Blogs

Skywalker X8 - Video and Telemetry via 3g internet

Posted by Tommy Larsen on May 5, 2013 at 12:36pm

Here is a short video presentation of my Skywalker X8 UAV using 3g broadband internet for video and telemetry.

 

Onboard my X8 i have this ZTE MF60 3g/Wifi router which handles the communication for the APM2.5 and the Raspberry Pi model B. I didn't wanna use the Dronecell because i will place the load away from the APM2.5. I could have put a 3g USB adapter in my Raspberry Pi as well, but the Pi have more than enough to do transcoding the video-stream, so i use a Cisco Wifi USB adapter in my Pi to communicate with the 3g router and GCS.

 

The telemetry from my APM2.5 is sent to a Serial 2 Wifi converter which then is connected via Wifi to the 3g router. I then connect to my APM2.5 using TCP from Mission Planner.

 

The Raspberry Pi are using VLC Player for Linux to transcode the videostream from the Microsoft Lifecam webcamera to a resolution of 352x288 at 500kbit/s and 10 fps. If you want to use the same solution just change the hostname and port to you needs in the command below. I use Dynamic DNS (client configured in my Raspbery Pi) since mye 3g router gets a dynamic IP adress on every new connection.

Command in the Pi for starting videostream:

"sudo -u pi vlc-wrapper -I dummy -vvv v4l2:///dev/video0 :v4l2-width=352 :v4l2-height=288 :v4l2-fps=10 :sout='#transcode{vcodec=MJPG,vb=500,fps=10,scale=1,width=352,height=288,acodec=none}:std{mux=ts,access=udp{ttl=10},dst=mydyndnshostname.domain.no:2000}' :sout-all :sout-keep"

At my GCS i start VLC using this command in a .CMD file to recieve the video from the X8 and re-stream it to the Mission Planner:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" udp://@226.0.1.150:2000 --sout=#transcode{vcodec=MJPG,vb=500,fps=10,scale=1,width=352,height=288,acodec=none}:duplicate{dst=http{mux=mpjpeg,dst=:8080/},dst=display} :sout-all :sout-keep

In Mission Planner you just enter "http://localhost:8080" in the "SET MJPEG Source" when right-clicking the Hud. I have a 6GB per month dataplan in my 3g router and my calculations says that this can give me more than 52 hours of videostream. My sim card is a non-firewalled APN.

 

For now everything is powered from a MaxAmps 11000mah LIPO  This is a high capasity battery and the weight is only 825gram. My plan is to have 2 of those in my X8 for a really long range flight.

Right now i'm using a Sanwa 35mHz radio, but i waiting for my Turnigy 9XR and 433mHz modules from Hobbyking. I don't use 2.4gHz because of the 2.4gHz in my 3g router.

 

3689520571?profile=original

E-mail me when people leave their comments –
Follow

You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!

Join diydrones

Comments

  • John July 1, 2013 at 1:32pm

    Keep an eye on Soren Kuula. He now has a beaglebone black and a C920(internal H.264 formatting) webcam. I'm hoping he can figure out how to stream the H.264 and telemetry using only the BB, webcam, and a USB 4G dongle. If anyone can, it' him!

  • Tommy Larsen July 1, 2013 at 1:22pm

    Thank you Taylor :-)

  • Cloud9Drones July 1, 2013 at 1:19pm

    @Tommy: Great Work!

  • Tommy Larsen July 1, 2013 at 9:17am

    @Artem: The RN-174 takes the telemetry serial data from APM and converts it to TCP/IP. This way the serial data is sent as IP packets instead of UART serial data. In MP you just select TCP and enter the IP address/dns of the 3g router which forwards the communication to the RN-174.

    @Brian: Yes i configure the hotspot as without using 3g, but the wifi range is only 10-20 meter. When i route the data via 3g i can connect to my router via another internet connection on my GCS. I have tested this on a long range (58km+) behind a mountain far away and it works! If you don't use a router, how can you fly more than 20m from your GCS?? The overclocked Pi uses all it's resources to transcode the video to a small resolution and lower bitrate video, to be sent via 3g/internet.

    @John Smith: The big range is internet! :)

  • Artem June 19, 2013 at 1:35pm

    Thanks Tommy, what i am trying to do is to setup raspi as a cellular router with an ethernet port for an IP camera and  use its serial GPIO to connect to APM. this way raspi will act as  mere router, most of the processing will be done by the camera itself. in fact router portion is already configured i am able to stream HD video via LTE and SD via HSPA+, i can even access raspi GPIO pins this way, but i do not know how MP connects to APM. could you describe more in depth what RN174 does so i could recreate its logic with raspi.  If you cold get a chance to post some of your settings i would really appreciate this! 

  • Tommy Larsen June 19, 2013 at 12:32pm

    Hi Artem

    The MP connects to my plane using TCP. The serial converter forward whatever content coming from the APM yes. I configure the serial converter as a server. I have also tried to setup for UDP and that works fine as well.

  • Artem June 17, 2013 at 2:25pm

    hey nice job there! i have a question about  Serial 2 Wifi converter  did you set it up as a server or a client? and could you describe the process how your GCS gets data from it?

    is the  Serial 2 Wifi converter configured to forward whatever serial content coming from the APM to a certain IP address or does the mission planner configured to access it? 

    Thanks for posting you work! 

  • John June 4, 2013 at 8:58am

    Hi c j g, I'm going to try! I'm actually building the image right now for my new beagle bone black. I'm going to try and stream H264 like described here.

    For now I'm going to just use a wireless bridge(vap11g) plugged into the ethernet port, to my wifi hotspot(zde-61) and a wifi to serial adapter (rn-174) like tommy is doing. I do think it is possible to get the Beagle Black to do all of this with a USB dongle. 

  • Mike T May 29, 2013 at 5:32pm

    file dropper will drop links every few weeks

  • Alexey Kozin May 29, 2013 at 7:01am

    Tommy, Thank you very much!

This reply was deleted.