A discussion page to allow me to add my experiences using a Raspberry Pi 2/3/Zero V1.2/1.3 as a companion computer for Ardupilot/APM/Pixhawk flight boards. I will update my experiences as I learn, feel free to comment and offer tips, it's all free here.
I'm building a github for my experiments: https://github.com/benb0jangles/Companion-Pi
Drone Unit: Raspberry Pi Zero V1.3 + Pi Camera Module
img file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1cVb3uX0f0dQTZzSmVISFdYd3M
Ground Unit: Raspberry Pi 2
img file: <to be added>
Goggles Unit: Raspberry Pi Zero V1.3
img file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1cVb3uX0f0dakFpaTAyVF9HV2s
Ardupilot Technical Questions:
Also, if you have any technical code/hardware questions which you feel may take ongoing contributions and help over an extended timeframe, feel free to ask over on Ardupilot.org technical discussion page here: http://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/companion-pi-2-3-zero/9460
I will update as I get by, please contribute by offering your 'plug & play' wifi adapters using Raspbian Jessie. Also, if you happen to pick up this project, and are working faster than me, then please send us your own .img file experiments. Thanks.
Replies
the adapters I am using for testing and setup are 5x cheap ralink RT5370 usb dongles with screw antennas:
here link
they work with raspbian jessie out of the box. $2 each approx
it is indeed a great project to build!
Have a look at the diversity in wifibroadcast:
https://befinitiv.wordpress.com/2015/05/24/diversity-for-wifibroadc...
it's pretty cool, as you can plug two wifi cards into your receiving station and they themselves can have mimo dual antennas.
The key is in a good hardware setup. The sweet spot seems to be powerful transmitter and sensitive receiver (seems obvious, right :). The alfa cards work great as tx as they have injectable chipsets and have a great big amplifier so they are very powerful, but they're really bad as rx as they seem to have very poor receiver sensitivity. There are fortunately multiple cheaper smaller cards that have much better rx sensitivity. Then antennae, so you can use for example circular polarity mushroom antennae or dish antennae. I actually use the ImmersionRC 5.8ghz mushroom and dish antennae meant for analogue fpv with 5.8ghz wifi adapters, works brilliantly - and you can use this with standard wifi/gstreamer methods as well. The dish antenna gives you amazing range but of course you have to point it in the right direction to work. I found the circular mushrooms still give excellent range, certainly well past the point of legal flying in US/UK.
Good Luck :)
Testing video using QTGstreamerHUD.APK on Android:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXNPqt2XJkw
I recommend using 480p video settings for gstreamer as my cheap android tablet cannot handle 720p HD. I'm sure if your phone/tablet is more powerful it will receive the video no problem
Some software that is coming along with integrated video HUD:
As of today:
-Mission Planner has a modified version of software for video, I hope it gets integrated into the standard HUD soon
-Tower Beta has integrated video HUD which is nice :)
-APM Planner video HUD is in development I believe
You can of course run gstreamer as a stand alone software on Windows/Mac/Linux if you wish, but it will be better to integrate into a flight system.
Advanced setup:
they cost too much to be viable, you can buy 30 raspberry pi zeros for the same price
true, you would think it would be a popular item if it was priced to suit
Could I ask why you would want to use the csi input instead of the hdmi?
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