Developer Comment by Mark Colwell on November 27, 2010 at 8:12am

Nice! Thanks for publishing as Open-Source, flexible design with cool options.

Comment by Ahmad Usman on November 27, 2010 at 8:42am

Excellent and best work....

Comment by Johann Van Niekerk on November 27, 2010 at 8:49am

Hi Alexander
what would you say would be predicted Range?

Comment by abey on November 27, 2010 at 9:10am

Interesting. What would be the RF baudrate? How legal do you expect it to be in Europe (regarding the RF laws)?

Comment by Peter Seddon on November 27, 2010 at 9:45am

It's a Norwegian company and the module shown above is said in its data sheet to conform with EU R&TTE directive (EN300220, EN301489, EN60950). So looks like we are good to go in Europe.

Peter

Comment by Peter Seddon on November 27, 2010 at 9:46am

Data sheet gives range of 3-5Km LOS.

Peter

Comment by abey on November 27, 2010 at 10:45am

Re: legal issue, does it mention a 10% or 1% maximum duty cycle? Because it's a very common restriction in this kind of frequency for anything above 10mW.

Comment by Martin Seven on November 27, 2010 at 11:51am

The law says 10% averaged over 60 minutes, I'm guessing that's what this one does since it's certed.

Comment by abey on November 28, 2010 at 3:12am

That's 6 minutes. Any sensible flight is going to be longer so this will be a problem. For example, the 6 minute transmission time per hour is hardcoded in the XBeePro 868. It wont transmit anymore than that, so that makes it pretty much unusable for UAV purposes.

Comment by Alexander on November 28, 2010 at 3:44am

@Mark, thanks!
@Ahmad, thanks!
@Johann, range is highly depending on antenna system and regulations you want to meet, but more than 5Km LOS must be possible.
@abey, that's why I like this statement of the Radiocarft datasheet :"The use of RF frequencies, maximum allowed RF power and duty-cycles are limited by national
regulations. The RC1180HP-RC232 is complying with the applicable directives within the
European Union when used within these limitations."

The legal discussion is always a interesting part, using the radiocrafts module it's upto the user, but it's certified so it could meet the regulations which is good, the +27dBm is the maximum RFoutput but is configurable by the user.
Even a +10dbm output with 100% duty and a high gain yagi antenna is not legal because regulations are about ERP ;-)
Before I used a Wi232 module at +15dBm (32mw) and got a solid link with 9600baud at 4Km LOS, but this was with a 12 element yagi at the ground station pointed to the plane.

If there is interest in this project I can upload the schematics and board files, I think the board layout will be ready next week so I will place the order for about 10 boards next week, if more are needed let me know. I think the price for one board is around €10,- but depending on the quantity.
I hope there is some interest for this project because code has to be done from scratch, so help is very welcome !

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