Send ppm signals from a Raspberry Pi

[Sirius Fuenmayor]

Hi, I want to use the pixhawk to control a quadcopter but I instead of using a a radio control system to send the PPM signals to the Pixhawk I want to send the PPM signals from a Raspberry Pi. The setup I want to use is the following:

1) Connect a radio control trasnmitter to my PC via the trainer port (which outputs PPM signals)

2) Send this signals via WiFi to the Raspberry Pi

3) Connect the Raspberry Pi to the Pixhawk and send the PPM signals to the PPM input

It's possible to do this? 

[Tom Pittenger]

Done and done. See the various GCSes with UDP and joystick support and the RPi shield(s) at dev.Ardupilot.com. If no one sends you direct links in an hour I'll look them up when I get home.

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[Bill Bonney]

Hi,

Not sure I would recommend the steps you have indicated. Sending PPM to the Pixhawk from the RPi is unnecessary (and more complex as it requires accurate timing to create the PPM stream)

My suggestion would be that you'd convert the PPM on your computer To a WiFI compatible MAVLink message. The solution you would want is to send the PWM signal as a MAVLink RC OVERRIDE Message to the RPi which would forward it to the PH http://dev.ardupilot.com/wiki/raspberry-pi-via-mavlink/ should help. Problem with RCOVERRIDE is that its fairly crude control mechanism and if you have to convert the PPM signal to digital in the PC, why not use more intuitive drone control instructions.

We do have MAVLink message that allow you to send 'control' MAVLink message to the drone. for Example go up at 1m/s. For examples of Position or Velocity control see http://python.dronekit.io/guide/copter/guided_mode.html This documents how you do it in drone kit, but the same message can be sent using C/C++ or Java code as well.

You do have an option in that your control messages over WiFi could be your own invention, only the messages on the link between the RPi and PH need to be MAVLink.

Hope that helps :)

Bill