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DGPS in APM/Pixhawk

Posted by Pierre on February 3, 2015 at 11:02pm

I have used Pixhawk to fly my fixed wings for several months. Now I want to install and use DGPS to it.

Has someone here tried to put a DGPS on it? What are the steps to achieve that and what would be the least cost? I don't have a lot of money to spend on it but I can spend time to achieve that. Is there any published existing way to do that?

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Replies

  • Pascal P. February 10, 2015 at 2:16am

    Pierre,

    Just below 1000 USD, but GPS RTK solution. Should be able to cover 1000m

    RTK Piksi - Swift Navigation

  • ColinC February 10, 2015 at 1:22am

    If you're using the gov provided DGPS signals, then the DGPS receiver would sit in the vehicle and be wired to the gps. So you don't have to send anything.

    Or if the the DGPS receiver is just too big, maybe you could rebroadcast the output of the receiver direct to the gps using a wirless serial link like we use for telemetry. Could be sketchy.
     
    If you want your own DGPS base station, like the transportable unit shown in the Wiki article, then no, I don't suppose $1000 would cover it.

    • Pierre > ColinC February 10, 2015 at 4:46am

      How much, would you think, could do it in the own DGPS base station way? More than 5000 USD?

      • Pierre > Pierre February 10, 2015 at 5:04am

        I tried and didn't find out the pricing information of DGPS base station. Which website could I grab this kind of information?

  • ColinC February 9, 2015 at 6:16pm

    HI Pierre,

    Not much info, I'm afraid, but I'm very interested in this topic.  I can see the regional DGPS ground station from where I live.  I assume you're talking about ground based systems and not SBAS.  As in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_GPS.

    You need a receiver that pulls in the signal from the ground station at around 300 kHz (that's a "k") and sends it over the serial line to the GPS receiver.  Protocol is known as RTCM. My Ublox, for example, will accept this data and use it to correct the position in real time. 

    But finding a small, cheap, stand-alone receiver seems a challenge. You'd think we could build just a board, maybe using a software-defined radio (but here I 'm getting in a little over my head).

    Cheers,

    Colin

     

    • Pierre > ColinC February 9, 2015 at 6:53pm

      Yes. I'm asking about ground based systems not SBAS.

      What would be the minimum cost of such a system? Below 1000 USD? My UAV won't fly more than 1000 meters away from the ground station. So I might need less powerful ground station signal to GPS.

  • Pierre February 4, 2015 at 10:03pm

    waiting for the reply...

    • Pierre > Pierre February 8, 2015 at 12:20am

      waiting for reply....

      • Pierre > Pierre February 9, 2015 at 5:05pm

        waiting for reply....

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