Developer

figuring out the Antenna Tracker

Not many people know but we have an piece of open source software for controlling an Antenna Tracker.  It's been built by Tridge (Arduplane lead developer) for use in the outback challenge.

Sadly we have no documentation and, as far as I know, nobody except Tridge has used it.  Still given Tridge's track record on building great software I suspect it works well and if it doesn't, I'm sure we can fix it.  So to not let this piece of code go to waste, I'd like some help from people who are interested to give it a try and help me figure out how it works.

Here's the little that I know:

  • It runs on any of our supported board (APM1, APM2, PX4, Pixhawk, Flymaple and perhaps VRBrain)
  • For APM1/APM2 users building the code is as easy as opening our hacked ArduinoIDE and selecting File > SketchBook > Tools > AntennaTracker and then building in the normal way.  For PX4/Pixhawk, our autobuilder doesn't automatically build a binary but I can provide one if people are interested.
  • It can control a Pan and Tilt gimbal like this or this found on servocity.com.
  • It may or may not require a GPS
  • It must somehow receive vehicle position updates from the ground station which has the telemetry radio that is connected to the vehicle. Maybe through a USB cable.  Tridge probably uses the python ground station, MAVProxy, to passthrough the vehicle position data to the AT but perhaps we can get MichaelO to build out a similar feature in Mission Planner.
  • I imagine this antenna tracker could also be used to keep a camera focused on the vehicle which might be good for easing the burden on creating videos of our vehicles.

So if you want to give it a try please do and stick any findings, questions or issues below. Alternatively Issues can go into the issues list.

I'll start sticking things into the wiki as they become clear.

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Permalink Reply by Greg Covey on May 10, 2017 at 9:35am

In the upper right corner of Mission Planner you can simply select which MavLINK COMM device you want to connect to. In the images below, you can see the change in COMM ports and GPS satellite count between my tracker and copter.

Permalink Reply by ausdroid on May 10, 2017 at 6:05pm

Well! WOuld you look at that.

Found it. Thanks. Works perfectly.

Thanks.

Permalink Reply by palo sestak on June 15, 2017 at 9:10pm

Well guys I put together my quad copter and antenna tracker (build 0.8 on pixhawk). Connection via 433mhz telemetry link between vehicle and pixhawk works - I can see in MP telemetry data from vehicle. Anyway I can't switch between data from AT and vehicle because CTRL-X doesn't do nothing. It is bit frustrating since when I connect MissionPlanner to AT I can see reading first parameters from vehicle 1, then from vehicle 2. Then HUD and status shows me data from vehicle, but can't switch to data from AT. Is Ctrl-X shortcut removed from MP?

Version of MP I'm using is 1.3.48.

Edit:

OK, I found it - it is now only drop-down box in the upper right corner of MP for selection of vehicle.


DeveloperPermalink Reply by Randy on June 15, 2017 at 10:12pm

I think it's best to discuss over on ardupilot.org's antenna tracker support area.

Permalink Reply by Jeff on September 1, 2017 at 1:44pm

I just compiled v0.8.0 for the pixhawk if anyone needs it, since it is no longer available.

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Permalink Reply by palo sestak on September 1, 2017 at 2:49pm

Nice to have it. Would you post it to ardupilot.org too please.

Permalink Reply by Jeff on September 1, 2017 at 2:54pm

For sure.  Just have to create an account.

Permalink Reply by Mike Mac on September 1, 2017 at 4:09pm

Does anyone know if a new version is in the works?

I really like the format of this forum better. I hope the discussion does not totally dry up.

.

Permalink Reply by Anthony Verloop on September 2, 2017 at 8:41pm

Fantastic, that is really a great help. Thanks a million. (To Jeff, uploading version 0.8)

Permalink Reply by Greg Covey on September 3, 2017 at 7:06am

Thanks, Jeff!



Jeff said:

I just compiled v0.8.0 for the pixhawk if anyone needs it, since it is no longer available.

Permalink Reply by Jeff on September 4, 2017 at 7:14am

You guys are all very welcome!  I am still trying to get my tracker running reliably since I upgraded.  I decided to upgrade my GPS to the M8N because of large variances on both gps and compass readings.  I may also have to relocate it further from the 5.8ghz video repeater antenna.  I will echo Fred's comment above.  If anyone has a reliable tracker setup for either v0.8.0 or v1.0 please share your config settings, pids, etc.....

Permalink Reply by Greg Covey on September 4, 2017 at 8:01am

Here you are...

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