Comment by Jack on November 8, 2011 at 8:50pm

Thanks for the info as an out of range hold that works OK for me just didnt want it to pan home when Xbee signal is lost. The othe good note is I went over my station with a fine tooth colm and found a dry solder on a pin for the Xbee pin header. Works great now.  Hope to get out and do some flying this weekend and see how this works. Let me know on the checksum update.

 

Thanks again Jack

Comment by Jack on January 14, 2012 at 10:06am

Heino

 

Hope things are going well, just wanted to see if you plan to update the code for Ardustation. I use this all the time for my antenna track and still works great but I think some of the peramiters have changed in the current 2.2 code as it cant load all peram.

Thanks Jack

Comment by Heino R. Pull on January 14, 2012 at 10:12am

Hi Jack,

I sure will - I've been messing a little with 2.1xxx but I saw Jason's announcement of 2.2 and I planned to load it this weekend.  I'll sweep the parameter changes and put a new version out. I'm glad its working for you.

Heino

Comment by Jack on January 14, 2012 at 10:35am

Heino

 

Thanks for the quick reply. will look forword to your update and will let you know how it goes.

 

Thanks Jack

Comment by steve F11music.com on January 19, 2012 at 9:39am

I've just built my ardustation and bought my pan tilt antenna tracker from readymaderc. Should I get the stronger servos? I plan to put my 5.8GHz transmitter and patch antenna plus the ardustation on it.

Where can I read more about hooking up the servos and how to get the antenna tracking working?

Also how can I know the polarity of the buzzer. It's not the same as the picture. Doesn't have anything indicating the + side.

Comment by Heino R. Pull on January 19, 2012 at 7:12pm

It doesn't sound like you'll need the stronger servos. They work fairly well on my patch antenna and receiver.  Just make sure your mount is fairly level so that the servos don't have to work too hard.  It is important that you do use a  heat sink on the voltage regulator though. When I first set my antenna up, the regulator would shut down due to too much current being drawn. It normally doesn't do damage - because the voltage regulator is designed to shut down when it overheats, but it is best to avoid that situation. I just screwed on an aluminum heatsink and the problem went away. If you go to the bigger servos, you would probably have to set up a separate 5 volt supply just to power the servos because there would be more current drawn and that might push the regulator to the edge of overheating even with a heat sink.

There isn't anything written about how to  hook up the servos to the Ardustation, but the software is pretty much tuned to the Hitec servos that come with the readmaderc kit.  The important thing is to make sure you plug the  servos into the right servo connectors and also plug in - in the right orientation. The left most servo connector is identified on the board as J3 (left looking from the component side) and it goes to the bottom of the antenna unit that rotates antenna.  The right connector (J4) goes to the pitch servo mounted near the top of the antenna. The bottom pin on J3 and J4 is ground and goes to the black lead on your servo connector.  

When you power up the Ardustation, both servos will center themselves while the software is initializing. The antenna won't move until valid Mavlink data is received from your copter and it's GPS is locked on. If you watch my intro video you can see how it works on an early version of my software at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZFjiyd9ZCA

When the GPS is up and running, you bring you copter next to the station and hit the "home position" on the menus so that the lat/lon/altitude is set.  Then you would move your copter (or airplane) about 5 to 10 meters away and physically rotate the antenna to point at your aircraft. (You lift up on the antenna to detach from the rotate servo's gear. This should be all you need to do to operate the antenna.  Make sure you have a good GPS solution from the aircraft (8 satellites or more) since the GPS position error will be large and drifting a fair amout with 7 or fewer satellites - even though you have a solution. Hopefully the video will show you how I set up my antenna when powering up.  I tuned the software to point in the right direction with the HITEC servos (there are 2 constants for the gain settings on the positioning software that can be adjusted with other servos). 

The buzzer is not to sensitive to inverted polarity so you can try to find the + polarity by attaching to 5 volts quickly and see if if beeps.  If it doesn't you just switch polarity and try again.  I've had buzzers inverted with no damage.

Hope this helps....

Heino

Comment by steve F11music.com on February 14, 2012 at 10:53am

I just received the pan/tilt from readymaderc and will start the build today. With the ardustation I ran into a problem. I selected UNO in Arduino and my serial port. I'm using a macbook pro but am getting this error when I try to compile or upload.  I've got the ArduStation2 and library from the link you have above. I'm using latest Arduino also. I don't have the xbee plugged in. I'm powering the ardustation from usb and 11v lipo. Green light is on.

Any idea what could be wrong?

In file included from /Users/steve/Documents/Arduino/libraries/FastSerial/BetterStream.h:16,
from /Users/steve/Documents/Arduino/libraries/FastSerial/FastSerial.h:56,
from ArduStation2.cpp:56:
/Users/steve/Documents/Arduino/libraries/FastSerial/../AP_Common/AP_Common.h:19:20: error: wiring.h: No such file or directory
In file included from ArduStation2.cpp:61:
/Users/steve/Documents/Arduino/libraries/AP_EEPROMB/AP_EEPROMB.h:10:22: error: WProgram.h: No such file or directory
In file included from ArduStation2.cpp:56:
/Users/steve/Documents/Arduino/libraries/FastSerial/FastSerial.h:117: error: conflicting return type specified for 'virtual void FastSerial::write(uint8_t)'
/Applications/Arduino.app/Contents/Resources/Java/hardware/arduino/cores/arduino/Print.h:48: error: overriding 'virtual size_t Print::write(uint8_t)'
ArduStation2.cpp: In function 'void loop()':
ArduStation2.pde:-1: error: call of overloaded 'write(int)' is ambiguous
/Applications/Arduino.app/Contents/Resources/Java/libraries/LiquidCrystal/LiquidCrystal.h:82: note: candidates are: virtual size_t LiquidCrystal::write(uint8_t)
/Applications/Arduino.app/Contents/Resources/Java/hardware/arduino/cores/arduino/Print.h:49: note: size_t Print::write(const char*)

Comment by Heino R. Pull on February 14, 2012 at 11:44am

One other user had the same errors - what Arduino version are you running? I originally compiled with arduino-0022 and have also used arduino-0023 relaxed. I have not tried the latest arduino 1.0 which had issues with the libraries - although those have been fixed by the dev-team for ACM/APM. I plan to compile with 1.0 in the next week or so when I get time - since I'm trying to re-release a new version for compatibility with Arducopter 2.3.1 and APM 2.8.

If the problem isn't the version of Arduino you're using, then you have a library issue.  The zip file has the library that I compiled with and that needs to be in the "sketches folder" that is set in Arduino as a "library" folder.  Make sure you don't copy the library folder over a different library folder from other versions of APM/ACM.  

Comment by steve F11music.com on February 14, 2012 at 3:09pm

I'm using aruduino 1.0 that I downloaded today. I'm using the library in the zip here. I don't think it's a library issue. I removed what I had in the sketches folder and put in the library so it should be ok. I will try an 0022 and see if that works.

Comment by steve F11music.com on February 14, 2012 at 5:51pm

OK I got it uploaded with 0022. Didn't try 0023.  Do I need to have the xbee plugged in to get more than a green on light or is there some button combination to start it up? I'm not finding anything in the wiki except how to build it up until loading the software but nothing about configuring.

Where do I go from here?

Comment

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