I just received my Piksi GPS modular, and I can't get it to talk to the Pixhawk. Do I really have to install Python just to test it out? When is Piksi and 3Drobotics expecting to have the integration complete?
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Hi Michael!
Tridge just pointed me over here, since I'm the guy that's been doing the integration :) I'm a Stanford grad student, not part of 3D Robotics, working part-time for Swift Navigation.
The good news is, you should be able to use Piksi as a normal (non-RTK) gps already! And I'm finishing the RTK driver this week! For support in general, find us on the swift navigation google group! https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/swiftnav-discuss
To get started, how about you jump in with the Getting Started guide on Swift Navigation's wiki first: http://docs.swift-nav.com/wiki/Piksi_User_Getting_Started_Guide
These GPSes are still under heavy development, you'd want to make sure they're running nicely in the place you want them mounted before you take them out. As for mounting, you'd want to do what I did, and mount them on a groundplane: http://docs.swift-nav.com/wiki/File:Ground_plane.JPG
Pixhawk generates a lot of electrical noise that interferes with GPSes, which is especially bad for Piksi given its requirements to track the carrier wave of GPS, which has 1000x (27db) less process gain than the normal code tracking. Mount Piksi as far away from Pixhawk, your telemetry radio, and other sources of interference.
Once you can confirm that you've got the Piksis running correctly, did you make yourself a cable to connect to the Pixhawk? The picoblade-to-DF13 connector that ships with Piksi connects to the 3dr radio shipped with the unit, unfortunately the cable same cable doesn't connect to Pixhawk. That's a cable to go from a gps into the radio, which has the TX and RX lines reversed from a cable that goes from a gps into pixhawk. You'd want to make yourself a cable that goes from Piksi to Pixhawk, or flip those lines on the cable we shipped you.
3D Robotics will hopefully start carrying a compatible cable :)
For the moment we're recommending you fly with a dual-GPS setup as Piksi becomes more mature :) Follow the newsgroup, there's lots of activity!
Cheers!
-Niels
Here's an example of the type of positioning Piksi is giving its users! https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/swiftnav-discuss/nMqeRAOgXWg
ArduCopter's localization and control algorithms is tuned to a much much noisier GPS, so at the moment these quads aren't responding as accurately as they should do the higher quality sensor - as these are getting into the community we'll push to get those tuned better for a higher quality GPS!
Thanks very much for the update Niels. Please keep more info coming as more work is done.
Interesting question. Anyone knows how to answer?