We've been experimenting more and more with tablet ground stations here at Event 38 and have had a lot of success using the DroidPlanner app. The software has been working well for us but we found our ground station setup was really cluttered, the opposite of what we were going for when switching to tablets. My main complaint was having the ground side telemetry radio dangling from my phone or tablet. Not only was it a hassle and prone to coming unplugged, it was also hard to keep it in a good position for radio reception.
Following Arthur Benemann's instructions, we set up a bluetooth bridge that would let us at least set the radio down and move freely with the ground station tablet. A huge improvement, no doubt, but still a little rough around the edges, even needing power from a laptop. So we added a nice case and a single cell LiPo battery to power it all. This worked even better, and looked pretty nice as well!
It still had some power management issues but it worked well enough for our purposes. At this point we're thinking about running a Kickstarter campaign to run a production scale build of these but we'd like to get some feedback from potential users before we solidify the specs. I'd appreciate any/all comments on what kind of features you'd like to see on something like this, if any, besides the telemetry bridge to Bluetooth. Right now we're planning on including the following:
- Internal LiPo battery, rechargeable by USB
- Battery status LEDs
- 433 and 915MHz variants to be compatible with any 3DR Radio
- ~20m Bluetooth range
- ~1km telemetry range
- 5-6 hours battery life
- A durable plastic enclosure
Is there anything else we should consider adding to improve the functionality or usability? Do you think this would be priced fairly at $139? Let us know what you think!
Comments
This a good idea and I probably would have purchsed previously. I have added a 3dr Radio and bluetooth module to my 9x transmitter. Saves having to carry round another box/battery. The telemetry powers on when I switch on the transmitter.
Many thanks,
Steve
i do think the price is a tad ecessive.
perhaps sell the box with the port to plug in your own telemetry module. fair price would be around $60-70 but $100 is just kinda crazy
I've been wanting to hack something like this together myself for a while, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Sounds like an awesome product opportunity though.
Only thing I'd recommend, is maybe look at NiMh batteries instead. I'm going back to this technology on any application that does not have a strict Energy Density requirement (ie: Airborne)
NiMh batteries are simple, robust, no transportation issues, and it's so nice to just leave them plugged into a trickle charger 24/7, and just unplug them and go with no worries about charging, storage charge, overdischarge, etc.
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