Hi everyone! I'm very happy to announce our new u-blox based GPS board. The development teams and 3D Robotics have been working on this GPS unit for some time, and we have seen very good results on ArduPlane, ArduCopter and ArduRover. The Sparkfun AVC and the Quadcopter Rodeo were excellent opportunities to observe this GPS in action, and it helped Team Overhead win first place at AVC.
The device is pretty straight-forward. It has active circuitry for the ceramic patch antenna, rechargeable backup battery for warm starts, and I2C EEPROM for configuration storage. The units will ship pre-configured for ArduPilot Mega use, and the configuration file is available in the repository if needed.
Features and Specifications:
- ublox LEA-6H module
- 5Hz max. update rate, configured for 4Hz for APM
- 25 x 25 x 4 mm ceramic patch antenna
- LNA and SAW filter
- rechargeable 3V lithium backup battery
- low noise 3.3V regulator
- I2C EEPROM for configuration storage
- power and fix indicator LEDs
- ArduPilot Mega compatible 6-pin JST connector
- exposed RX, TX, 5V and GND pads
- 38 x 38 x 8.5 mm total size
- 16.8 g weight
It's on sale now, price is $75.99 USD. It starts shipping on Monday, July 9th.
Design files and links to the board's main component data sheets can be found in the product listing.
We look forward to hearing your feedback!
Comments
I've already used and had no tangible improvements, Mikrokopter is already very accurate even without this adapter.
the guys over at MikroKopter using u-blox lea6 too and suggesting simple a GPS shield for an even improved S/N ratio. Check it out
https://www.mikrocontroller.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&am...
What do you think? Worth a try?
Has anyone attempted to use this unit with Ardu IMU V3? This looks like an awesome unit.
Just got mine mounted and plugged in. 1st impressions are that this gps is rock solid. Locks in less than a minute for me on a cold start. Once lock is achieved, the built in battery maintains it! Only have done loiter testing and I've noticed a more accurate loiter. Drifting distance from loiter point is far less than the MT3329 GPS. Coincidentally I've recently noticed faster lock times (under 3 minutes cold) with my MT3329 though!!! Still liking the new UBLOX GPS much more! More testing to come!
Mike, thank you. I have few more questions. 1. Is external EEPROM used to store Ucenter configuration or it's for ArduPilot config only? 2. How to compare accuracy of this unit to Skytraq Venus 6? 3. I'll buy it from 3DR UK shop, does that mean I do not need to configure it?(I'd like to track my boat)
If you get the unit as shipped by 3DR, then just connect via serial at 56k.
Yes. But you may want to explore the windows software uCenter to explore different settings and you might find their drivers page and tutorials page helpful. Of course, it will give you some messages simply by connecting via serial, depending on how it is configured, so most of the information is useful if those messages are not already in a format you want, or do not already include the data you want. We initialize the GPS with the config we want it to have each time, and ublox are highly configurable (at least my uBlox5 was, I haven't taken my uBlox6 out of the box yet, I have too many things to do before I can play with it.)
Hi. Is it possible to use this board on linux straight through RS232 port? What about configuration?
Cliff-E: We'll be releasing 2.6.1 early next week. It's been performing flawlessly for the team -- best ArduCopter code ever -- so you might want to wait for that before taking it up again. Among other things, it fixes the log issue that a few people had.
Got mine on Wed, on time... Perfect timing since I'm rebuilding my Y6 from a horrific simple mode crash (not sure why, non-simple loiter was excellent, BUT I have no logs since it's an APM1.4-1280). The crash wiped out my GPS hard that I ripped the ceramic off...
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