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Navio+, Awsome flight controller from Emlid. Tested with 4G Cellular communications

Posted by Bernt Christian Egeland on April 19, 2015 at 10:30am

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Hi Everyone.

I would like to share my experience using navio+ as flight controller.

At first when discovered navio i was a little skeptic if this board could really be as good as it looks. I read all the documentation over at Emlid.com and i finally decides to order one for testing.

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When i got my hands on this board, i immediately fell in love. Nice layout and solid connectors and at last, this board fits beautifully on top of the RPI. 

Then i installed Real Time Kernel for RPI and Ardupilot. Installation went painless, just following theirs instruction line by line.

An important note! You dont need to be a linux geek to get this going. Everyone is able to put this togheter.

After the installation is complete, you can launch anyone of the supported vehicles:

  • APMrover2
  • ArduPlane
  • ArduCopter-quad
  • ArduCopter-tri
  • ArduCopter-hexa
  • ArduCopter-y6
  • ArduCopter-octa
  • ArduCopter-octa-quad
  • ArduCopter-heli
  • ArduCopter-single

 

Typical ArduPilot start command:

sudo ArduPlane -A udp:<GCS_DYNDNS>:14550

Then just use Mission Planner and connect using UDP option. 

So after several days with bad and ruff wheatear, the sun was finally shining and i immediately packed up for maden flight.

Today i was flying for 60min using Navio+ as flight controller and 4G for video and telemetry.

I have one word;  Awesome.

My aircraft Skua FPV was rock solid after running Autotune function. 

My setup:

  • Navio +
  • RPI 2
  • 4G USB Cellular adapter
  • Logitech C920 webcam with gstreamer
  • Logitech Gamepad F710
  • GCS ( My Laptop with Mission Planner )
  • Airframe Skua FPV

This brilliant board keeps everything in one piece, specially when using 4G / 3G cellular. There is no need for extra converters as i used before with APM or pixhawk in conjunction with RPI.

I simply connect the 4G usb to RPI2 and start the Ardupilot with UDP telemetry option. Simple as that.

 

Guys at Emlid currently works to get the Odroid-C1 support for  Navio+ .

APM autopilot port for Navio+ currently works with:

  • Raspberry Pi Model A
  • Raspberry Pi Model B
  • Raspberry Pi Model A+
  • Raspberry Pi Model B+
  • Raspberry Pi 2 Model B

 

 

I will post an "HowTo configure RPI, Navio+ and Cellular network"  at my website: UAVmatrix.com

So for those of you that are skeptic, try it. you won’t be disappointed.

Emlid gives you great and fast support at theirs community section.

Regards

Bernt Christian Egeland

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Comments

  • Josh April 7, 2016 at 5:29am

    Thanks Sami, I was wondering about this too. Amazon servers, here I come...

  • D.S. April 6, 2016 at 9:17pm

    Thanks, Sami.  How was the performance when you did it?

  • sami ahmari April 6, 2016 at 8:58pm

    What I just explained is a backdoor by using your home internet

  • Tim V April 6, 2016 at 8:28pm

    There needs to be a way of connecting to a cloud based host to pass the traffic, from UAV to cloud host to laptop/gcs in the field.  That is the issue, correct?

  • sami ahmari April 6, 2016 at 8:17pm

    There is a way to work around and I did try it. You need to set a vpn server on your home pc or in your router then you can  use your Ground station (PC or tablet) to connect first to vpn .Then you will have a  valid ip which you can have dynamic dns assigned to your home ip ( for instruction read http://www.noip.com/ ) 

    Now you are going to stream the video from your raspi to a valid ip and port , Also by using mavproxy you can send your telemetry data. 

    But the problem is normally home internet has very low up link speed than downlink , VPN itself souldnt add a big late latency but  low  up link speed make it worse.

  • D.S. April 6, 2016 at 8:09pm

    Has anyone determined the status of the ATT/USA status of using ports?  Is there a workaround in the USA?

  • Josh December 11, 2015 at 5:42am

    @sami,

    I am embarking on this project as well... did you manage to test 3g vs 4g video latency?

  • sami ahmari November 5, 2015 at 10:22pm

    Video Latency with home VPN is disaster I get lots of  corrupted frames also. It might be because of low end router my home internet is pretty fast. I disabled any kind of encryption or compression but didn't effect much. I will change one of my usb 3g dongle to LTE to see how it effects it. I use mavproxy for telemetery.At least latency for telemetry is acceptable 

  • sami ahmari November 4, 2015 at 10:22pm
    Tim
    I seted up my router as von server.And dynamic dns on my home pc. Then with my laptop (which is connected with 4G) I connected to my home vpn server and had video and telemetery working this way.Raspi was on 4G also. Some port mapping on router needs to be done to map vidor and telem to the connected vpn client (my laptop) .Whit this approach the connected device with vpn will have a public ip of your home internet. Which has ahost name with dynamic dns and you just need that for your vpn clinet connection with user pass you created in router ( or windows )
  • Tim V November 4, 2015 at 1:27pm

    Sweet.  Doing the same using OpenVPN.

This reply was deleted.