Has anybody hacked together a controller that works across LTE. I want to be able to control my drone via the LTE cell network so I have unlimited range and can land and then proceed to take off again while controlling all flight segments from my smartphone many miles away.
I noticed that DroneDeploy recently announced this feature as part of their toolkit which is great, has anybody built this themselves?
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ariel: I have only technical information to write according to my experience with LTE. The LTE compared to the 3G has two things different. The bandwith, that allows you to stream also a video, and much lower latency. 3G latency is ranging between 350ms and 3000ms. LTE latency is (my experience only) between 50ms and 100ms.
The main issue of the LTE that anyone has to take into account is this:
1) LTE router will sometimes switch to 3G or even to EDGE depending on the signal strength.
2) You can't fly a drone over LTE where LTE has the best signal - like in a town. You can fly at places where LTE has weak signal.
You can make the conclusion :-)
If the drone is provided with waypoints via LTE at waypoint 'A' and told to fly and land at waypoint 'B' two miles away.
Even if the drone is temporarily out of the LTE coverage zone between waypoints 'A' and 'B' it still knows it needs to land at Waypoint 'B' where LTE coverage is known to be very good.
At Waypoint 'B' via the LTE connection the drone is told to take off and return and land at Waypoint 'A'
So, in these cases as long as there is good LTE coverage at Waypoint 'A' and 'B' and the drone carries / caches it's waypoint data then you don't need LTE coverage throughout the entire flight? Sure, you wouldn't have flight telemetry and FPV at all times but the drone would still get to it's waypoints without issue.
Would this work?
Ariel: What you want is possible andd no problem, but look at this: The issue you need to solve is not the LTE nor if its possible to use it or not. The issue is if you can fly drone the way you want. The connection, whatewer kind it is, is not the issue.
There are already means to fly a drone over 20 or 40 miles and you can send command, waypoints, video. This is not the problem. So you can use whatewer mean you want.
But can you? Have you sufficient insurance? Do you meet the legislation requirements of countries you wish to fly? Do you have a pilot licence equired? Are you sure there is no other small crop duster, paraglider, a new building not beeing on google map... strong wind...
If you are sure about this everything, you can fly and you have no problem. But is you are not sure about something, solve this something and then you can choose LTE.
If you want to make something in this field much more securely, try this with a boat arround some large seacost. Or for sure you can fly above a forest large enough to be sure the drone looses battery voltage before hiting a town.
I am sorry for being sceptic. I did have the same idea already in 2010, but find out what I wrote shortly here above.
Petr: this is excellent feedback and I love folks who have done / tried / thought about this. It vets and improves the concept!
The landing zones need to be away from obstructions and the flight paths needs to be pre-established to ensure they don't cross over populated areas. The idea is to string together a few different Hiveports ( little airports for drone or Hives for short) that meet the requirements above.
I except that the very first deployments will be in more rural areas and then expand them to slightly more populated areas.
What other issues did you run into?
LTE coverage is not as good as you may think, especially at some altiture.
But I guess you really meant GSM , data connection ? like UDP ?
Yes - that's been around for a while.
Hi
Yes i have been doing this for a couple of years now. Read about the configuration at my friends webpage at:
http://www.uavmatrix.com/
Edit: When i look at that web page now, i see that some parts of the setup is outdated for my current setup.
Very cool!
Have you successfully landed the drone and then taken it off again while remotely controlling the drone via the wireless connection?
it's not a problem.
While in AUTO mode, it does as expected, manual landing later have no influence on the presence of telemetry.
Do you have a video of somebody remotely controlling the drone via a cellular connection (3G or LTE?) and landing the drone and then taking off again?
Ok, now I see this discussion is odd.
I was commenting on using data (UDP protocol) to "control" in the sense of telemetry, tasking AP with objectives, monitoring and/or changing mission parameters on the fly.
*not* some "FPV video downstream and RC upstream" - or other amateurish/dangerous/unreliable ideas like I see people attempt to find in this thread.
Nor will I contribute to make people fly this way over such networks. It's asking for an accident.
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