ESP8266 WIFI on pixhawk

Hardware Pixhawk family
18

Wanted to add my 5 cents:

  1. Usually when dealing with ESP8266 <-> Phone / Tablet / Laptop connection the limiting factor will be the phone / tablet / laptop (assuming esp wifi power is bumped all the way up as is in https://pixhawk.org/peripherals/8266 ). The range here is expected at up to around 100 meters.

  2. The fun starts when one is using two esp8266 to communicate with each other, typical setup will be:
    FC <-> ESP for the air part and ground part: ESP1 <-> ESP2 <-> Phone / Tablet / Laptop.
    ESP1 and 2 can run same firmware with RX / TX crossed (i.e. TX from 1 to RX of 2 and vise versa). Alternatively ESP2 can be swapped for BT module HC-05 / HC-06 in same manner. If using two ESP’s it’s advised to run on distinct channels. Range here if using ESP with external antenna is expected at around 500 - 750 meters.

  3. I also use soemthing simillar to more or less that Peter have, 2 SIK radios (433Mhz)
    Air <-> SIK and ground setup: SIK <-> RPI3 (RaspberryPi 3 built in wifi set up as soft AP) <-> Phone / Tablet.
    Run from portable phone power bank or car charger, benefit of additional logging via RPI and more or less nicely packed setup (the rpi is in a case).

  4. Firmware wise, I’ve tested for the ESP8266 3 firmwares:
    a. jeelabs/esp-link https://github.com/jeelabs/esp-link - HTTP, nice GUI. setting in AP mode isn’t straightforward.
    b. festlv/mavbridge https://github.com/festlv/mavbridge - UDP, very nice and polished, GUI is good.
    c. dogmaphobic/mavesp8266 https://github.com/dogmaphobic/mavesp8266 - UDP, poor GUI.

I’ve played mostly with (a) and © and prefer © mainly as it’s support UDP, lean & easy to flash, code is easy and traceable. jeelabs esp link is great firmware but it’s HTTP transport doesn’t give benefits to the least in our case.
Another thing all firmware are missing with respect to our use case is lowering the PHY Layer speed link to the lowest possible as this provides higher sensitivity for all wifi receivers out there. (https://www.espressif.com/sites/default/files/documentation/0b-esp8266_system_description_en.pdf - page 5).

Good luck, Eddi

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