Arming and Disarming

This page explains how MAVLink can be used by a ground station or companion computer to arm or disarm a vehicle. The user wiki page for arming and disarming is here.

MAV_CMD_COMPONENT_ARM_DISARM within COMMAND_LONG

Attempt to arm or disarm the vehicle by sending a COMMAND_LONG with the command, param1 and param2 fields set as specified for the MAV_CMD_COMPONENT_ARM_DISARM command.

Command Field	Type	Description
target_system	uint8_t	System ID
target_component	uint8_t	Component ID of flight controller or just 0
command	uint16_t	MAV_CMD_COMPONENT_ARM_DISARM=400
confirmation	uint8_t	0
param1	float	0:disarm, 1:arm
param2	float	0: arm-disarm unless prevented by safety checks, 21196: force arming or disarming
param3	float	not used
param4	float	not used
param5	float	not used
param6	float	not used
param7	float	not used

Example

The example commands below can be copy-pasted into MAVProxy (aka SITL) to test this command. Before running these commands enter, “module load message”

Example MAVProxy/SITL Command	Description
message COMMAND_LONG 0 0 400 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0	arm the vehicle (may fail because of arming checks)
message COMMAND_LONG 0 0 400 0 1 21196 0 0 0 0 0	force arm the vehicle (try to bypass arming checks)
message COMMAND_LONG 0 0 400 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0	disarm the vehicle (may fail if not landed)
message COMMAND_LONG 0 0 400 0 0 21196 0 0 0 0 0	force disarm the vehicle even if flying