Navio2 Antenna tracker setup

Good day everyone.

I want to setup the Navio as an antenna tracker.

I tried doing this via “sudo update alternatives antenna tracker” as well as via the sik radios through Mission Planner but that doesn’t work

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Ok I just tried via the PI USB ports and that did not work either

Anyone from Emlid ?

Antenna Tracker is not included in our debian packages. You can build it by following our docs but using git checkout AntennaTracker-release and then waf antennatracker to build it. After that copy the binary over to your Raspberry Pi and select it here.

I was hoping that there would be an easy answer :slight_smile:

I forgot that you can just download the binary from here and then follow the rest of the instructions.

Thank you very much George.

At least this is forcing me to learn how to compile all of this. I have never done anything like this so lets see :slight_smile:

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You can postpone it until you need something custom and limit yourself to the compiled binary!

I agree but the sooner i learn how to do it the better.

My copter setup on the my first Navio2 works great. I need to purchase a second Navio2 for the antenna tracker. And besides I can not break anything as if there is a problem I can just start fresh

George is there a specific reason that the antenna tracker is not included?

I tried the Antennatracker with different hardware (APM, Pixhawk, Navio) from 0.4 on. It was a bumpy road, sometimes it would work, sometimes not. Even during one flying session. Everytime I thought, that I had figured everything out, it would track 15, 20 or even 90° off, or don’t move at all.
Since it is developed by one of the leads of Arducopter development, it does not get much attention and the userbase is small.

What do you use instead Sebastian?

Or are you saying that it is better just to point one’s antenna at the drone manually

You can download the precompiled executable here:

http://firmware.eu.ardupilot.org/AntennaTracker

I use a Crius SE or Crius AIO based tracker for my aircraft, now also available for Naze32 boards. All you really need is an arduino and a compass.
It is called open360tracker for the 8bit MCUs
and u360gts for the 32bit version. It is meant to work with a specific hardware, but with a bit of coding I made it work with my hardware.
My rover is controlled via wifi, so I built a tracker which is controlled by Missionplanner running on my Laptop and a maestro servo controller.

Would a project like that nor be possible with RPI ?

The second tracker has an RPi actually. It provides an Access Point and runs ser2net, so it can get the control inputs from Missionplanner without a cable.

i want to setup 2 Routerboard 912’s on my drone and base station.

Was thinking that the PI has a pan tilt system. Can one not build a wifi tracker with that?

You can build anything. It depends on your abilities. One thing that may work is to use mavproxy. It has a module that prints out the position of your vehicle as angular values, so you can point an antenna by hand. You could use that to feed an arduino, which then moves your servos.
If I find the time and since my Laptop died, I might try that myself.
Depending on Missionplanner and therefor on Windows does not leave many SBCs as an option.

That is the frustrating thing for me.

I feel like I won the science fair because I managed to get gstreamer working so I am still learning how to do the basics.

I have all these ideas and do not know how to program :slight_smile:

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You know. I think the best solution will probably be to get something like a 2ghz Mikrotik Routerboard on the ground station and on the ground with I would say a 6 dbm antenna on the drone and a 10 dbm antenna on the base station.

That should get one enough distance.