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Modified Ardustation Software to Support the Arudcopter and a Tilt/Pan Antenna Driven By Mavlink

Posted by Heino R. Pull on August 1, 2011 at 7:32am

3689417928?profile=originalI've modified Phillip Anthony Smith's Mavlink Ardustation to support an inexpensive tilt/pan antenna platform. RAM is very tight in the software so this is not a laptop/ground station replacement and the original software was oriented towards APM. However, I've been flying many flights with Arducopter 2.0.x and this antenna and have gotten pretty good video performance with much less multipath interference. I still use a second Xbee on a notebook with the Mission Planner and that seems to work pretty well with the Ardustation. This link gives some more details, a demo video of the software with some explanation of the added screens, and the software itself for others to play with. The software is a little rough since it was developed quickly before the 4th of July weekend, but it is fun to watch the antenna follow the quad and I wanted to give a little back to the Arducopter community.

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Comments

  • steve May 26, 2013 at 3:59pm

    Heino, I'm getting ready to update my tracker to this one:

    http://www.fpvpilot.com/Pages/AntennaTrackingStations.aspx

    Very good mechanism. I plan to add a GoPro to it so need something a little more stable than the readymaderc kit.

    It doesn't use gears so I imagine I need to adjust something in the code? Can you point me to the place in the code that needs to be modified?

  • steve July 8, 2012 at 5:25am

    Ahhh I suppose I found it :)

    http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/ardustation-2-version-2-0-15-rele...

  • steve July 8, 2012 at 5:24am

    Hi Heino, do you have a link to the 2.0.15 code or the new forum link? I'm on 2.6 now and 2.4 now with mavlink 1.0. 

  • Heino R. Pull June 5, 2012 at 7:51pm

    Jack,  

    I just uploaded version 2.0.15 for Mavlink 1.0.  There is a separate Ardustation forum post describing the release. 

    Heino

  • Jack June 5, 2012 at 7:56am

    Heino:

     

    Thanks I figured you were waiting for the trunk to stabalize and 2.6 release. I am loading 2.6 now and will be doing some tresting after that I will look forword to testing your update.

  • Heino R. Pull June 5, 2012 at 7:06am

    Hi Jack,

    I'll release it tonight - I've had it ready and tested with the previous GIT trunk but was waiting for the 2.6 beta release which is happening right now. I'll retest with the Arducopter since there were Mavlink 1.0 changes over the weekend.

    Heino

  • Jack June 5, 2012 at 7:02am

    Heino

     

    Is 2.0.15 comming soon with Mav 1.0 support. I am going to update my stuff for the Sparkfun event and wanted to update my Ardustation as well but it needs to suport Mav. 1.0

    Just curious.

     

    Jack

  • Heino R. Pull May 24, 2012 at 9:14pm

    Joachim,

    I'm glad that the servo reversing is working for you and you're up and running. Version 2.0.15 is coming very soon - I'm testing it now with Mavlink 1.0.

    Heino

  • Joachim May 24, 2012 at 12:09pm

     

    "Pan.Write(180.0-Bearing_Home); // reversed pan servo rotation"

    Heino,

    i had to change the pan servo rotation, but with the big W in "Write" it gave a mistace. It must be written with a small "w", now it works!

    Joachim

     

     

     

     

  • steve April 10, 2012 at 4:37am

    Thanks Heino! First I'm going to test the original servo because I think it's ok. It just wasn't panning because I had too big of a battery on the pan tilt kit.

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