I just bought a 3DR built device from a vendor on eBay. They have been listed there for a long time and the price cut in half so I got one. I already knew that I could not find any information on this item as I researched it pretty hard beforehand. I thought that it would come with preloaded software and instructions. But it came with neither. It is very well built with WiFi, a 3DR 915mhz radio, a 3DR GPS connected to a keypad / power hat for the RPi board which also charges a nice onboard battery and has status leds. I comes in a nice plastic case. With usb cables and the matching radio for telemetry. I can only find one reference to it on a DIY Drones thread from seven years ago where it is suggested as a proto type. This device is totally built and pakaged for distribution. How can there not be a software developed for it? The power hat has to have had a program burned to the chip on it. It handles two serial devices and seven push buttons. So just throwing it out there and starting trouble. I have loaded the available modules out there for the RPI to make a MAVLink WiFi bridge and the clover drone module. Neither could find the 3dr radio on the board. I can of course remove the hat and gps. Connect the radio directly to the prescribed comm port and it makes a nice WiFi bridge. I believe it was intended to be a portable gps enabled follow me device. What do you think?
Hi Kim
MAVStation was a project started by Pat Hickey back in 2013 GitHub - pchickey/mavstation-daughterboard: Firmware for the Mavstation daughterboard, based on the PX4 project Firmware.
How can there not be a software developed for it? The power hat has to have had a program burned to the chip on it.
Back then somebody in the community would create a design and we (3DR) would build a few and get them out into the community for people to write the code. Unfortunately this product got caught in the transition of 3DR going from making open source hardware and autopilots to making vehicles and was abandoned by the 3DR management in favor of the Solo before it could be completed by sponsored developers. After that nobody in the community took up the torch to complete it.
There is some documentation here Making a MAVLink WiFi bridge using the Raspberry Pi ā Dev documentation
and an image of the R-pi code code here https://firmware.ardupilot.org/Tools/MavStation/
The last person I had working on the STM32 code was Kevin Bretney and he got as far as writing a bootloader and the Nuttx support for the STM32F102
So just throwing it out there and starting trouble. I have loaded the available modules out there for the RPI to make a MAVLink WiFi bridge and the clover drone module. Neither could find the 3dr radio on the board.
You need Kevinās code on the STM to use the serial ports and read the buttons.
We used to have newer version of the mavstation code with Kevinās changes in the ardupilot github but the repository has been deleted. There is an older version of the code here
but it does not have working drivers
If you are really interested and want to take up the torch I probably have an archive copy of the Ardupilot/mavstation-daughterboard code on my own serverā¦
Craig
Thanks Craig, I will gladly take whatever you have to play with. Would love to keep the board if I can get the ports to work. The power and battery is a great addition to the bridge. I have it wired as a bridge and it is working good. But I had to remove the board to use the pins. Thanks so much for the reply, stay safe. My email is k_mc@msn.com
Hello Kim, I have come across a MAVstation also and was wondering if you have gotten any use out of yours since this thread?
wow. Jon, missed this post, yes I put the code for mavstation on it from the ardupilot site and it works nice. I have removed the gps as there is no support for it there. I wish I could use one for my Ruby HD projects as it has menu buttons built in. But I could not find how it was configured on the daughter board. Somewhere there is schematic. Evoimagery, seller on ebay, still offers the module for $25 now and then. I bought another but havenāt set it up yet.