rover plant pic

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look before you leap

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rover by drone

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FPV Wish List

Hoping for some good Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals next month.

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Rover photo while out and about...

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Rover controller setup...

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Another rainy day...

Ordered servos and BECs (battery eliminator circuits) for the rover.  First project with them is to control the direction the FPV camera points.  My mom always told me, "Look both ways before you cross the street".  54,71,64, .31",B

new controller/more options

Figured out a few more options with Mission Planner while using a new controller.  The old joystick I was using didn't have extra buttons and no self-centering on the throttle, so I had to precisely place that lever to keep the rover stopped.  The new controller has plenty of buttons and two spring loaded levers - one for forward and one for reverse so it stops when released.  Eliminated an independent RC transmitter and receiver altogether which would control the rover in "manual" mode and trigger the other control modes. Now I use the controller alone to choose between "auto" (pre-planned missions), "guided"(individual segments of travel), and "acro" (manual movement with the new controller).  All this transmitted from the ground station to the rover via the long-range telemetry radio.  85,90,58,0,B

RFD900X

Quite pleased with this test of the new long range telemetry radios. Wasn't sure how the RFD900x system would handle losing line of sight behind the hill by the highway (2.5 miles from the ground station) - but it stayed connected like a champ. Only had a few brief outages as I turned around by the mailboxes and started heading back. I wasn't up for the normal one-hour trip it takes the rover to make on its own so I strapped it into the back of my pickup for a faster trip and took if for a ride. The ground station radio was mounted on top of a 30' mast at the hut. Compass variance for the rover direction was off a bit, but that didn't matter for this test. All in all, it was rousing success! I couldn't get the system to work with an FrSky Taranus QX7 RC Transmitter - but the system works fine with a slight mod to the ground station end. 74,77,59,0,C

Thrustmaster

Having a lot of trouble getting a new RC transmitter to work with the long-range telemetry radios.  I think I found a good workaround.  Went through a bunch of boxes in storage until I found an old USB joystick I bought about 4 years ago.  Was able to get it to work in the ground station software and control the rover manually.  Since the control inputs are sent through the new long range telemetry system, there really is no need for an extra transmitter.   Since I'm not getting much cooperation out of the one I recently bought, I am going to return it for a refund ($140).  The Amazon return window closes on the 16th. 72,85,56,0,B 

pinouts...

One of the problems with the rover project has been the ability to easily get all the parts I need.  Seems Pixhawk accessories can be a little hard to track down.  Ended up having to cannibalize a couple of cables to get from point A to point B.  (After triple checking my work - I'm pretty sure the Pixhawk pinouts in the above diagram are opposite of the ones on my Pixhawk so I redid the connections - fingers crossed.) This is the rover part of the setup.  Tomorrow, I hope to get the ground station side operational so I can test out the new long range (40 kilometer) system.  81,88,59,0,B

coming up...

new mount / new view

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One mile wifi range...

Mounted the wifi booster much higher and got a lot better range. I used a 32' long aluminum awning roller tube from an RV as the mast for the antenna. Those things are a dime a dozen because folks often don't bother repairing them after they've left their awning unfurled until the wind has come along and torn the whole thing up. The combination of an external antenna on the wyze cam v3 and my wifi booster mounted really high made a huge difference in the wifi range of the camera. 81,86,59,0,B

Antenna

Added an external antenna to the Wyze Cam V3 that I use on the rover.  This should give it a little better Wi-Fi range.  Thanks to yet another YouTube turtorial... 90,96,66,0,B

new camera antenna coming...

Just figured out a convoluted way to add the Wi-Fi camera view to the HUD (heads up display) in mission planner. Getting ready to upgrade the Wyze Cam V3 with an external antenna and a new long range radio system for telemetry and RC control - so I figured I would do a quick test to see what the current range is with the stock systems I have been using. I don't expect to get a whole lot more range out of the Wi-Fi camera, but an external antenna should certainly help. I will fully attend to that issue later when I can afford the parts for a good long range FPV system. (Note: Not sure why there was such a compass variance once the rover started heading east - just another mystery to solve.) 90,98,65,0,B

there and back...

Attempted this mission over a month ago and failed. Tried it again with dual GPS units in blended mode and some offsets on the X and Y axis to give the rover more accurate "situational awareness". Made it there and back even though I had to wing it setting up the waypoints at the turnaround. Mission planner is using a Google Map image from 2017 so I wasn't sure if the rover would be able to get around that spot. Distance traveled was 2,700 meters. Mission in real time was 46 minutes. 84,93,68,0,B

10.3 kilometers...

Ran another battery duration mission but it looked pretty much like the 8K mission so I'm just showing a couple of passes. Since I had some power left when I ended the 8K mission, this time I ran the rover continuously until the low battery warning shut it down. Made it 10,321.27 meters (just over 10 kilometers!) on a new 2s lipo. Mission time was 3 hours and 24 minutes. Uploaded this video in HD 4K. 84,96,65,0,B

8 kilometers...

Running a test with a new 5200 mAh 2S Lipo. The battery I have been using for all the previous tests was a 2000 mAh NiMH. Set up an easy mission for the rover so I could let it run without worrying about traffic or a crash. 24 loops around the airfield with pauses at each corner - the distance of each loop was approximately 300 meters. Total distance was 8087.05 meters. Run time was 3 hours and 21 minutes. Still had a good bit of battery capacity left at the end of this test. 89,95,64,0,B

new lipo battery test...

...and wired in a kill switch.

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coming next week...

New transmitter to work with the long-range telemetry radio.

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