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3DR Radio Maiden - Range Test

Posted by Sergio Luis de Almeida on April 23, 2012 at 11:43am

Yesterday I had the opportunity to test the 3DR Radio 900MHz.
On first impression I could see that he is much smaller and lighter than the Xbee.

I upgraded the firmware to v1.5 (the card that goes in the model airplane need a FTDI cable).

I made some ground tests with the default setting and noticed some delay by MissionPlanner. So I have disabled the option ECC and everything worked perfectly.

In flight test, I used a 7dBi patch antenna at the ground and flew up to 8km ( 4.8miles ) away and 2000m high and the 3DR Radio signal was in 90-94%.
Compared to the XBee system with the same patch antenna at that distance the signal was around 40-60%.

The settings I used were the image below. The only difference is the firmware v1.5.

Screenshot-3DRradio.png


I'm very happy with the 3DR Radio.


Thanks.

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Replies

  • B Duffy October 18, 2012 at 11:51am

    Hi Sergio,

    Can you tell what  7dBi patch antenna you are using. That range is fantastic!

    Thanks,

    B

  • Ravi April 25, 2012 at 9:35pm

    can u tell the procedure for upgrading the firmware for 3DR. 'local' indicates the new firmware should be on laptop instead form the repository.

  • Ravi April 25, 2012 at 9:22pm

    hi sergio, i rcvd my 3dr 900 Mhz last week and not to mention seems to be working flawlessly. i want to upgrade to firmware 1.5. the icon shows firmware upgrade as local. that menas that i shoul have the hex file on laptop or can i do via the net. ravi

  • Developer
    Andrew Tridgell April 23, 2012 at 4:58pm

    Hi Sergio,

    Thanks for the good report! Would you mind posting a tlog of the flight so we can look at the signal and noise levels?

    I'm surprised you noticed much latency with ECC. It will lower the telemetry rate as it halves your bandwidth, but the error correction should be worth it. Instead of disabling ECC, if you want higher telemetry rates you may be better raising the air rate a bit, perhaps to 96? Otherwise I think you'll start losing some packets at longer range as bit errors start creeping in.

    Also check what stream rates you have set in the planner.

    I'm also considering adding MAVLink compression to the radios. If we can get that working then it would allow for very high telemetry rates at low air data rates.

    Cheers, Tridge

  • Gabriel April 23, 2012 at 3:58pm

    there is a new firmware already ... dam I forgot to buy a FTDI cable :(

  • Glenn Pipe April 23, 2012 at 2:18pm

    Did you try any higher air rates to see what kind of range you get?

This reply was deleted.

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