTITUDE) will become an
+`attitude` metric, with all fields copied from its Mavlink message definition.


Please use indirect links!

Suggested change

For example, the message

[ATTITUDE](https://mavlink.io/en/messages/common.html#ATTITUDE) will become an

`attitude` metric, with all fields copied from its Mavlink message definition.

For example, the message [ATTITUDE][attitude] will become an

`attitude` metric, with all fields copied from its Mavlink message definition.

[attitude]: https://mavlink.io/en/messages/common.html#ATTITUDE

plugins/inputs/mavlink/mavlink.go

…to feature/mavlink-input-plugin

…mavlink-input-plugin

chrisdalke · 2025-05-05T15:46:15Z

@srebhan Updated to address all the comments above!

srebhan

@chrisdalke awesome. Just some more formatting things and we are good from my side...

plugins/inputs/mavlink/mavlink.go

srebhan

Thanks a lot @chrisdalke for this nice plugin!

plugins/inputs/mavlink/README.md

Co-authored-by: Thomas Casteleyn <thomas.casteleyn@me.com>

telegraf-tiger · 2025-05-08T15:28:50Z

Download PR build artifacts for linux_amd64.tar.gz, darwin_arm64.tar.gz, and windows_amd64.zip.
Downloads for additional architectures and packages are available below.

☺️ This pull request doesn't significantly change the Telegraf binary size (less than 1%)

📦 Click here to get additional PR build artifacts

Artifact URLs

DEB	RPM	TAR GZ	ZIP
amd64.deb	aarch64.rpm	darwin_amd64.tar.gz	windows_amd64.zip
arm64.deb	armel.rpm	darwin_arm64.tar.gz	windows_arm64.zip
armel.deb	armv6hl.rpm	freebsd_amd64.tar.gz	windows_i386.zip
armhf.deb	i386.rpm	freebsd_armv7.tar.gz
i386.deb	ppc64le.rpm	freebsd_i386.tar.gz
mips.deb	riscv64.rpm	linux_amd64.tar.gz
mipsel.deb	s390x.rpm	linux_arm64.tar.gz
ppc64el.deb	x86_64.rpm	linux_armel.tar.gz
riscv64.deb		linux_armhf.tar.gz
s390x.deb		linux_i386.tar.gz
		linux_mips.tar.gz
		linux_mipsel.tar.gz
		linux_ppc64le.tar.gz
		linux_riscv64.tar.gz
		linux_s390x.tar.gz

skartikey

@chrisdalke Great work!

booo · 2025-05-18T08:59:47Z

Sorry for some "off topic noise" now.

Can I test this easily within the docker ecosystem?

I tried:

➜  telegraf sudo docker run --rm --volume $PWD/config.toml:/etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf quay.io/influxdb/telegraf-nightly:latest          
2025-05-18T08:54:35Z I! Loading config: /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf
2025-05-18T08:54:35Z E! loading config file /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf failed: error parsing mavlink, undefined but requested input: mavlink
➜  telegraf cat config.toml 
[[inputs.mavlink]]
url = "udpserver://:14550"

Would love to beta test this!

chrisdalke · 2025-06-09T15:09:07Z

@booo Thanks for trying this. At the time you had tried it out, the nightly build hadn't succeeded yet. However it looks like now the nightly build is updated and you should be able to try again!

If that does not work, try building from source.

booo · 2025-06-13T17:54:54Z

@booo Thanks for trying this. At the time you had tried it out, the nightly build hadn't succeeded yet. However it looks like now the nightly build is updated and you should be able to try again!

If that does not work, try building from source.

In the end I did build it from source. I created a small Dockerfile and Compose file: https://gitlab.com/searchwing/development/groundstation/antennagroundstation/mavlink-telegraf

So far it works quite well! Well done. Looking forward to create some fancy dashboards for our test flights :)

Hipska · 2025-06-13T19:31:26Z

Thanks for sharing, but by having only two plugins activated, you could build yourself a much smaller binary with only those included.

telegraf-tiger bot added feat Improvement on an existing feature such as adding a new setting/mode to an existing plugin plugin/input 1. Request for new input plugins 2. Issues/PRs that are related to input plugins labels Apr 14, 2025

feat(inputs.mavlink): Add plugin

888dad1

chrisdalke force-pushed the feature/mavlink-input-plugin branch from d0c0e8b to 888dad1 Compare April 14, 2025 02:15

srebhan reviewed Apr 23, 2025

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srebhan self-assigned this Apr 23, 2025

srebhan added the new plugin label Apr 23, 2025

chrisdalke added 4 commits April 23, 2025 11:11

Merge commit '403199fb464de9235a3e602c804f9f51d1a11cdd' into feature/…

200d1e7

…mavlink-input-plugin

PR feedback: Consolidated tests, simpler config, code styling

0a0e2ec

Shorten sample config to 80 columns

eb348b8

Make enumeration exhaustive

23d91bb

Hipska suggested changes Apr 24, 2025

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chrisdalke added 5 commits April 24, 2025 09:55

Updating sample conf, clarify readme, fix go.sum

416df64

Add link to metric filters in readme

1b5c41f

Fix README, go.sum

850225d

Change endpoint config to a single interface instead of slice

9c6ad63

Simplify host/port parsing logic

4598de3

Hipska reviewed Apr 24, 2025

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chrisdalke added 2 commits April 24, 2025 12:08

ipv6 support, remove warning section from readme

da5b644

Merge branch 'master' into feature/mavlink-input-plugin

a3dc340

srebhan reviewed May 5, 2025

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chrisdalke added 4 commits May 5, 2025 11:09

PR feedback

c3b3820

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/feature/mavlink-input-plugin' in…

d12f19a

…to feature/mavlink-input-plugin

Merge commit '548c064cc627f170e4848ea80a16a75aa14637a7' into feature/…

0f3648b

…mavlink-input-plugin

Re-run scripts

2bc6f2e

srebhan reviewed May 7, 2025

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chrisdalke added 2 commits May 7, 2025 10:05

Formatting fixes

1dadb08

Merge branch 'influxdata:master' into feature/mavlink-input-plugin

8b6b0b4

srebhan approved these changes May 8, 2025

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srebhan added the ready for final review This pull request has been reviewed and/or tested by multiple users and is ready for a final review. label May 8, 2025

srebhan assigned skartikey and mstrandboge and unassigned srebhan May 8, 2025

Hipska suggested changes May 8, 2025

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plugins/inputs/mavlink/README.md Outdated Show resolved Hide resolved

Update plugins/inputs/mavlink/README.md

52a1d5e

Co-authored-by: Thomas Casteleyn <thomas.casteleyn@me.com>

Hipska approved these changes May 8, 2025

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skartikey approved these changes May 9, 2025

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skartikey merged commit 4c23243 into influxdata:master May 9, 2025
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github-actions bot added this to the v1.35.0 milestone May 9, 2025

feat(inputs.mavlink): Add plugin #16780

feat(inputs.mavlink): Add plugin #16780

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chrisdalke commented Apr 14, 2025 • edited by srebhan Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

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Summary

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chrisdalke commented May 5, 2025

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telegraf-tiger bot commented May 8, 2025

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booo commented May 18, 2025

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chrisdalke commented Jun 9, 2025

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booo commented Jun 13, 2025

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Hipska commented Jun 13, 2025

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chrisdalke commented Apr 14, 2025 •

edited by srebhan

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