I'm trying to launch my hexacopter on a moving ship with the speed of 5knots. I keep on getting a bad gps pos error message. My hdop is below 2 and getting about 10-13 sat while monitoring in MP. Is this normal? I know the RTL will be in the water when it takes off. Is there a way to have a dynamic RTL that takes the position of my transmitter as the return to home? Or maybe taking a 4-6m range between my transmitter and my hexa as my RTL. This can be called Return to Range if possible.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV58MzXIIc0&feature=youtube_gda...
If you're interested in trying it out, I would suggest uploading AC 2.9 or wait until the next release. Some of us had problems with FollowMe mode with the current code.
Requires telemetry.
Mike
Thanks for all the information. I will try the follow me when I get back to shore and buy the GPS usb dongle. It would be nice to have the GCS working on an Android tablet because it has a built in GPS.
It does work on Android tablets?
Droidplanner works quite well, including follow me mode. I use my tablet all the time as a ground station so I don't have to take my laptop with me every single time I want to fly. Caution though, the refresh rate on follow me is pretty low, and quadcopters like to lunge at the point. Makes for a wonderful game of incredibly dangerous tag, to the delight of all onlookers ;) If you feel like you're up to the challenge, you could talk to the developer of DroidPlanner and see if you can work out how to continuously push updated home coordinates. It would most likely have to be something like re-writing the mission to update the home location to your tablet location. See what you can find out! Just put a little velcro on the most convenient point of your tablet case and try it out!
I've not tried it in a while - will make some time this week, but andropilot follow me works really well.
This is the first ever live test of it v0.2 of andropilot. It's come a long way since then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oAkDZh-5OY
On apm until at least some versions ago, Home is set when the apm is turned on and it gets a valid GPS signal. One explanation for the "bad gps" thing is that it may be looking at differences in GPS, rather than looking at hdop directly. Since your ship is moving, it's picking that movement up as inaccurate gps information? Maybe stopping dead in the water allows you to arm the vehicle at least.
As indicated by others, the tx has no gps. You must attach a gps to the laptop and use that. The (experimental!) "follow me" feature should be great for this, although you probably have to set it to this mode explicitly, not sure if you can change into this mode from the AP mission plan.
http://copter.ardupilot.com/wiki/ac2_followme/
FollowMe is a flight mode based on GUIDED mode. So it would not be available as a mission command. It would be like telling your copter to fly to WP1 then switch to stabilize mode.
There's nothing in the code that I've heard of (yet) allowing for a moving GCS, maybe Ardustation Antenna Tracker would be something to look at.
Mike
How do you believe the TX would know where it was?
I can't comment on the GPS but your transmitter does not have GPS or the ability to send coordinates to the autopilot. It may be possible to use some sort of script in mission planner running on a laptop with a GPS module pushing an updated home position at a certain interval. Not sure how that would affect landing though.