LibrePilot Forum
Development => GCS General => Topic started by: beriev on January 19, 2016, 02:02:10 pm
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Hi,I have the idea of controlling a drone with a joystick or control pad, some people use arduino and a receiver to get it, my question is whether the GCS you could do or is prepared to do so from a PC or notebook through the uSB port or in my case the game port, I think you could do through OPLINK not sure, is this possible?
thank you.
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I have been searching through the LP Doc's and on the net with the same question. There is not a lot of info on OPLink and what capabilities it has on the Tx side. There is only few Transmitters that you can connect it to and having the telemetry and control out of one box simplifies things(Laptop+BT game pad). My only worry is Range vs. a 5.8Mhz Tx
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I wanted to do something like this http://www.ianjohnston.com/index.php/projects/56-project-020-rc-joystick-tx-v3-usb-version , but instead of using Arduino, using a laptop with software and a transmitter like this http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__7380__Corona_2_4Ghz_JR_Module_Rx_V2_DSSS_.html , or use the transmitter itself
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I have been searching through the LP Doc's and on the net with the same question. There is not a lot of info on OPLink and what capabilities it has on the Tx side. There is only few Transmitters that you can connect it to and having the telemetry and control out of one box simplifies things(Laptop+BT game pad). My only worry is Range vs. a 5.8Mhz Tx
I'm not sure what other information you're looking for. To use it as a transmitter you hook up ground, power, and a PPM source. You should be able to hook it up to any transmitter (meaning the device with joysticks and switches) that outputs a standard RC PPM signal. http://opwiki.readthedocs.org/en/latest/user_manual/oplink/control.html tells the pinout and how to hook it to a jr module connector and several trainer ports on transmitters.
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I wanted to do something like this http://www.ianjohnston.com/index.php/projects/56-project-020-rc-joystick-tx-v3-usb-version , but instead of using Arduino, using a laptop with software and a transmitter like this http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__7380__Corona_2_4Ghz_JR_Module_Rx_V2_DSSS_.html , or use the transmitter itself
Using a general purpose computer like a laptop to generate a critically timed data stream isn't something I'd recommend. There are too many other things going on, screen updates, reading the keyboard, servicing wifi, and many more. If one of them occured while say the throttle pulse was being generated the pulse width might end up too wide and command 100% throttle instead of the 25% you meant. There's really no advantage to using the laptop to read the joystick and generate the transmit stream. Arduinos are not very expensive and I'd do what the person in your first link did and hook the joystick to it.
You could still hook an oplink to your laptop and use GCS to monitor the flight. You could even hook the Arduino to the other oplink port and use it as the transmitter instead of the one in your second link if you wanted to.
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I've entered a tracking to do this and document the setup. I personally think we really should allow the user to attach a dual joystick to the GCS and use the GCS/TelemetryOpLink to control the model, albeit with more lag than a normal RC transmitter.
It currently doesn't have an assigned developer, so it may be a while.
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Done, tested and working.
https://librepilot.atlassian.net/wiki/display/LPDOC/Control+vehicle+using+joystick
Need OPLink telemetry with vehicle.
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excellent, someone to raise the salary to the people who work for the community librepilot,thanks very much Laurent by the job.
About what the lag, as is possible with an Arduino you can do, and with a notebook supposedly has more processing power may have problems with lag, the transmission module in theory is similar to installed on the RC transmitter,in these videos is not appreciated lag.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbRhPu7xCVg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe6jbNdF35s
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Great job Laurent! Your instructions are always full of helpful pictures.
I'm a little surprised that UAVO metadata didn't need to be tweaked to reduce the lag.
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The GCS update period is currently set to 100ms: Gcs >> remote vehicle side.
When controller is on the Tx change from 12bytes/s to something more high :)
I didn't notice any latency for now.
Need to do more tests today with day light.
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That's awesome Laurent!
I'm a ways from trying this, but I'm looking for all my options. I have a Spectrum Tx and their trainer port is just a double binding with another Spectrum Tx. So as near as I can figure I'd need a DSM2 Rx with a USB output to use it with OPlink
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I've spent the last month playing around with trying to set this up in my free time and I finally accomplished it about a week and a half ago. Then today I was just wasting some time reading the forums and came across this. Turns out I came up with the exact same setup doing trial and error. Only difference is that I didn't disable rc input because I like to be able to fly from my controller without having to go into the settings and changing things when going from joystick controlled flight to controller controlled flight.
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Hi, I've been flying a 250 quad with the CC3D for a few months and used the original OP GCS.
I have switched to LP GCS and was wondering about using the GCS to send control commands to the CC3D.
I just joined the forum and see that it is possible to do this using OPLink.
I wanted to take this a step further (backwards??) and ask the question, "Can the GCS control the CC3D via hardwired serial link or USB?"
I wanted to use a joystick or game controller to control the CC3D outputs with the board direct wired to a laptop.
Johnw
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Hi John,
You can do the same with wire/usb link.
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Great, I'll give it try.
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f5soh,
I followed the steps in the vid link, however when I got to the part to calibrate the controller the Tools dropdown didn't have "options" as a selection. :-\
I'm running 15.09 on a MAC.
Am I missing something?
Thanks.
JohnW
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Did you connect Joystick before starting GCS ?
Don't know if works using OSX.
Sorry... the OSX menu scheme is not exactly the same as Linux/windows.
Can't remember exactly how is the path to go into options menu
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Did you connect Joystick before starting GCS ?
Don't know if works using OSX.
Sorry... the OSX menu scheme is not exactly the same as Linux/windows.
Can't remember exactly how is the path to go into options menu
LibrePilot GCS > Preferences...
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Sweet.
Thanks for the help.
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I was able to connect a Devo 7 radio to an oplink by soldering a flexi cable to a Dragonlink training cable. By doing so, now I can control my Quadcopter through the oplink's PPM connection and get telemetry through my laptop on the GCS while in flight. Let me know if anybody wants step by step instructions on how to do this.
As requested by some readers, I have attached a step by step PDF.
3/10/15 - Sorry, I edited the attached PDF, I didn't realize the conversion to PDF cut out the baud settings in the Oplink configuration screenshot. An updated file has now been attached.