Cloak

1 Peter 2:15 For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: 16 As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. 

no crash this time...

Finally tweaked the rover's controller parameters enough to make it all the way around the block (after about 10 tries). In the basic tuning section of mission planner, I adjusted the FF gain in the steering rate from .2 to .8 to give the rover more turning authority. Still having "drifting issues" that I need to figure out. The trip in real time was 22 minutes and 10 seconds. Total distance was 740.2 meters. 93,98,72,0,B

down and back...

Decided to try a round trip to the road and back. Tweaked the steering parameters and the rover seems to be tracking a little better but still meanders a bit. I'm also noticing that when it does an out and back mission, on the way back it tends to hug to the left of the waypoint path. Not sure what that is all about. There are newer GPS units available now, so I ordered one to try out. If the new one doesn't do much different, I can try both of them. The Pixhawk can use two up to 2 GPS units simultaneously and "blend" the readings for more precise positioning. The rover cut it a little close on the way home but managed to plow over and through a couple of obstacles. 97,101,74,0,B

telemetry...

This test mission to show failsafes working and telemetry data readout in mission planner. Parameters set up to continue in auto mode when RC and/or GSC (ground station control) signal is lost. I was having latency issues with the Wi-Fi FPV camera (Wyze Cam V3) but solved them by changing the live view from HD to 360P. I use Google Drive to get the portions of video that I need off of the Wyze cameras and into my laptop for editing. Made good progress today dialing in the steering trim. Ran numerous short missions out to and around the end of my driveway and successfully got it back home without once having to walk out to it for a rescue and reset. As you can see from the "Dist Traveled" (lower left), the rover had already gone just over 1900 meters before running this mission. 98,103,76,0,B

around the block...

Made it around the block...almost. So close! Still having steering trim issues. Was pretty happy to see it make all the turns it was programed to do - especially through my back driveway entrance. Unfortunately, it was hugging the left side of the route a little too close and a stupid desert plant jumped out in front of the rover near the end of the trip. Total distance travelled was 744 meters at an average rate of .65 meters per second. Total mission time was 19 minutes. Wi-Fi and telemetry signals held firm but lost RC connection for a while around the far turn. All failsafes worked as programmed. 100,108,74,0,B

trip to mailbox rd...

Trying another driveway mission. Aside from making it to the road and circling around my entrance posts - another part of this mission was to test some failsafe parameters. Finally figured out how to get the rover to continue the mission in case of loss of RC and/or telemetry signal. This will come in handy for long range missions. I still need to adjust the steering trim as the rover doesn't track straight enough to suit me. 98,103,78,0,B

Circle test...

Testing some features in mission planner: auto wp circle and the "DO_JUMP" function to repeat the waypoint mission. The rover was programmed to run the route 5 times and seemed to stay on course fairly well. Ran into a little snag though on the way home (I'm going to need to add some obstacle avoidance eventually...). Wyze Cam V3 onboard running off a 5V power bank. 94,100,73,0,B