Posted by John Cousins on December 25, 2010 at 4:18pm
Hi there everyone. It's my first post in the Ardupilot Mega part of this forum so please... be gentle.I am currently building a massive (by my standards) UAV. It is based around the "Payload Master 100" by AMR research. I hadn't decided on an autopilot system, but after seeing what Ardupilot Mega is capable of, it has sealed the deal.I have all the necessary gear either ordered, or on back order. One thing that I can't seem to find information on is alternative telemetry options.Due to the size of my UAV, I have the capability to carry an on board micro PC which is a great luxury. It means that I open up a great deal of options with regard to transmitting flight data back to my base station.To save me massive amounts of internet trolling time on a slow internet connection, (I'm currently on an oil rig..... about 9kbps) I was wondering if anyone could tell me how flight data information is sent out of the Ardupilot Mega. What format is the raw data stream being spat out of the Mega?What I need to know is, could all the flight data information be converted to a one way serial data stream for transmission over a different (ie. not Xbee) radio modem. I only want to tansmit data in one direction and that is from aircraft to base station. I have software which can take a variety of different data streams from different com ports and combine them into a single data string, but that doesn't help me if I don't know where to obtain, or what format the data is in.I would really appreciate any help and input.Cheers!John
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Hello John, The messages sent from the APmega are binary packets. There are two preamble bytes, a payload length byte, a message ID byte, payload bytes and finally a two byte checksum.
Replies
What is the lowest baud rate at which the APM can be set to? Can it be set to 9800bps?
So all I have to do is connect my modem to port 3. Define the port and the protocol to suit my GCS and i'm away?
If that's the case.... Awesome!
Hello John, The messages sent from the APmega are binary packets. There are two preamble bytes, a payload length byte, a message ID byte, payload bytes and finally a two byte checksum.
This will explain it
You have a choice of three protocols:
Legacy
APM Binary
MAVLink
You can transmit over any radio link that can take serial in.