Hey guys,
I'm looking to setup a pan/tilt gimbal, stabilized by the APM, with targeting input from the video operator on the ground. (Note that the video operator will NOT be the guy flying, hence my post here :). We want to have one guy 'flying' and monitoring aircraft attitude and flight path, and another responsible for video operation and target location.
The idea is simple: I want the video guy to have an easy to use interface to point the camera. Could be a joystick, or even a few keys on his keyboard. What I'm looking to find out is whether or not anyone has ever attempted this, and if there are any easy ways to send a signal like that through the APM's telemetry/command link, as opposed to having to go through the R/C transmitter.
It could be something as simple as this: use com2com to open a serial port on the command computer, and have a simple program take input from the keyboard and send the appropriate signal through the secondary comport to the mission planner. Then I somehow configure the mission planner to take that signal and send it to the plane.
What do you think? Any easier way to do this, that maybe is already available? Thanks guys.
Replies
We found the simplest method for us was to use two receivers on the aircraft, one used for flying the aircraft and controlling modes of the APM as normal and the second receiver getting it's power and earth feed by the first receivers spare channel and then the signal wires going to the APM input channels 6,7,8 to be setup in the camera gimballing section as overrides for the APM gimballing. That way the APM stabilizes the camera and the other operator (camera station) has their own transmitter to override the cameras pan, tilt and zoom.
You can use a joystick setup to use only the spare channels, but it slows things down, which is why we used the second radio system in the end as it had a more reliable and faster link.