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Ardustation 2: Antenna Tracking, Mavlink, Flight Data for Arducopter 2

Posted by Hai Tran on August 13, 2011 at 7:08pm

Heino, Jeff E and myself have been working on updating Ardustation code to support Arductoper 2.

 

I think our code is ready for general use.

- Automatic antenna tracking, tested with ReadyMadeRC Antenna pan/tilt unit (even had my ContourHD cam attached to the directional antenna!)

- Manual antenna tracking (aka Antenna Test)

- Edit/View AC2 Params included PIDs

- Flight data display

 

Credits to Phillip Anthony Smith for updating Ardustation to support Mavlink (ArdustationPS).

 

Source code is available here

http://code.google.com/p/ardustation-ii/

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Comments

  • Boris Matuschka May 1, 2012 at 11:46am

    Thank you very much Heino! For you reply to my mail, also :-) very appreciated!

  • Heino R. Pull April 29, 2012 at 8:49am

    Yes you can - here is a more updated post.

    http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/unified-ardustation-2-with-para...

  • Boris Matuschka April 29, 2012 at 5:55am

    Can I use the antenna tracker feature with arduplane, too?

  • Whooper November 15, 2011 at 3:00am

    Some of the chips need "Arduino Uno" selected as the board instead of "Arduino Duemilanove or Nano w/ AT mega 328"

  • Whooper November 12, 2011 at 4:22pm

    Confirmed the problem was in the 328 chip. Swapped it out for another and seems to work fine now.

  • Whooper November 11, 2011 at 10:47pm

    I have the same error message and can't find a solution. I am using "Duemilanove or Nano mega328" and correct USB port and Xbee is removed as mentioned in the manual.

    Messages in the above posts suggest using a baud rate of 57600 however I don't see an option in arduino how to check this. I thought baud rate is fixed by the board selection?

    Only the PWR LED lights up with LCD connected and Xbee disconnected. With Xbee connected the ASC LED also turns on (does not flash). Is this correct?  

  • heckmic October 7, 2011 at 3:58am

    I have now my second board but still the same Error:

    avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00avrdude: stk500_disable(): protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x54

    Upper left LED is on, lower left blinks. It is supplyed only by USB. I can upload to Arduino mini Board for WiiKopter, but i get an error when i try to upload the Ardustation code to the Ardustation by selecting "Duemilanove or Nano" like described. So whats wrong?

     

  • Ben Miller September 15, 2011 at 11:23pm

    So with this new code, the antenna will automatically track the drone?  Can this be done with the ardupilot program running off a laptop as well, or only with the ardustation 2?

     

    Thanks, amazing job!

  • Heino R. Pull September 4, 2011 at 7:44am

    Also as others have mentioned, it might make sense to power a servo with a separate beefier 5 volt supply (from the Ardustation's 5 volt supply) to allow large current draw servos to be used.

  • Heino R. Pull September 4, 2011 at 7:40am

    The magic lines in the software for servo calibration are:

    Pan.attach(9,609,2255);//PAN Servos  //These numbers seem to work well for the HITEC-485 servos   Tilt.attach(10,591,2235);//Tilt Elevator

     

    pan init values (609 usec for 0 degree servo call, 2255 usec for 180 degree servo call)

     

    The servo library call "write" argument is 0 to 180 degrees and 0 maps to 609 usec above and 180 to 2255 usecs for pan. Therefore, the software assumes in pan that 0 to 360 degrees maps to a servo call of 0 to 180 and a fixed servo position. This should work with 360 servos and needs testing the initialization above to actual pan position on the servo. The values I set above are actually out of range of the standard pulse widths for a servo (1000 usec to 2000 usec being "standard")  but the hitec 485 uses the above init values ok. 

     

    The basic limitation of the software is that for a given antenna pan heading (0 to 359) that there is a single servo rotation position for a given call to "write". So if a servo maps more than 360 degress of rotation, the init calls have to be adjusted to reduce the rotation to just 0 to 360. A continous rotation winch servo will definitely not work.

     

    I've tested a 360 degree modified Hitec-485 servo from servocity.com and it works fine, but is not well suited to the readymaderc antenna tracker. 

     

    Loosing the LCD while testing servo positioning probably means the the voltage regulator is overheating and has shut down.  You definitely need a heat sync for most servos, and you need to avoid servo binding. Otherwise a 360 degree servo should work with proper init values.

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