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Rembizi OSD on APM?

Posted by Mark Randall on October 19, 2010 at 12:49pm
Hi folks,

I'm interested in trying to connect a Rembizi OSD to my APM. I've searched both forums and the code, but I can't find any hint that this has been implemented yet. I haven't read through the hundreds of posts in the rcgroups thread, though. I'd love to be proven wrong. :) Assuming I'm the first, I looked at this post by Blake Krone about integrating Rembizi into the ArduPilot code:

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/integrating-remzibi-osd-amp

Let's pretend for a moment that I'm crazy enough to try something similar for the current APM code. I know I'd need to use the FastSerial code. Just like Blake, I'm using a UBlox GPS, so I assume I should examine the date code in the UBLOX class in case similar changes are needed.  There are two parts where I'm utterly clueless, though: which pins I should use for connecting my APM to the Rembizi board, and (if not obvious from the first part) which serial port I should use in the code.  In case it's relevant, I have an Xbee connected and I plan to add on the airspeed sensor and the magnetometer (once it's available). I think I'll have my own little Medusa when I'm done. :)

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. I'll be happy to share my resulting code.

Mark

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Replies

  • Toby Mills August 30, 2011 at 2:39am
    Stupid question maybe. But why does the data need to get added to the video stream on the airside. Why not transmit the video raw and put the osd on the output of the video receiver. Perhaps you could feed the osd data from a serial output from the apm planner or arustation etc. The less gear that is airside the better both for weight and risk. Is any data that is required for osd that is not transmitted over mavlink?
  • Ed Stewart December 3, 2010 at 4:45am
    It's not quite like 'T'ing into a pipe to share the data, there is a bit of 2 way communication going on with the GPS. To my understanding the advantages would be having to buy only one GPS and sharing the digital information from the APM and the graphical information from the Rembizi all on one OSD.
  • Andrew Radford December 3, 2010 at 2:18am
    Sorry to hijack the thread with a noob question - but what specific advantages are there to connecting the OSD to the APM rather than just 'T'ing the GPS to both the OSD and the APM? Artificial horizon from the Giros? Information about waypoints etc? More precise altitude from the baro?
  • Ed Stewart December 2, 2010 at 6:48am
    Thanks for all your time and efforts, mainly a hardware guy here. I know it's the glue that hold it together but all that code stuff makes my head swim.
  • Matthias Badaire December 1, 2010 at 12:43pm
    Blake,
    did you manage to find a way to connect a serial on the APM. Are you going to integrate this into SVN ?
    Thx
  • SciFly October 25, 2010 at 9:05pm
    Would a serial Multiplexer help?Id hate to have to cut traces to accommodate it though,
  • Joel October 25, 2010 at 7:02pm
    Con grads Blake! I've been looking forward to this!
  • Blake Krone October 22, 2010 at 10:26am

    Quick video showing progress so far, not sure why it is so slow and choppy at times. Probably my netbook that I'm using to record on. Unfortunately when I went to show turning on/off the OSD layer it just so happened that was when I finally got a GPS lock which automatically sets the home on Remzibi.
  • Blake Krone October 21, 2010 at 6:52pm
    So I have almost all of the Remzibi stuff updated for the APM. I've got it so that I can turn on/off the overlay, set home, etc. I built it under the assumption that it would work similar to a GPS library, using generic function calls etc.

    I just now was working on the whole Serial2 which you can't use obviously. I'm working out the sharing telemetry port stuff now.

    For reference I'm using Ardu1.7 from Remzibi.

    Chris, can you shoot me a message on how you guys were thinking of integrating it? No sense on doubling-up the work effort if how I'm going about it is acceptable.
  • Developer
    Doug Weibel October 19, 2010 at 8:48pm
    Whoa! Hold it!

    The pins for port 2 are used for the I2C connection to the ADC on the shield. You cannot use them for serial communication.

    If you want to use an xbee then you are "out" of serial ports, unless you want to work out how to share one.
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