DIY Antenna tracker

[Coyote]

Wow that`s some size / price, but looks the part for sure :)

[skyscraper]

Continuing on with my antenna tracker project. Cobbled together another video, but should probably redo it, as it aint that good, but hopefully it'll be of interest to somebody!

Anyway here it is... DIY antenna tracker Part 3 - Transmitting Data from Ardupilot down the FrSky telemetry link

Hopefully will get around to writing all this up and putting up some code at some stage soon!

Though the link is for sending data from the ArduPilot to Frsky, with the mighty stm32f4 in the loop it would be easily possible to use the Video vertical retrace or audio.

Actually the stm32 is capable even to write a full OSD. (There is some code for an stm32 OSD lurking around the OpenPilot project).

Anyway I hope to mess around with some of these ways of sending data so the project isnt just restricted to my hardware.

Hope I can get some more details about the project on my website soon!

regards
andy

[pk-surfing]

 :thumbsup:

PK

[Coyote]

Looking good :)

[skyscraper]

Thanks for the support guys  :)

I hope to get started on some more detailed documentation and making source code available in the near future.

regards
Andy

[skyscraper]

Update on my antenna tracker project.

Recently I have been concentrating on the airborne part , converting the data from the Ardupilot, which is in Mavlink protocol to
a suitably lightweight protocol for the FrSky telemetry receiver whic is limited to about 120 bytes per second.

I managed to get some custom hardware done in the form of a freestanding stm32f4 board small enough to fit in my plane.
I also got a little GUI application going to display the data which comes out of the FrsKy serial port.. a very basic Ground Station

Here is a hurried video of the latest efforts.
DIY Antenna Tracker stm32f4 Ardupilot Mavlink to FrSky Part2

Am really pleased to be starting to master the stm32f4 micro. I hope to write down some HOWTO's about it ( e.g. free and Open Source compilers and firmware programmers!) It leaves the avr micros ( Arduino) in the dust for features and performance.

Now I have to seriously get down to writing up and posting details of the software and getting back to the actual tracker hardware. Still plenty of work ahead!

Fun though!

regards
Andy

[skyscraper]

I'm pleased to announce that the source code fro the Ardupilot to Frsky converter is up.

https://github.com/kwikius/mavlink_to_frsky

I now need to get on with some docs! Of course it aint much use without a client app to read the data at the other end, so thats my other task.

regards
Andy

[skyscraper]

I'm pleased to announce the code for the GUI app to present the FrSky telemetry Data on the PC is up !

https://github.com/kwikius/frsky_data

It is Linux only at the moment, unless anyone wants to try porting it. It uses wxWindows so should be portable, just needs a rewrite of the serial port!

See it in action at 0;50 in the video...

DIY Antenna Tracker Part 3a - stm32f4 Ardupilot Mavlink to FrSky on custom PCB

Hope to get more docs, circuits  and generally detailed info  about the project up soon at :

http://www.softpainter.org/fpv/antenna_tracker/index.html

Next on to hacking the guts out of a RcTx and applying another microcontroller to it to send TX data via a high speed Serial link ( probably
RS422, (since The max RS232 baud rate goes down as the line gets longer).

Great fun so far!

regards
Andy

[skyscraper]

Hi All !

Been coding away at my antenna tracker project.

To use the FrSky Telemetry system to return the GPS data for my tracker I decided to mount the FrSky RcTransmitter module on the revolving part of the tracker, as the telemetry data comes back out of the FrSky  Tx module serial port.

The advantage is that the RC system can have a directional antenna as well as the Video.

Of course the problem then is how to get the commands from the handset to the Transmitter module.

So here's Part 4 -  Demonstrating Sending  servo commands to the Frsky RC transmitter down a serial link...

Diy Antenna Tracker part 4 - Send servo commands to RC transmitter via PC Serial port   

The nice thing is that once this is achieved you really dont need to spend a lot of money on a RC system. You can do any mixing you like in software at either end of the link. I plan to use a cheap RC transmitter handset instead of the PC. You could also use a PC joystick., but can potentially have the functionality of a very expensive RC system for the price of a FrSky system. ( about £40 for Tx DHT and RX D8R2 module last time I looked)

Hope to get source code for this part up soon. Meanwhile, dont forget that source code is available for other parts of the project...
   
Onboard Mavlink to FrSky conversion software
   https://github.com/kwikius/mavlink_to_frsky
   
PC GUI viewer for the Mavlink to FrSky data
   https://github.com/kwikius/frsky_data
   

Hope to get started on the mechanical part soon!

regards
Andy

[Coyote]

Looking very promising :)

[skyscraper]

Looking very promising :)

Thanks for the encouragement Coyote!

I have been working on the mechanical parts over the weekend and am now just about to connect everything up.

Heres some pics of the beast. ( Apologies for crap photos ... done on my fone)







I made it pretty big, because I hate fiddling around in small spaces. I reckon it could be made much more comapct of course once its sorted.

What you have in there is a pololu motor with encoder so giving continuous rotation.. With the gearing it gives 9600 steps per revolution.

The commands and video signals use slip rings to cross the rotating part. The H-bridge uses an L298 . Got it from Ebay fro a few quid.

The Elevation servo calls itself a Supertec S04 from JP. I reckon it must be 10 years old by now. Its a slow old bugger, but got some serious torque! I found it in the bottom of my spares box.
Got to get that wired up using a UBEC, which is on order from ebay. mEanwhile can just use a 5v nimh pack.

The PCB is the stm32f4 Discovery board. The STM32F4 is a fantastic Microcontroller.  These devel boards are about £10 from Farnell etc. A real bargain. 

The whole thing runs on a 3S lipo. I made sure there is plenty of room to get any size in there.

Anyway ... Just about to connect all the jumpers and fire it up!  Of course will let you all know how it goes!

Unfortunately not got round to uploading the code for this bit yet. There are a few bits to be done on it

There is a bit more info on my website http://www.softpainter.org/fpv/antenna_tracker/index.html

I hope to update the website too with much more detaill , but just a question of fitting in time to do it!

Oh and sorry for the shakey camera work on all the vids  :o

Oh and if you are interested in the project please do subscribe to my YouTube channel airtensor   ;D

regards
Andy

[skyscraper]

this is seriously cool

with all the work you have put into this, once up and running you should consider repackaging in laser cut acrylic and then selling them, im sure theres good money to be had even selling at a reasonable price

get some return on your time and effort

Aitch :laugh:

Hi Aitch. Thanks for the compliments.  Yeh I should sell it should I  :)
However I plan to make the software open source. It will be free to download. The Discovery demo board comes with its own on board programmer. All you need is a bit of software on your pc to program it and a usb phone cable  I just need to polish off a bit before putting a rough n ready version up on GitHub.

It should be possible to make using off the shelf components. Everything in there you can buy quite cheap if you look around. (You have to loo around though If you buy a motor from Pololu it costs £40, but currently on amazon its £20). Eventually I'll make a PCB if it takes off but for the moment you can just solder to the pins on the Discovery board.

I reckon it would cost around £80 + maybe a bit for pnp, for the bits.

As for a fancy case.. I'm sure that someone could come up with a nice once the firmware is sorted!

Anyway. Plugged it all in and is working ok ! Hope to do a vid of it going round n round soon, but thinking how to do better vids.. My vids are crap! :o

regards
Andy

[skyscraper]

It goes!

DIY Antenna Tracker - mechanicals working

Finally starting to look like an antenna tracker!

Coding should get a bit simpler from here on in! ;)

regards
Andy

[skyscraper]

Hi again All.

Tracker is nearly finished when... I was due to start testing the tracker outside when of course the weather started getting right royal miserable. So I decided to do a little App on the PC that simulates  my plane flying about and sends the GPS data to the tracker. Turned out quite well. You fly the plane about with the mouse and so you can see exactly how well the tracker is doing. Works a treat!

Heres a vid of it all whirring

DIY antenna tracker in action using a PC to simulater the GPS data

Next I guess I might have to try to tracking a real plane. Got a bit of work to do yet mounting the antennnas etc, but basically it works really well ... Yippee!  :D

The idea of the project is all open source so soon I hope to have all the source code for both the tracker and the sim available. Might even get around to porting it to Windoze at some stage! You should be able to get all the bits this for under £100!

regards
Andy

[Coyote]

Really coming together now Andy :)