I just completed my Pixhawk equipped 4WD Slash chassis complete with dual GPSs and a 3DR 915MHZ telemetry radio.
The GPSs are mounted at each end of the chassis. The 3DR GPS/Compass module is in the front of the chassis and 3DR uBlox LEA-6 v1.1 is in the rear. Both are protected by the chassis bumpers
The rest of the components are mounted on a navigation platform above the battery.
The rover is powered by a Traxxas 3500 brushless motor and VXL-3s ESC and is using a Spektrum Remote Receiver to communicate with a Spektrum DX8 Transmitter.
I have beefed up the body mounts with extruded aluminum "L" rails to help prevent damage during a rollover.
Unlike my 2WD Slash rover, the battery can be removed for charging without taking the navigation platform off of the chassis.
Here are some pictures of the new rover:
Front View
Side View
Top View
Rear View
Regards,
TCIII ArduRover2 Developer
Replies
Hello Tom,
Nice build. I am intrigued with your dial GPS setup. Did you modify the stock firmware to select the one that has more sat at any time? On which ports are these two modules connected?
Hi Hugues,
Thanks for the kudos, much appreciated.
The Pixhawk ArduRover2 firmware has had the dual GPS capability since the beta versions of v2.45/2.46 came out.
The primary GPS/Compass is connected at the Pixhawk GPS input and the secondary GPS is connected to Serial 4 (Pins 2&3). The debug UART was moved to Serial 5 (Pins 4&5).
You will need to enable the use of the secondary GPS by setting the parameter GPS_TYPE2 to 1.
The present beta firmware will select the GPS that has the most satellites at any given moment.
Regards,
TCIII ArduRover2 Developer
Wow thx that is a great feature. Will that be ported to APM:copter and plane too?
@Hugues,
I believe that Tridge has already integrated that dual GPS feature into the Arduplane firmware.
I do not know about the Arducopter firmware.
Regards,
TCIII ArduRover2 Developer
Nice work. But, why do you need dual GPS? Shouldn't one module be sufficient?
Will it be possible to install small fpv camera on it and stream live video to the computer or tablet?
@Al B,
Thanks for the kudos, much appreciated.
For redundancy and for protection against potential dropouts (looses lock) where only one GPS momentarily drops out, but not both.
I have reviewed dual GPS performance using my dataflash logs and there have been instances where one GPS momentarily lost lock while the other one did not loose lock and the rover stayed on course.
But suit yourself. If one GPS is good enough for you then stay with one GPS. I base my findings on emperical testing so that I know that the dual GPS configuration performs as expected.
Yes, you can install a small FPV camera on a rover and live stream the video to a whatever you want.
I have run a GoPro camera on this rover without a transmitter which could be easily added for live streaming.
Regards,
TCIII AVD
I missed your previous post where you commented about the dual GPS, "The present beta firmware will select the GPS that has the most satellites at any given moment."
I might be missing something here since it doesn't make any sense that one GPS detects more satellites than the other. If one module uses the most satellites and the other doesn't, then one is defective. If they randomly alternate detecting the most satellites, then that means that both can also detect the wrong or correct amount of satellites at the same time.
Anyway, I don't think that throwing more redundant hardware is good solution.
That is such a clean build...most impressive.
Beautiful work.
Hi BTE,
Thanks for the kudos, much appreciated.
I am always trying new ways to mount and populate the navigation platform with each build.
Regards,
TCIII ArduRover2 Developer
Whats the difference between the pixhawk and apm 2.6?
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