I've been slowly building up and testing a more elaborate ground station, and I'm in the process of adding an antenna tracker. The tracker I'm using has gearing up on the pan servo to extend the range, but does not on tilt. Due to the gearing, the speed of panning and tilting are not the same, so I started looking for a way to more or less normalize them.
I'm using a Maestro servo controller, so the speed and accel parameters were the obvious way (to me) to start doing this. I started looking for ways to change those parameters, and unless I'm missing something, the Maestro::Setup() routine appears to hard-code the pan and tilt speed and accel parameters (100 and 5, respectively).
Perhaps there's a simpler way to alter those parameters other than changing the hard-coded values, but I added pan and tilt speed/accel text fields to the antenna tracker screen, which are only enabled when the combo box selects Maestro. I also took advantage of reading/writing the values set by the user to the config.xml file. The values entered in those fields are sent via SendCompactMaestroCommand() in Maestro::Setup(), instead of the hard-coded values.
Are these changes of any interest (they aren't particularly large), or is this something I'm better off keeping a locally modified version for? If there is interest, I've got the changes up on github...
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Yup, I did git a merge notice, hopefully that means it will be in the next release - but that's up to the MP folks.
I haven't bothered with creating an install image, so I'd just wait unless you want to experiment for yourself.
I am just running in to this issue now. I don't see anyway to change the speed and acceleration settings in MissionPlanner so I am guessing this change was never adopted?
This is an issue when using tracker bodies such as the EagleTree one RMRC sells because the pan has a something like a 1:4 gear ratio so it really whips it around fast.
The RMRC tracker pan & tilt is exactly the reason I made the patch in the first place...
I didn't get any indication of interest here, so I just used my own branch. I can send you a patch if you'd like, after I verify that it still works okay.
Hi Mitch,
I am surprised more people were not interested. I guess most people are using a 360 servo with an un-geared tracker body. I would very much appreciate the patch if you can provide one, although I don't know how to apply it to MP.
Jeff
Ok, I'll try sending in a pull request to MP and see if the patch makes it in that way. It's not exactly a large change.
Might take a few days, no guarantee they'll take it though.
Thanks man, I really appreciate it. Keeping my fingers crossed they do.