How to place the antenna on an UAV

Reach Module / M+ / M2 Hardware integration
1

Hi,

after some time I’m finally ready to fly and use our Navio2 controlled hexacopter and Reach for aerial mapping.

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I’m very happy with the first results, although it’s not perfect right now and the camera wasn’t accurately focused. Navio2 and Reach worked very well.

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I’m still struggeling with postprocessing the logs from Reach. The solution for the base station has a height drift of more than 1 m during 3 h, that is not great.

To get the best out of the rover I would be very interested in some comments on the antenna placement. How bad are vibrations, should I place the antenna directly above the flight controller to reduce vibrations and acceleration or should I place it further up and away from the possible emi sources?

These are the logs of my frist fligth: emlid.zip (7.7 MB)

Thank you,
Tobias

1 Like
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I noticed an air gap between the Reach antenna and the ground plane. Are you using velcro or duel lock to attach the antenna to the plate? I found that I got better SNR values if the antenna was attached directly to the plate using the adhesive on the antenna.

1 Like
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Thank you for the hint @rrr6399, yes there is a gap, I will try to remove the spacer.
I also have not yet grounded the groundplane, I guess that is necessary/helpful?
The thir question which arose is how to calculate the offset between the antenna and the camera. Would you only count for the heigh difference or also the other axis?
Thx, Tobias