What you will need:
-ArduStation Kit
-Soldering Iron:
-Solder:
-Low Profile Multimeter:
-This is what you will find inside the ArduStation components antistatic bag (LCD is included of course):
-Lets start soldering the non polarized capacitors (.1uF), when you are done place the xBee headers:
-After you placed the xBee headers, place any xBee module you have available to hold the headers in the right angle, then solder:
-Continue with the Atmega328 socket and the buzzer, watch out with the buzzer polarity!:
-Now place the protection diode (check the white strip) and the power regulator, be careful both have polarity too:
-Lets continue with the potentiometers, one is for the contrast with the number "103" or 10Kohms (UP) and the other with the long pins is for the backlight LED, with the number "502" or 5Kohms (down).
-An extra picture:
-Now solder the first 100uF polarized capacitors, check out the white strip (negative).
-Now solder the second 100uF polarized capacitors, check out the white strip (negative).
-No solder the 16Mhz Resonator (orange/brown one), is not polarized, the reset button and the power jack (easy):
Now we need to solder the LED's, but i have chosen very bright LED's in order to see something under the sun, but they are clear, so no way to see the color and one of the was inverted polarity (the long pin is the negative). A solution for that is using a the multimeter, just choose the continuity option or diode test (both will work):
-After you solder the LED's in the right way, is time to solder the funniest part, the buttons:
-Turn the board and place the Atmega328 carefully (the little half-circle divot on the chip should be on the side with the little half-circle in the socket; ignore the position of the red dot on the chip, which is not meaningful). The processors comes with bootloader pre-loaded:
-Now just solder the LCD (you can use female headers so you can remove the LCD anytime) and the FTDI port. You are ready to connect it. Note: You can't upload code when the xBee is connected.
-When you are ready, just upload the ArduStaion demo code here. It should work with ArduPilot and show you real time telemetry as indicated:
-By pressing the buttons left and right you can change the screen data.
You can find the latest code here:
http://code.google.com/p/ardu-station/
The example is commented and you adapt this system to any of your projects!
Enjoy!
Comments
Please don't use this old post for building instructions! The instructions linked from the product listing are here, and explain what the extra transistor is for. Please always use the manuals and instructions linked on the product listings. There are loads of old posts on this site that have been superseded by proper manuals.
have been going through the user manual and trying to figure out why I am getting the same errors every one else got in the beginning. will feedback once I have some some thing going on.
When you program the ArduStation the FTDI cable will provide the power for the Station so you do not need to use a separate battery during the programming. Also, do not plug in the Xbee module until after you have finished the ArduStation programming and are running on a separate battery.
Regards,
TCIII
thanks. So where do I start?. I have jordi's ftdi cable , . I have used MPLab IDE , All i have now for the ardustation hardware is the ardustation_v12 files. Beginner steps please. Thanks again
You don't need any of that. This is an Arduino board. All you need is the Arduino IDE.
I have assembled the ardustation hardware today. I need some help with ardustation programming. I am new to avr programming & haven't used avrdude or similar avr program . The " make " command is driving me crazy. I have downloaded the ardustation_v12 .I have downloaded avrdude and winavr software. I can run make but can't get it to do any thing. So pls tell me what do I do next ( syntax and all that). All I need is to make the relevant files and program my ardustation hardware for starters. tnx.
As for using two XBee's on the ground it looks like that should work as well...just based on a quick read of some of the XBee documentation it appears you can configure them in a way where both ground-based XBee's would listen in to the telemetry tranmissions. That could eventually allow the PC to send waypoint updates to the aircraft as well.
Thanks,
Dave
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