Scripted Hardware Testing for PX4

Scripted Hardware Testing for PX4 — MAVLink Shell, Docker, and pymavlink

How to script PX4 hardware verification using pymavlink’s SERIAL_CONTROL protocol over a USB connection — download CI firmware, flash from the command line, and run NSH commands programmatically. No QGroundControl required.

April 7, 2026 · 7 min · Pavel Guzenfeld
Satellite imagery comparison: 15m vs 0.13m resolution in headless Unity simulation

The Satellite Tile Hunt: From 15m Blobs to 13cm Resolution in an Air-Gapped Simulation

A practical guide to finding, downloading, and fusing satellite imagery and elevation data for an air-gapped Unity simulation. Covers every free tile provider (ESRI, Bing, Google), every free DTM source (SRTM, Copernicus, Mapzen), how to stitch thousands of tiles into Unity-ready textures, and the dead ends along the way.

April 5, 2026 · 13 min · Pavel Guzenfeld
FPS optimization pipeline for headless Unity simulation

From 21 to 25 FPS: Profiling and Optimizing a Headless Unity Simulation Pipeline

A detailed technical walkthrough of profiling and optimizing a headless Unity simulation from 21 to 25 FPS — covering NVENC GPU encoding, batch camera rendering, GPU instancing, static batching, and the failed URP migration. Every measurement, every dead end, every lesson.

April 4, 2026 · 8 min · Pavel Guzenfeld
Satellite terrain and natural sky in headless Unity simulation

Natural Skies and Satellite Terrain in a Headless Unity Simulation

How I replaced flat brown terrain and solid-color sky in a headless Unity 6 Docker simulation with real satellite imagery, SRTM topography, and a custom panoramic skybox — all fully air-gapped, no runtime network dependency. Includes NVENC GPU encoding, custom shaders, and every dead end along the way.

April 4, 2026 · 12 min · Pavel Guzenfeld
From Magenta to Desert: Fixing Unity Terrain in Docker

From Magenta to Desert: Fixing Cross-Platform Unity Terrain Rendering in Docker

A detailed account of fixing terrain rendering in a headless Unity 6 Docker simulation — from magenta buildings and gray streaming cameras to textured villages with working RTSP feeds. Covers cross-platform asset bundle shader mismatches, runtime material conversion, texture recovery from broken materials, and every dead end along the way.

March 27, 2026 · 12 min · Pavel Guzenfeld
Contributing to ROS 2 — A Practical Guide

Contributing to ROS 2 — A Practical Guide from Four Accepted PRs

Everything I learned submitting four pull requests to ROS 2 core repositories — from finding issues and building in Docker to passing DCO checks, handling OSRF’s AI disclosure policy, rebasing across distro branches, and running the full test suites. A warts-and-all field guide.

March 22, 2026 · 15 min · Pavel Guzenfeld
PX4 Autopilot: A Practitioner's Guide

PX4 Autopilot: A Practitioner's Guide to Troubleshooting, Debugging, Building, and Testing

Everything I learned contributing 6 PRs to PX4-Autopilot in a single session — from Docker-based builds and sanitizer workflows, through uXRCE-DDS session debugging and MAVLink signing analysis, to SITL integration testing. Real bugs, real fixes, real build output.

March 22, 2026 · 14 min · Pavel Guzenfeld
PX4 SITL to Unity in Docker: A 60-Hour Odyssey

Connecting PX4 SITL to a Headless Unity Simulation in Docker: A 60-Hour Debugging Odyssey

A three-day odyssey connecting PX4 flight controller to a GPU-rendered Unity drone simulation running headless inside Docker — through licensing labyrinths, shader abysses, coordinate system riddles, native library dragons, and a TCP protocol twist ending nobody expected.

March 21, 2026 · 10 min · Pavel Guzenfeld
Debugging Doxygen: How .inc Files Break C++ Docs

Debugging Doxygen: How .inc Files Silently Break C++ Documentation

Eigen’s .inc plugin headers were read by Doxygen but never preprocessed as C++ — meaning macros like EIGEN_PARSED_BY_DOXYGEN were silently ignored. Here’s how I verified it in Docker and what the one-line fix looks like.

March 21, 2026 · 8 min · Pavel Guzenfeld
Fixing a CI Pipeline on Jetson Xavier

Fixing a CI Pipeline on a Jetson Xavier — 15 Failures to Green

A day-long battle fixing a CI pipeline that builds Docker images on a self-hosted Jetson Xavier runner. From stale git submodules to GCC-15 assembler errors, expired tokens, DNS failures inside Docker, and deleted upstream branches — every layer of the stack had something broken.

March 20, 2026 · 10 min · Pavel Guzenfeld