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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Darren on September 3, 2011 at 2:00pm

Would be a great use for a 1280 too...

Soon the code for flight will be too big for it, so why not reuse/recycle an older APM to be a nice GS Display/AntTraker solution.

Awhile back I had ported a bit of code from HK's Ardutracker to run on the APM and worked good. I had also ported some of the old Ardustation (sans display) code to connect to HK's GCS and run the ant tracking servos too; but would like to see the touch screen instead of buttons.

Also how about a localized GPS input working in conjunction with the transient GPS for an antenna tracking solution based on a mobile base station.

As well as potential solution for a (home facing tracking antenna) for the transient to utilize to track the antenna towards the base station, for high data rates and or hd video streams.

 

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Permalink Reply by Scott Plunkett on September 3, 2011 at 3:29pm

Awesome - I have an old ArduPilot, a Gen 1 APMega (1280) and standard Arduino Mega, and Arduino Mega 2560 - so my original thought was to make this like a shield for the older Gen 1 board, but since I had the Arduino 2560, I thought why not use the one that will allow me to do more.  

 

So assuming I am making a shield for an ArduPilot Mega, I'll need to sort out whether or not enough of the pins are brought out to accommodate the screen - it takes 8 digital and 4 analog pins.  The GPS is a breeze because the connector is already there and the code can be reused.  PWM for the antenna is easy too, just take it right off of OUT 6 and 7 on the servo outputs and reprogram for that.  I am pretty sure I can get at the rest of the UARTs, but not sure about the pins I'll need for SD Card for data logging and / or audio and image files.

 

What could the 328 on board be used for??

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Permalink Reply by Andy Demartini on October 17, 2011 at 2:35pm

Here's a product name suggestion - "MavTracker Mega"

As long as the Mavlink GPS packets stay the same, this could be a universal antenna tracker.  It wouldn't care what autopilot or groundstation you were using as long as it uses Mavlink.

It's great to use the existing 1280/2560 APM boards.  They are reasonably priced and it's good to have extra's on hand in case one fails or just gets cranky.  The current Ardustation features are a good starting point.  Simple pushbuttons for user input and an LCD screen for basic data access.

Since the Mega boards have four serial uart ports, I would suggest providing two XBee sockets.  One would have a 900mhz board for telemetry comms to the airplane.  The second would have a 2.4ghz XBee as an alternate to the USB,  Here's why--  At many fields here in Florida, there are covered areas with tables for setup, repairs, etc.  The covering is also good when using a laptop groundstation, it reduces the sunlight factor.  On the downside, they can block the video/telemetry antennas if you cant get far enough away.  The second XBee on 2.4ghz would replace the wire and allow the antennas to get away from the covers.  You still need a video wire but that's much easier than USB at long lengths.

The software would primarily pass the Mavlink packets from one port to the other.  Groundstation commands would be repeated up on the 900 radio and airplane autopilot data packets would be repeated on the 2.4 radio.  Each packet would be inspected and the GPS data packets would be used for the tracking algorithm.

How far have you gotten on this, do you need/want any helpers?

 

Andy

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