Can't seem to easily find this elsewhere. Is it possible to use the 3DR data radio in just normal arduino projects if you write it in correctly? Is it expecting certain mavlink packets or will it take any serial data you shove in one end and spit it out the other end?
The reason I ask this is because I want to get some telemetry back from another project, some simple data, mainly battery voltage, tilt and pan angle(wireless control for a camera). The 3DR radio is perfect for it, but only if I can use it in this way. So can I enjoy all the features like error correction and the decent range like it does when hooked into a pixhawk if I just have the tx wired to arduino rx and vice versa and it's just became a wireless serial cable? Or is it not that simple?
Any guidance on this would be wonderful.
Replies
Hi Daniel,
Yes it is "that simple". Plug your 'ground radio' into a USB port, plug your 'air' radio into an FTDI adaptor and use your favourite terminal app to connect on the appropriate serial ports. You can have a great conversation with yourself :)
The radios simply pass through what ever you send them. Using the baud rate you configure in the MP 3DR Radio settings, you can send/receive data wirelessly. Connect your air radio up to your arduino (Tx<->Rx, Rx<->Tx, GND<->GND, 5V<->5V). Connect to your ground radio on your PC using a terminal emulator like Putty. Any data you transmit from the Arduino should appear in the terminal. You can even use the Serial Monitor from the Arduino editor. Dont forget you can use the SoftwareSerial library on (almost) any of the digital pins if you are already using the Hardware serial (like for programming!)
awesome! Glad its that easy! Two more questions:
Is this also this easy for arduino-arduino communications?
And also,
how do I set the 3dr radio modules so that they are.. I guess bound to each other? I might have multiple sets operating at the same time, how do I make sure they don't interfere? What is the procedure to bind them to each other and make it so they don't send or receive each other's data?
one more thing actually, is the baud rate some default thing? I'm not sending much data so I can use whatever the default is, or does it not care as long as both are the same?
Thank you!
Daniel,
The radios are pretty much transparent to devices that use basic 5V TTL serial comms. What you put in one end is what you get out the other (just like a cable). You can use them for arduino<->arduino serial communication (requires 2 x 'air' radios).
You can configure the radios using the utility built into MP or download the standalone utility from Ardupilot site here: http://ardupilot.com/downloads/?did=89. Radios must be 'paired' by setting them to the same NETID.
You can set the baud rate with the configuration utility but from memory they are set to 57600bps by default. The two radio devices do not have to have the same serial rate but need to use the same air_rate (obvioulsy, the serial baud rate used has to match what is used by the devices talking to them!)