ADS-B PingRx with Arduplane. Where are we at?

I am mulling getting an PingRx for my FPV plane but I have seen very sparse documentation with Ardupilot. Is it even compatible with Arduplane as I have only seen references on the Copter threads?

While i do not actually need it, and I freely admit it is a bit gimmicky, I do FPV over a large body of inland water at legal heights and I would like to see manned aviation traffic on Mission Planner. I think in the context of what I am doing (which is technically illegal, of course, as all FPV is) it would be a nice addition.

Does this work with Arduplane? I would think just a warning and indication on MP would be fine. I see some reference to avoidance being worked on but is this only in Copter and not Plane?

Anyone care to illuminate me?

1 Like

I have been doing some test in recently with SDR Radio to track aircraft using ADS-B and discovered in my part of the UK this would be pointless as it appears only the larger aircraft have ADS-B fitted. Not the small planes, helicopters that i want to avoid.

In the US increasingly often light aircraft do have them. Both my Cessna pilot friends have them. By 2020 all aircraft will have to carry them I believe. I think it would be a good idea to have one.

But if someone could advise me as to whether it even works with Arduplane and to what extent it works I could make a decision as to whether to buy one.

I would be interested in the answers too.

I am going to take the silence here as an indication that it likely has not evolved from the technical demonstration stage in Copter and Mission Planner. But I do think that the fact that all light aircraft in the US will have to carry these in under 2 years times means that it will become a significantly useful add-on feature.

I have emailed the manufacturer to see if they can shed any light on this.

So no reply since?
If so, then I guess that is our answer from then… do not buy.

Its in the documents http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-ads-b-receiver.html?highlight=adsb
but I think for me its useless at the moment

Correct. No reply and I emailed them. Basically this is undeveloped I would say. This really should be a pretty high priority for the manufacturer to sponsor the development. I guess they just have not done so. I do not really want to mess with it if it has seen minimal development.

Thanks. Saw that. Copter docs though. Plane is where it is useful. Who really needs it for a copter? My question was about Arduplane.

Hello everyone, sorry about the super late respose. I didn’t notice this thread till just now.

ArduPilot has ADS-B support for all vehicles types. It was initially implemented on Plane late 2015 and was then ported to the other vehicles. All ADS-B IN and OUT products by uAvionix are supported.

If you look at the wiki you’ll see lots of documentation and videos.
Wiki -> Plane -> optional hardware -> ADS-B Receiever takes you here:
http://ardupilot.org/plane/docs/common-ads-b-receiver.html

It’s plug and play, just set param ADSB_ENABLE=1 liek the docs say and it automagically works.

Things it does:

  • listens to other aircraft and creates an onboard database.
  • constantly streams the “database” down to Mission Planner and it will populate other aircraft on your map.
  • Default behavior is just to display them but otherwise ignore them. Optionally, you can automatically avoid by following directions the docs
  • With an ADSB-Out transceiver, your aircraft could transmit to other drones and others listening with ADSB-In could avoid you!

I wrote the source code for this so please ping me if you have any questions!
-TomP

1 Like

Thanks Tom!
Not sure why I could only find references on the Copter sections – maybe I was relying on Google (I am sure I was and only Copter came up).

In any event, this looks like it could be useful in my scenario. With RAM limitations I am thinking that Navio2 would be a good choice of FC to use with PingRX as it has a lot more RAM than some of my other PX4-class FCs.

It works fine on pixhawk

Thx Tom.
However I am still warry of a product whos manufacturer/seller ignores potential customers emails.
Also I did see the plane wiki before. However there is no detail about the types of avoidance possible with plane. Just says “under developmemt” for past 3 years.

PS Tom. Please please find some time to revisit the auto landing issue that we discused a long time ago.

Hi Tom,
I have a pingRX together with Arduplane and it used to work last year (well, I have never tested collision avoidance but I could see the traffic around me).
But for some reason, I don’t see the ADSB traffic (green plane icons) anymore on the map in Mission Planner (v1.3.55) after upgrading a few weeks ago. When I analyze the logs I can see the MAVLink packets of type F6 “mavlink_adsb_vehicle_t” coming from the pingRX on the plane. I am sure the pingRX works but for some reason the traffic doesn’t show on the map.

Do I have to check the tick box “ADSB” under config/tuning–>planner in MP to show traffic from pingRX? When I enable this option using an arbitrary IP address and port it shows traffic around my home location even if I am not connected to the Arduplane. I assume this information is taken from FlightRadar24 or similar source.

I have also emailed to uAvionix but no answer so far.

Can anybody help me to get the pingRX running again?

I am not sure how to fix your problem, but I am sure 1.3.55 just came out 4 days ago, so could not have been “few weeks” as you say.
However you might wanna try some older version, to see it that helps. As in roll back. That way you would be sure if it is something broken in MP or not.

Thanks for the hint! I’ve quickly checked previous versions of MP, and it works well up to v1.3.52.
1.3.53 and the latest 1.3.55 do not show the traffic anymore. Looks like a bug unless there is a hidden option to enable it somehow.

Regarding the ADSB checkbox, it doesn’t have to be enabled for pingRX to work. It seems that this option only imports traffic from external sources such as dump1090.
See here https://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ads-b-mission-planner-and-flightaware-ads-b-dongle/21362/9

@Michael_Oborne is there a regression in adsb? Maybe there’s just an option in the menus to turn it on and off now?

As Manuel stated already - I have the same problem with ADSB on MP 1.3.53 and 1.3.55. MP 1.3.52 works perfect!
Thanks for the hint Manuel!

@MagicRuB
@Michael_Oborne

I finally bit the bullet and got one of these. It is plug and play alright, but seems very counter intuitive without the (detected) plane that are in the radius not showing a relative (to base) altitude over their icons.
Most aircrafts are too high to matter. It would be nice to someone (even if just mouse over) show what AGL the aircraft is at. That is when not using auto evade feature, which I am unsure of yet, how it performs in plane as it cannot just change altitude without going in a certain direction.
So would be nice for it to be similar to flightradar with AGL of the aircraft showing up on their icons.
Is this a possibility?
Most aircraft are at 10000m, so do not matter, we are just interested in ones 500m or lower. However not all of them are danger, so we cannot just set “warn” for everything at 500m. However if we can see something coming at a the preset parameters, then looking (manually) at the vector and AGL, we can decide if to look out for it or not. Like when it is miles aways we can decide to stay at 200m and not bother with any avoidance algorithms.