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openipc-rs

openipc-rs is a Rust receiver stack for OpenIPC FPV ground stations. It is meant to be useful in two ways:

  • as reusable crates for people building their own OpenIPC tools, and
  • as Nebulus, the pure-Rust ground station for desktop, Android, and browsers.

The project was built after studying devourer, aviateur, openipc-zig, the standalone adaptive-link tools, and PixelPilot. Those projects are reference material only; openipc-rs builds independently.

Repository Shape​

openipc-rs/
  crates/openipc-core/        protocol, WFB, RTP, video, adaptive link
  crates/openipc-rtl88xx/     shared async Realtek rtl88xx USB/HAL driver
  crates/openipc-uplink/      userspace WFB IPv4/TCP and VTX control
  crates/openipc-video/       platform-native and WebCodecs video decoding
  apps/openipc-cli/           native CLI utilities
  apps/wfb-rs/                WFB-ng-style Rust binaries over the userland driver
  crates/openipc-web/         wasm-bindgen SDK
  apps/nebulus/               primary egui station for desktop, Android, and browser
  docs/                       this Docusaurus site
  scripts/                    build, clean, release helpers

What Runs Where​

The receive path is intentionally Rust-heavy. Native and browser builds share Realtek descriptor parsing, WFB session handling, packet decryption, FEC recovery, RTP depacketization, Annex-B video framing, and adaptive-link packet construction.

The platform boundary is kept at the edges:

  • native apps open USB devices through nusb,
  • browser apps ask JavaScript for WebUSB permission and then pass the granted UsbDevice into Rust/WASM,
  • Nebulus Android builds perform the same permission/file-descriptor handoff through a small Rust JNI module,
  • Nebulus browser builds run RTP reorder/depacketization and the openipc-video WebCodecs backend in separate Rust/WASM workers built from Nebulus's internal nebulus-decode-worker binary target,
  • Nebulus native, Android, and browser targets share one egui application and receiver model.

Nebulus is the main application: egui provides the UI and openipc-video selects VideoToolbox, VA-API, Media Foundation, MediaCodec, or WebCodecs for the current target.

The wfb-rs package is the native WFB-ng-style tool set. It rewrites the receive/transmit/helper binary roles in Rust and uses the openipc-rtl88xx userland Realtek driver for radio I/O, rather than relying on Linux kernel monitor-mode interfaces. That keeps the main radio path usable on Linux, macOS, and Windows, subject to each operating system's USB permission and driver binding requirements.

Current Status​

The protocol pipeline, browser SDK, Nebulus UI, native CLI, adaptive-link feedback path, and Realtek driver are implemented, including Jaguar3 RTL8812CU/EU and RTL8822CU/EU. The remaining work is mostly hardware validation: comparing traces against known-good receivers, testing more adapters, and proving cold-start behavior across chip families and operating systems.

For normal use, start with Nebulus. Use the crate and protocol pages when integrating the stack into another application.