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Project Andromeda - Ground Station Electronics Box

Posted by Nima K on April 20, 2010 at 1:43am

The ground station electronics box houses the telemetry hardware that keeps Andromeda connected to the base. The ground station controller keeps communication flowing even if the ground station computer is disconnected while the routerboard will relay digital video via ethernet.


Currently we haven't got any antenna connectors but they'll be coming soon. The usb and ethernet connectors above are for telemetry and video respectively. The other two connectors are for the catapult and dynamixel actuators. The catapult connector allows the GSC to launch the aircraft and measure launch speed. The dynamixel connector facilitates the movement of the antennae. Next update will hopefully be some AHRS progress and equations,etc.

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Comments

  • Admin
    Morli April 20, 2010 at 9:50pm
    Thanks Nick, I have seen that one , specs unknown , no reliable reviews & pair would cost 1K$+ :-(
  • Nick Bright April 20, 2010 at 9:24pm
    Perhaps it will come in handy for "v2" :)
  • Nima K April 20, 2010 at 8:51pm
    That box looks quite neat. Unfortunately I've already got my antennas. A 5ghz panel antenna and a 900Mhz yagi both with 20 degree horizontal and vertical beam width. We will put N-female connectors on our box eventually. I'll post some pictures when I have them. Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.
  • Nick Bright April 20, 2010 at 8:49pm
    Also, you might find http://www.antennas.com/DATA-SHEETS/ARC-IE20XXK01_113009.pdf this pretty handy. It's an affordable antenna system that you could utilize with a 5.8GHz flat panel antenna, and it has plenty of space inside the box for your gizmos (more than the box you have now), with 4 holes for whatever passthroughs you might want to install. (e.g. your ethernet, USB, and other connectors, even N female bulkheads with the bulkhead adapter).
  • Nima K April 20, 2010 at 8:49pm
    Nick that's a good find on the scrambled video, they don't say how they do it though. And you're correct it's an RB133c. We only use about 5Mbps and only as a bridge interface but I will look into the RB411 because for that price it's too good.
  • Nick Bright April 20, 2010 at 8:46pm
    Nima, I noticed that's an RB133c. If you run into CPU problems (as in, not enough), the RB411 is only US $49, exact same form factor, and 3-4x faster CPU: MIPS 24K V7.4 @ 300MHz vs the 133MHz older gen MIPS in the RB133.
  • Nick Bright April 20, 2010 at 8:40pm
    As far as scrambling analog video, a quick search turned this up: http://www.spytronic.com/en-ca/product/Video-audio-scrambler-receiv...
  • Nima K April 20, 2010 at 4:41pm
    Maybe one day I'll put one in a UAV, not sure. As for analog video scrambling, unfortunately I have basically no experience in this area. If you find something please share.
  • Admin
    Morli April 20, 2010 at 3:26pm
    Nima thanks for all that info ,wow, now that looks expensive, do you intend to put that in UAV even if lets say you are able to get it ?
    But for layman like me the leopard board looks like poor man's Makito with many of the functions but not may be not same bandwidth and processing power... I haven't read the documents of either full yet but a quick glance gave me some feeling like it.
    In any case I am looking for advice on small device/board that can sit between cam and analog TX on one side and between RX and screen on the ground side or some thing similar. worst scenario I will have to tune Tx and RX out of band/standard freq but that won't be optimal solution, even a single stage plug in inversion scrambler would be gr8 if available for video( I know it is available for audio Txing), any advice or leads?
  • Nima K April 20, 2010 at 3:07pm
    Yes well in that case, I'd recommend a SBC (single board computer) with a framegrabber. There are lots of combinations out there and with some linux programming you should be able to have a platform for image processing, etc.

    This is what I really want to get, but waay too expensive:

    http://www.haivision.com/products/makito/
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