Hello,
I've been building and flying both multi-rotor and fixed wings for some time and with that has come a number of learning moments (crashes, hard landings, tactical descents, etc...;-( ) and a few have left my system outside line of site with no updated reporting on mission planner or other platforms when they've been lost.
Truth in lending...we're a commercial technology company working drones for future use and working on that section 333 waiver to go full time in the UAS sphere. Ahead of this, we operate a gps tracking solution that we use on all our flights and a few of our clients who operate UAS systems have adopted as the safety net for their systems.
Our system is alpha track and it consists of lightweight gps tracking device hardware and a web backend that provides all tracking information, history, exportable tracks, analysis reports and when directly need, the location of your aircraft in real time independent of your telemetry / control links through cellular communication. If youre interested in knowing more...check us out here... GPS Drone Tracking
GPS tracker with built in cellular communications. Provides secondary tracking of your UAS as well as reports to backend for detailed flight metrics.
Comments
Keith M,
for RTK you should have a look at the Emlid Reach or the Piksi. This device is designed to find you copter in case of flyways not for precise mapping.
What's the accuracy ? I'm interested in using a RTK or DGPS for more precise mapping ... instead of using GCPs. Lemme know plz !
Keith
The precision is pretty good as it is, but there is external antenna connector available if you're concerned. This isn't designed to provide precise input into your auto-pilot but rather to let you know where you went down in an emergency / recovery situation.
There are housing enclosures build for the device that can be hard mounted to your bird with easy screw / zip tie configuration.
This is very interesting. Are there/will there be brackets available? I could see having a mount on each UAV and only needing one of these devices for several vehicles. Could always print something either way.
Where's the antenna on this thing? If the antenna is in the device, it probably still gets a lock, but your precision significantly suffers because it doesn't have an unobscured view.