The Mission Planner, created by Michael Oborne, does a lot more than its name. Here are some of the features:

Point-and-click waypoint entry, using Google Maps/Bing/Open street maps/Custom WMS.

Select mission commands from drop-down menus

Download mission log files and analyze them

Configure APM settings for your airframe

Interface with a PC flight simulator to create a full hardware-in-the-loop UAV simulator.

See the output from APM’s serial terminal

Mission Planner Overview

Mission Planner is a full-featured ground station application for the ArduPilot open source autopilot project. This page contains information on the background of Mission Planner and the organization of this site.

What is Mission Planner

Mission Planner is a ground control station for Plane, Copter and Rover. It is compatible with Windows only. Mission Planner can be used as a configuration utility or as a dynamic control supplement for your autonomous vehicle. Here are just a few things you can do with Mission Planner:

Load the firmware (the software) into the autopilot (APM, PX4…) that controls your vehicle.

Setup, configure, and tune your vehicle for optimum performance.

Plan, save and load autonomous missions into you autopilot with simple point-and-click way-point entry on Google or other maps.

Download and analyze mission logs created by your autopilot.

Interface with a PC flight simulator to create a full hardware-in-the-loop UAV simulator.

With appropriate telemetry hardware you can:

Monitor your vehicle’s status while in operation.

Record telemetry logs which contain much more information the the on-board autopilot logs.

View and analyze the telemetry logs.

Operate your vehicle in FPV (first person view)

All of these and many more features are covered here.