The heartbeat message shows that a system is present and responding.
                The type of the MAV and Autopilot hardware allow the
                receiving system to treat further messages from this
                system appropriate (e.g. by laying out the user
                interface based on the autopilot).

                type                      : Type of the MAV (quadrotor, helicopter, etc., up to 15 types, defined in MAV_TYPE ENUM) (uint8_t)
                autopilot                 : Autopilot type / class. defined in MAV_AUTOPILOT ENUM (uint8_t)
                base_mode                 : System mode bitfield, see MAV_MODE_FLAGS ENUM in mavlink/include/mavlink_types.h (uint8_t)
                custom_mode               : A bitfield for use for autopilot-specific flags. (uint32_t)
                system_status             : System status flag, see MAV_STATE ENUM (uint8_t)
                mavlink_version           : MAVLink version (uint8_t)

def heartbeat_encode(self, type, autopilot, base_mode, custom_mode, system_status, mavlink_version=2):
                '''
                The heartbeat message shows that a system is present and responding.
                The type of the MAV and Autopilot hardware allow the
                receiving system to treat further messages from this
                system appropriate (e.g. by laying out the user
                interface based on the autopilot).

                type                      : Type of the MAV (quadrotor, helicopter, etc., up to 15 types, defined in MAV_TYPE ENUM) (uint8_t)
                autopilot                 : Autopilot type / class. defined in MAV_AUTOPILOT ENUM (uint8_t)
                base_mode                 : System mode bitfield, see MAV_MODE_FLAGS ENUM in mavlink/include/mavlink_types.h (uint8_t)
                custom_mode               : A bitfield for use for autopilot-specific flags. (uint32_t)
                system_status             : System status flag, see MAV_STATE ENUM (uint8_t)
                mavlink_version           : MAVLink version (uint8_t)

                '''
                return MAVLink_heartbeat_message(type, autopilot, base_mode, custom_mode, system_status, mavlink_version)