Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Andrew Dunlop on May 29, 2010 at 2:57pm

Hi Peter,

That is good to hear. I had a quick look at the 2.6 source and it did appear that your telemetry data came from an earlier version. Having said that, there are a number of changes that 2.6 implements that my GCS does not handle. So when I get a chance I will update it. I have no example telemetry data from 2.6, so if you do know of some or happen to catch some it would be very useful :-)

Cheers,
Andrew

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Permalink Reply by Krzysztof Bosak on April 16, 2010 at 4:46am

Fantastic, fantastic groundstation.
A few dreams:
From operational point of view,
I am wondering if it is not better to ad heading+distance to plane UAV as seen from takeoff point (a compass with a dial).

Personally I prefer to show battery cell voltage rather than cumulative voltage.
reason: the autopilot can scale/renormalise, but also you can show multiple cells at once if the protocol permits.
The scale must have some room for died LiPo, LiIon etc.

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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Gary Mortimer on April 16, 2010 at 5:28am

Andrew must be due an award from somebody, Chris should certainly talk to him on the podcast, I bet he has a raft of good ideas.

What will the dead battery symbol be Chris?? Perhaps the GCS should swear in a language of your own choosing as well!

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Permalink Reply by Krzysztof Bosak on April 16, 2010 at 5:48am

I was just thinking about a dial coming from from 2V to 5V or so
it is up to the user how to interpret: sometimes main battery also powers the autopilot so no engine and lipo cell voltage under 2.7V still means autopilot works if you shut down some servos etc (but the lipo will die).
So I was thinking about a1 or few multicolored dials on a single scale.

BTW ServoStation flies in Pteryx as power supply. Robust, efficient, filters signals very well.
Big motor, autopilot and multiple servos on a single 4S battery.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Dunlop on April 16, 2010 at 5:56am

Thank you Nick, Krzys, Gary!

Good ideas Krzys, as always. Perhaps the Flexipilot GCS will have these excellent features :-)
From memory I don't think that Ardupilot telemetry has the right fields to calculate a vector to thegenerate these features. At least not yet - I'm sure it will evolve to include it soon enough.

And Gary, I am way too shy and boring for podcasts, please noooo!

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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Morli on April 16, 2010 at 9:51am

Thanks Andrew , that is cool GCS. Downloaded , read the manual & ran it as mentioned, without connecting any thing. I like it :)). Ran into one bug in KLM screen top left,nothing special, just restarted it and playing with it now. Manual is well done , good work, pls thank the team @ ME on our behalf.
Was wondering if it was possible to connect a small 2 servo serial servo controller for antenna pan & tilt to same GCS via USB/serial port( I am not sure if ComOCom will like it or not) and small dial in GCS/GE to indicate( cosmetic) the direction antenna is pointing with respect to base/home( with distance between home and plane indicated there like Krzys said). this might eliminate the need for separate H/W ardustation.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Dunlop on April 16, 2010 at 9:09pm

Hi Morli,

Thankyou. It would be fairly straightforward to add the ability to drive a serial servo controller instead of a Failsafe, would just need to know the protocol. After all, the Failsafe is just an overblown serial servo controller. (The Failsafe actually supports Pololu and Scott Edwards protocols, as well as a bastardised text version of the Pololu format, which is the one the GCS uses). The tricky (i.e. fun) part would be calculating the launch to UAV vector - do you want to have a crack at it? Would need to know the launch co-ordinates, which currently are not part of Ardu telemetry, but these could simply be added to the config file instead (arguably a more sensible way of doing it).

Andrew.

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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Morli on April 16, 2010 at 10:17pm

Thanks Andrew for the feedback,
"Would need to know the launch co-ordinates, which currently are not part of Ardu telemetry, but these could simply be added to the config file instead (arguably a more sensible way of doing it)."
I am sure I understand this. Jordi's hardware ardustation already does that based on telemetry( I guess) which does not have its own GPS, so there must be a way either the ,
1. first GPS coordinates that is received( via telemetry to GCS) while initialization the airframe is considered as Home/GCS point ( what if Ardu station/GCS lost power intermittently while the plane was in air then the next first set of coordinates would be from somewhere in air!!)
2. WP0 is transmitted say every 2 minutes via telemetry to avoid the issue in point 1
3. What if GCS it self is mobile station? then a fixed entry in config file may not work..
4. May be GPS connected to GCS would give study stream of its own coordinates Say variable A (location A) for GCS to calculate direction vector to UAV by comparing ardu data from UAV (location B ) , since Gcs is running on a Laptop/PC , processing and power should not be issue
Sure, I would love to have a crack at this but I have some learning curve to cross yet. But I will work on this the moment I iron out primary issues( H/W in the airframe, endurance, RC range etc)

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Dunlop on April 16, 2010 at 11:51pm

Hi Morli,

A very thorough consideration of the possible scenarios. If I may add my 2 cents worth:
- I would think that if you were going to drive a couple of servos for an antenna tracker (say), then it would generally be a stationary installation.
- I think that deriving the launch co-ordinates from the first transmission will work much of the time, except for when the GCS or computer crashes or runs out of power and needs to be restarted, and then you are toast. Unless of course the launch co-ordinates are saved to disk, but then you may as well just enter them yourself into the config file.
- I agree, a GPS connected to the groundstation is the deluxe solution, and actually not impossibly difficult to do, but perhaps overkill for a first attempt.

Andrew.

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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Gary Mortimer on April 17, 2010 at 4:08am

But surely worth it for $50?? or perhaps if you had a cellphone with a GPS you could bluetooth the position across or even one of those cheap USB jobs

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=256536&C=Froogle&a...

Sometimes its not worth re inventing the wheel!!

But I say tracking smaaachking who needs it!!!

Tasks undertaken by sUAS should be pre planned and sorted before the aircraft leaves your hand!

If you add antenna tracking to your GCS Andrew it will start being the most complete, and clear open source one about!

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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Morli on April 17, 2010 at 4:55am

Yep . antenna tracking if part of GCS would be complete package ( I don't see a reason why it should be independent system)IMHO too , for case like if you want to test long range endurance test say 5 K.M but still be inside visual range/legal limits , I guess the only choice would be to have GCS move along in mobile mode :) & then a tracking system would be cool on top of your car/van/mobile system ( I know if you are in visual mode, the data/video tx signal would be ok with omni antenna but what about those sub/1mW xbee type users?! )

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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Gary Mortimer on April 17, 2010 at 5:17am

VLOS has been defined as 500m by ICAO Morli, flight to 5km would be BLOS.

In South Africa we are allowed out to 1km VLOS, UK 500m both not above 400'

Mobile GCS are forbidden in most places.

Thats in countries that have rules, before anyone from countries with nothing in force answer, you know who you are ;-)

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