Radio Improvements for UAV Applications

[Rai Gohalwar]

Dear Piksi users,

We have some exciting news to share. From some of our recent improvement efforts, we have discovered ways to significantly improve the performance of PIksi radios. 

Many of you wanted to use a single pair of radio on your UAV and inject the Base SBP data through that link. Though the instructions were explained in the Piksi / Pixhawk integration guide, this setup was not recommended. The main reason being the unreliability of package deliver and an enormous amount of latency. During our in house testing with that system, we experienced solution drop outs due to the unreliable link. We have discovered that using a single radio on the UAV is now possible!

By Default, 3DR radios use "MAVLink" as the "Communication Protocol". Changing that parameter to send "Raw Data" instead of  "MAVLink" significantly decreases the latency, hence reducing the number of solution drop outs. A modified integration guide is available here. From our initial testing, this setup performed on par compared to the dedicated radio setup (current default). 

Best

Rai Gohalwar 

[hans]

Hi Rai,

works great with Mission Planner 1.3.38, but not with the new 1.3.39. They changed something. I think it is "SerialInjectGPS: packet align rtcm/sbp"

Best hans