Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Noth666 on January 31, 2009 at 12:16pm

R u in the US or europe or where?
I'm also gonna order my dev kit soon (before the end of the offer).
About the control HW for GCS, I am used to the 2 stick flying also standing up, but I want to get a bit of a different feel for when I control the UAV I am building. More a bit predator style ;-) but my main UAV will also not be lacking much in terms of capabilities, 3 cameras, IMU guidance and flexible payload config (anything which can be triggered by switches).
I'll be using Saitek X45 USB controls to fly it I think, a work colleague offered them to me for free :)).

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Permalink Reply by Reto on January 31, 2009 at 3:38pm

I'm in Switzerland.
Cool sticks, the X45. Are you going to build your cockpit in a van or just take everything out in the field?

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Permalink Reply by Noth666 on February 1, 2009 at 8:23am

I'll be taking the stuff out in the field, I'm going to try to build it into 2 aluminium suitcase type things :)
A van would of course be handier but its not something I have access to, I drive a new beetle which does not exctly have enough space for a GCS inside it :).
I will have 2 laptops for this, one in each suitcase, one will handle the control and telemetry with the XBee modem, the other will display the FPV video from the selected camera with OSD and also record it.

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Permalink Reply by Kuba Pajerski on March 6, 2009 at 6:44am

How did you do that? I tried to order from Digi Europe, got an offer from Polish distributor for 130$ + VAT, that gives around 159 USD...

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Permalink Reply by Reto on March 6, 2009 at 9:05am

Whom are you asking, Kuba?
If it's a question to me about the dev kit price, then you may have noticed that the Digi bargain action has been extended for Europe, as per today's Digi online store details:

XBee-PRO 868 Development Kit, with 2 XBee-PRO 868 modules
Part Number XBP08-DK

Special Promotion Price - valid until March 20th 2009 (delivery time 4-6 weeks)
89,00 Euro

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Permalink Reply by Mike on February 1, 2009 at 8:56am

Noth666,
does the TechFX work with the 868 as I read on their website that that was part of a future package?

Mike

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Permalink Reply by Noth666 on February 1, 2009 at 10:18am

Not sure if XBee 868 works out of the box with TechFX, but the source is provided so I can rewrite it if needed. I mentioned I was going to use it to drex@thesiliconhorizon and he did not say anything about it not working. I think it has just not been tested yet, but I'll see once I actually get the gear - it is still in the mail now.
I'm a programmer and have done firmware rewrites like this before. I will need to do quite a bit of programming to add the features I want both to the firmware of the TechFX as well as the GCS software.

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Permalink Reply by Mike on February 1, 2009 at 11:10am

OK I understand. On their website they said the system was being updated to work with the 868 as well as some other features. I wasn't sure if this was purely a software upgrade or also the hardware - I have placed a message on their forum to try and find out.

Let me know how you get on...
Cheers,
Mike

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Permalink Reply by Matt Fisher on February 3, 2009 at 8:33am

I'm interested into what everyone thinks they can pack into a single 24 Kbps data connection. Can I get all my realtime flight data back to ground (ie, alt, speed, IMU info, GPS info) with a 3KBps data rate?

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Permalink Reply by Noth666 on February 3, 2009 at 1:47pm

@Matt: well that depends mostly on the required update rate, but provided it is low enough the simple answer is yes. It of course also depends how you send it, 3KBps = 3Kbit or 375 8 bit characters per second traffic(if the 3KBit still is affected by overhead this will be less), which to me sounds like quite a lot to send telemetry and IMU data in. But it also depends on exactly what IMU data and other data you want to send and how much detail you want in it.

I will be sending servo position commands for up to 8 channels, plus some other command data, and getting back attitude,altitude, speed, program feedback and IMU feedback, GPS data etc...
But most of it does not need to be updated very fast, and some will be more temporary and shift to and from the XBee channel.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Fisher on February 4, 2009 at 2:12pm

Thats pretty much what I had figured - Some rough math in my head seemed like I would only need about 150 or so 8bit chars/sec to do what I needed. Anyways - thats all I really needed to know to get the motivation to put a order in for one of these XBees thanks alot!

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Permalink Reply by Reto on February 5, 2009 at 6:27am

I do not know if people of DIYdrones operate in Switzerland or Liechenstein, but here is the technical approval of the Xbee Pro 868 for those two countries:

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