Hey there, thank you for checking out my ArduPilot UAV Log Viewer! My name is Javid I'm 21, I'm an astronautics engineer and I'm highly interested in UAV, I built my first UAV a year ago and then I decided to create this program.
Native desktop log viewer and automatic health analyzer for ArduPilot DataFlash (.bin) flight logs. Inspired by plot.ardupilot.org, but offline and as a real desktop application with a built-in plain-language flight review.
Created by Javid
- One-click parsing of any ArduPilot DataFlash
.bin, MAVLink ground-station.tlog, or generic.logfile. Parsed in a background thread via pymavlink. Tested on logs with 100k+ messages. - Drag-and-drop a file from Finder/Explorer anywhere onto the window to open it.
- Open Recent submenu — keeps the last 10 logs you used; remembers the last folder you opened from.
- Window state persistence — geometry, splitter, last tab, and timezone are restored next launch.
- PLOT — searchable message tree, click a field to add it as a curve. Wall-clock crosshair readout. Right-click anywhere on the plot to drop a labeled annotation (vertical dashed line + text); annotations persist per log automatically.
- MAP — 2D satellite view with the GPS / EKF-smoothed flight path colored by altitude (gradient cyan→violet→amber + legend). Now also overlays the planned mission waypoints (numbered violet markers + dashed mission line) and the geofence polygon if your log has them. Layer toggle for Satellite / Dark / Place labels. Zoom to z22.
- 3D — orbit-able 3D trajectory with an animated airplane mesh that banks into turns. Distance markers along the route auto-adapt to the flight scale (
50 m,100 m,1 km…). Play / pause / reset + 0.5×–8× speed buttons + scrubbable timeline. Real-time 1× playback by default. - COCKPIT — flight instrument panel: artificial horizon (roll/pitch), heading indicator, altitude & airspeed tapes, plus radio-transmitter gimbals showing the live throttle/yaw/pitch/roll stick positions. Synced playback with speed controls.
- FFT — per-axis vibration spectrum (AccX/Y/Z) with the top-3 resonance peaks annotated. Multi-IMU overlay: IMU, IMU2 and IMU3 are drawn together (solid / dashed / dotted) so you can spot which sensor is failing. Below the spectra: a spectrogram (FFT-over-time heatmap) showing how vibration content evolves during the flight.
- PID TUNING — overlays the commanded vs actual roll / pitch / yaw so you can immediately see loose tuning (gap between desired and actual) or over-tuning (oscillation around the command).
- AUTO REVIEW — analyzes the log and produces a plain-English health verdict across 14+ factors:
- Vibration & IMU clipping · GPS quality · Battery sag · Compass interference
- EKF state estimator · Error events · Altitude profile · Attitude peaks
- Motor output balance · Power consumption · RC link · CPU loop overruns
- IMU temperature drift · Flight mode timeline
- Incident detector — flags extreme tilt (>60°), free-fall descent (>12 m/s), per-cell battery < 3.3 V, EKF stress, RC failsafe, and explicit ERR events. Each detected event is a clickable row — click jumps to the PLOT tab, zooms to a 20-second window around the moment, drops a red marker, and snaps the Map / 3D / Cockpit tabs to the same instant.
- Tooltips on every category card explaining what the metric measures and what good / bad values mean.
- INFO — raw log metadata: duration, vehicle type, mode timeline, error events, message counts.
- Timezone picker — 17 IANA zones (with DST support). The plot axis, cockpit HUD, 3D HUD, status bar and Info tab all switch zones immediately.
- File → Export flight report (PDF) — one-click branded PDF with the Auto Review, mode timeline, and incident list. Also available as a prominent EXPORT PDF button in the header.
- File → Save plot as image (PNG) — exports the current PLOT view at 1,800 px wide.
- File → Export plotted series to CSV — dumps the curves you've plotted with ISO timestamp, Unix timestamp, relative seconds, and value columns.
- File → Load comparison log — overlays a second flight on the plot as dashed, color-matched curves. Toggle any field on the tree and it mirrors automatically. Perfect for tuning before/after.
- Modern dark UI — built with PyQt6, Inter + JetBrains Mono typography, tactical accent line, hover states, and an at-a-glance overall health score with green/amber/red verdicts.
Requires Python 3.10+ and a working pip toolchain.
pip install -r requirements.txtDependencies:
PyQt6andPyQt6-WebEngine— UI + embedded browser for map/3Dpyqtgraph— fast plottingpymavlink— ArduPilot log parsernumpy,bottleneck
The map and 3D views need an internet connection (they pull tile imagery from OpenStreetMap/Esri and the Plotly/Leaflet libraries from CDN).
| Tab | What it shows |
|---|---|
| PLOT | Time-series plots of any tick-box-selected fields. Crosshair shows wall-clock time. Right-click to drop labeled annotations (persisted per log). ✕ Clear all to reset. |
| MAP | 2D satellite view of the EKF-smoothed flight path, segments colored by altitude. Mission waypoints and geofence overlaid if present. |
| 3D | Orbit-able 3D trajectory with an animated airplane that banks into turns, plus auto-spaced distance markers. Play / pause / reset + speed controls + scrubbable timeline. |
| COCKPIT | Artificial horizon, heading indicator, altitude / airspeed tapes, and live radio-transmitter gimbals. Real-time playback with speed controls. |
| FFT | Multi-IMU vibration frequency spectrum per accel axis + a spectrogram (FFT-over-time heatmap) below. |
| PID TUNING | Commanded vs actual roll / pitch / yaw. Diagnose loose or over-tuned gains visually. |
| AUTO REVIEW | Plain-language health summary with an overall verdict, hover tooltips per metric, and a clickable incident list that jumps the whole app to the moment of interest. |
| INFO | Raw log metadata: duration, vehicle type, mode timeline, error events, message counts. |
- PyQt6 for the desktop shell
- pyqtgraph for time-series plots (Qt-native, GPU-accelerated)
- QtWebEngineView + Leaflet for the 2D map (Esri World Imagery tiles)
- QtWebEngineView + Plotly for the 3D trajectory
- pymavlink (
DFReader_binary) for parsing ArduPilot DataFlash logs
MIT — see LICENSE.
ArduPilot logs and pymavlink are copyright their respective owners. Map tiles © OpenStreetMap, © CARTO, and Esri / Maxar / Earthstar Geographics for satellite imagery.