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.
Replies
Greg,
The question about the order of the accel calibration vs changing the AHRS_ORIENTATION is a good one and I tink it's actually changed between 0.5 and 0.6. I think with 0.5 you'll need to do the AHRS_ORIENTATION change first while in 0.6 the order doesn't matter. I've always done the orientation parameter change first myself.
Changing the ahrs orientation also changes the internal compass orientation and (although you're not asking) none of this should affect the compass calibration.
With this set-up you should point the tracker/tri-pod roughly towards at the vehicle. It doesn't need to be pointed directly north nor precisely at the vehicle.
Hi all does the tracker need GPS
i think trackers working if i power it up its lock on to the quad points to its location
but in mission planner its got the tracker on the other side of the wold
because the tracker is on the other side of the wold if move to the quad in does not move
@Fred,
You can use the START_LATITUDE and START_LONGITUDE parameter to set the tracker's position so that it doesn't require a GPS.
Hi Randy thanks for your time
So it does need one to set the home that's fine makes it easier trying to set it all the time as i fly all over the place never in the same place
In the Frame Assembly chapter of the Antenna Tracker manual, see the "Mounting the GPS and external compass" section at the bottom. In the image below, I have the Antenna Tracker and MRC at different places inside my house. It makes for some fun testing on rainy days.
Ha, funny.
By the way, the latest beta version of the mission planner moves the red and orange lines coming out of the tracker. This shows which way the tracker is point (red line) and which way it wants to point (orange line).
I want to use Arduplane with Missionplanner and also run an Antennatracker on an APM 2.6 board.
I understood, that the Antennatracker needs the plane position somehow.
Afaik the Antennatracker can be connected to Missionplanner to upload firmware, adjust parameters and calibrate sensors...
But how does the Antennatracker gets the plane position when (in normal use case) Missionplanner is connected to Arduplane?
I haven't found an option in Missionplanner to set another COM/UDP/TCP port to pass the plane position to the Antennatracker.
Is there a hidden option in Missionplanner?
Or do i have to run Mavproxy beneath Missionplanner to accomplish this?
Here's the link to said manual.
In short though, instead of the GCS sitting between the antenna tracker and vehicle, the antenna tracker sits between the GCS and the vehicle.
Vehicle <--> Tracker <--> GCS
Both the tracker and vehicle data are mixed together and passed to the GCS so in the case of the Mission Planner's at least, the Ctrl-X key allows you to select whether to look at attitude, position parameter data from the vehicle or from the tracker.
Randy - thank you very much for the clarification! That was the missing information for me ;-)
However, this is not the configuration i intend to use with the antenna tracker.
I want to run redundant telemetry links (UHF, WiFi, maybe 4G) between vehicle and GCS.
Therefore the antenna tracker cannot "sit between" vehicle and gcs and have to get the plane position somehow from the GCS.
I thought the Missionplanner can relay the plane position on a different port to the antenna tracker - maybe a feature request for Missionplanner?
But afaik i will have to use Mavproxy to handle the redundant telemetry links and also to pass the plane position to the antenna tracker.
Hi,
I use a Raspberry Pi in my antenna tracker. It runs a raspbian image prepared with mavproxy and AP mode for wifi:
http://dev.ardupilot.com/wiki/companion-computers/raspberry-pi-via-...
Raspberry Pi and APM are connected via USB. I have the 3DR radio connected to the APM to keep the tracker working, if the Raspberry should have problems and this way you can access both the tracker and your vehicle from missionplanner. You could also connect all your telemetry hardware to the RPi and output the telemetry to the APM through USB.
Perhaps you could even mix the setup, with the UHF (3DR radio etc.) connected to the APM and the other telemetry links connected to the RPi.
I am going to try this, because my quadcopter now has a wifi link.
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