With the upcoming release of Ardupilot v2.1 requiring a 328 based board I have been thinking what i can do with my 168 board. One thing i have noticed is there seems to be a large demand for a cheap tracking antenna from both the FPV and UAV communities.Unfortunately I lack the technical knowledge/skill to build a tacking antenna but from what i have seen, there are many gifted programmers/developers here. Perhaps it wouldnt be too hard to modify the Ardupilot v1.0 code?Here are a couple of thoughts on how I see a tracking antenna working:-The tracking antenna gets aircraft's coordinates from the NMEA sentences transmitted by an Xbee modem (this hardware would already be in place if you are using a laptop labview based ground station) I'm not sure what could be done if the Xbee modem went out of range of the GS.-Either input the "home" coordinates in the sketch before use or connect the Ardupilots GPS each time when setting up the base station.-Hobby servos are generally limited to 180* rotation, perhaps two servos could be used on top of each other (think twice the rotation speed for close distance tracking) or a stepper motor could be used?Does anyone have any thoughts on this and are there any of you interested in developing such a system?Cheers,Nick
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You wouldn't even need to use an Ardupilot for this I would imagine, the standard Arduino boards would be perfectly capable of accomplishing this.
This is a brilliant idea however!
The concerns about zeroing the antenna are perfectly valid but the digital compass still seems a little overkill.. zeroing to north is a perfectly valid way of solving this problem but it might be tricky.
Even with some of the most directional of antennas, have a 10-15 degree beamwidth on both axis so at a decent range the antenna mount would not need to be super accurate.
An idea that just come to my head are telescope mounts, they would fit the bill for a mechanical platform almost perfectly.
Will post more after I have a think about it.
Great Idea! Can someone please do this! (My programming is no where near good enough yet!)
It could be set up to receive Raw NMEA Data so that any GPS or autopilot system could be used.
You would just need a "get home position" button on it which would involve putting your UAV down next to the antenna and pressing the button before take off! Then just point the antenna North and off you go! (using data modems of course)
It would be good to set it up to a standard Servo City type mount (or something cheaper), or have a feature where you could Scale / calibrate it to your own mount.
Please correct me if i'm wrong but I believe continuous rotation servos have no ability to go to a fixed point (they be stationary or can rotate clockwise/anticlockwise only)?
However you could probably use external gearing on a standard hobby servo or perhaps use a special 360* rotation servo usually used for sailing boats such as the GWS S125 1T
That's a cool idea. You can easily get continuous rotation servos (used in robotics). Assuming the ground station and launch point are about the same, the airborn ArduPilot could send the tracking ArduPilot its home position as part of a setup string.
Replies
http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/705844:Topic:46641
Collaboration is always best. :P
This is a brilliant idea however!
The concerns about zeroing the antenna are perfectly valid but the digital compass still seems a little overkill.. zeroing to north is a perfectly valid way of solving this problem but it might be tricky.
Even with some of the most directional of antennas, have a 10-15 degree beamwidth on both axis so at a decent range the antenna mount would not need to be super accurate.
An idea that just come to my head are telescope mounts, they would fit the bill for a mechanical platform almost perfectly.
Will post more after I have a think about it.
It could be set up to receive Raw NMEA Data so that any GPS or autopilot system could be used.
You would just need a "get home position" button on it which would involve putting your UAV down next to the antenna and pressing the button before take off! Then just point the antenna North and off you go! (using data modems of course)
It would be good to set it up to a standard Servo City type mount (or something cheaper), or have a feature where you could Scale / calibrate it to your own mount.
it would be interesting to see the development of ArduTracker :)
However you could probably use external gearing on a standard hobby servo or perhaps use a special 360* rotation servo usually used for sailing boats such as the GWS S125 1T