Skip to main content

The Autopilot board is now GPS-enabled!



I finally managed to get my hands on the em-408 GPS receiver. After making provision on the autopilot board for the sensor and making sure that the OpenLog board could save the data, it was time to put this baby to its paces.

It was no small feat I must add although the "old faithful" internet  was right there besides me to give me along. I found that there aren't many scripts that give an modular solution to allocating GPS data to variables in Arduino for further processing. So I made my own :).

My approach was not to disrupt the internal timers of chip due to servo control. So the GPS board communicated with the rest of the system through the hardware Serial channels. This also enabled the processing of the data coming in prior to it being used in the rest of the system.

So the aim of the board is to give heading coordinates to heading tracker function which in turn controls the roll and pitch controller. My plan is to use the haversine formula to calculate the distance and course reference points to be used in the heading control which is part of WayPoint tracking.

Let's see how it goes.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Setting up the Tarot T4-3D gimbal on the Pixhawk 2.4.8 with Specktrum dx6 Gen2 toggle switch

So i took the challenge of setting up the Tarot gimbal not just for inherent stable video footage but also the flexibility of controlling it from the radio control. However, I encountered quite a few challenges which made me aware that I'm not the one only in this battle . It's quite clear that the setup of the Tarot gimbal using its own software is completely different from how it's been described in the Ardupilot/Arducopter webpage and in mission Planner. In Mission Planner and it's associated site makes one believe that it should be done through software, only to realize that in actual fact the setup is more complex than that.  After two evenings of trying various combinations, I realized the getting the pixhawk Aux channels to communicate with the T4 gimbal requires the following steps: - The Pixhawk Pin9 (Aux1) needed to be activated to pass through user-chosen channel from the transmitter. For the Dx6 Gen2 it was the channel 6, which can assigned the ...

The hard climb of innovation

For the last couple of months, our design team has been hard at work at detail development of our drone concept which we hope to make public early 2021. These have been unprecedented times with so many changes within our company: people moving countries, stuck at airports, universities closing and transitioning to online classes and exams; all in the space of one year! Nevertheless, one of the fundamental challenges facing the drone industry in developing countries next year, is how to operate within an environment where shipping of critical parts (amongst other things) has been disrupted due to the covid-19 pandemic. If the most critical items (propellers, batteries, sensors, etc. ) of the system are also associated with the longest lead time, this has a significant impact on the operating cost and service coverage that can be achieved. Unfortunately, there's no easy way of solving this issue except if it was envisioned as part of the development process. But this is seldom the ca...

3 Key Areas for Drone Makers in Africa to Survive

Far too many drone companies have been involved in a journey that has been characterised by a short honeymoon. From an African standpoint, the journey was always delayed.  Most African drone companies have been involved in training initiatives , environmental initiatives and consumer journalism .  But the bulk of the drone development was performed in Asia , USA and Europe .   So it's no surprise that Venture capitalist invested mainly in Asian and American companies.  But given the recent reports and the foreclosure of big startups last year , the drone landscape has changed.  So a question needs to be asked, what would happen to up-coming drone manufacturing companies based in Africa? Below are three key aspects that we believe drone manufacturers need to take into consideration going to the next 3 to 5 years. Focus on Functionality One of the biggest elements when it comes to drone development is the ability to focus not just on the e...