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

I would want two parameters that define the elevation above me and below me that define the vertical envelope of display awareness, and the vertical envelope of avoidance response. For example, only show me other aircraft that are within 2000 feet above or below my current altitude, and avoid any aircraft that are within 500 feet vertically of my current position. Any aircraft greater than 2000 feet above or below me is displayed differently, smaller, or not at all.

There are two components to this: What the aircraft sees and what the GCS UI chooses to display. Sounds like you’re just wanting more UI stuff. The ADSB_* params are in the aircraft and can filter out by radius. There’s no altitude option but it only takes a minute to add that (which I just did).

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Great work Tom, thank you.
Now all eyes on @Michael_Oborne :slight_smile:

with the ADSB_LIST_* params doing some filtering, the aircraft will ignore aircraft outside of the ranges so Mission Planner will never know about those aircraft.

Yes, I get that part. I mean would still be nice to see AGL on planes that are within the filtering. just to have idea.

Thanks Tom! Looking forward to trying your code out.

Kelly

I have a ping2020 W/GPS and Baro PingNav and I have not been able to get airtraffic to show up on MP, I have it on telem2 and it shows up on messages when I connect to MP with call sign & ICAO info, but also there are alot of configurable options in the full parameter list that I do not know the necessary parameters. also all current firmware ArduCopter 3.6.5 & MP 1.3.62
ADSB_EMIT_TYPE 14
ADSB_ENABLE 1
ADSB_ICAO_ID 696969
ADSB_LEN_WIDTH 1
ADSB_LIST_MAX 25
ADSB_LIST_RADIUS 800 or 1000 or 10000
ADSB_OFFSET_LAT 4
ADSB_OFFSET_LON 1
ADSB_RF_CAPABLE 7
ADSB_RF_SELECT 3
ADSB_SQUAWK 1200
|SR2_ADSB|5|
|SR2_EXT_STAT|0|
|SR2_EXTRA1|0|
|SR2_EXTRA2|0|
|SR2_EXTRA3|0|
|SR2_PARAMS|0|
|SR2_POSITION|0|
|SR2_RAW_CTRL|0|
|SR2_RAW_SENS|0|
|SR2_RC_CHAN|0|
|SERIAL2_BAUD|57|
|SERIAL2_PROTOCOL|2|

and I built my telem2 cable as 5v to 5v, Gnd to Gnd, tx to rx, rx to tx.

Please help me make this work, I have tried for days now. Please help me fill in the blanks.

Just updated to ArduCopter 3.6.5 and all ADSB related config is gone. I cannot see nor set ADSB_ENABLE=1 using MP (1.3.62). This used to work with the previous version 3.5.7 of ArduCopter, and it also works with the latest ArduPlane 3.9.5.
Any ideas what happened with ADSB in AC 3.6.5?

All aircraft in the US do not have to have ADS-B out in 2020. Same as Mode-C transponders now. Only if you fly in controlled airspace defined under 14CFR Part 91.225 will you need ADS-B with a manned aircraft.

That makes ADS-B pretty much useless for manned aircraft avoidance with UAV’s. The sole purpose of ADS-B is as the next gen system replacing current terminal radar in Class Bravo, Charlie and Echo airspace. UAV’s fly in Class G airspace (unless with special authorization from ATC).

That doesn’t mean many GA pilots who fly for recreation won’t install it. But it does mean that the aircraft you are mostly likely to encounter flying a UAV won’t have it.

Thanks for the clarification. Where I fly they almost certainly will have them. I agree though it is pretty pointless to install them in many places.

Yeah, I think the UAV industry might try to hail it as the Best Thing Since Sliced Bread because they do automatic avoidance of manned aircraft. In reality, in Class Echo airspace it is not required for manned aircraft to have one below 10,000 MSL.

So at least in the US it’s not going to work for avoidance of manned aircraft. You can have everything from ag applicators flying at 140kts, to ultralights, to Sport class airplanes, to emergency services and military flying VR routes below 400AGL. And none of those aircraft will likely be equipped with ADS-B out. And it’s up to the UAV pilot to stay out of their way. Which means it’s all see and avoid, VFR, VLOS. If people have some mistaken idea that the FAA is going let it turn into a free-for-all with BVLOS blanket certificate of waiver because a UAV has ADS-B with auto-avoidance - sorry, not gonna happen. I’ve been working directly with the FAA for 35 years as a commercial pilot and I can tell you the FAA has totally different ideas of how it’s gonna work than the UAV industry has.

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For me it is just a hobbyist FPV extra gadget. Where I fly off Lake Michigan’s shoreline north of Chicago all light aircraft are likely fitted with such devices. It would be nice to know if Cessna’s were cruising at 1000 feet out over the Lake and heading towards me at 400 feet. The truth is I do not think this has any thing like the refinement required for it to be very useful now. We would need a GCS that filtered out the high altitude planes or color coded the ones below a certain altitude – or even displayed the altitude on the planes visible in MP. There is a lot of high altitude planes cluttering up things that I do not need to see.

I think it is a sparsely used feature now so I could not really blame Michael Oborne for developing this further. I do not not know why MP is free anyway. You could still put the sources on Git and charge a nominal fee for it – it is not like anyone would not pay $20 a year to able to download the latest versions.

They may not all be yet, but most will have to be by 2020 in that airspace. You are under the tiers there of the KORD Class Bravo space. I fly into KORD on average once a week. It is illegal for even a student or Sport rated pilot to fly an aircraft into KORD without a qualified instructor or minimum instrument rated private pilot as Second in Command. Must less entering that airspace with a drone.

Reality is, under the tiers of the Class B, there is some aircraft flying around VFR without flight following, squawking 1200 on the transponder. And that transponder will be replaced by ADS-B out by 2020. But there is still Sport pilots flying around in the Class E and G space there without transponders. And that’s where auto-avoidance for drones using ADS-B falls apart.

@Marc_Dornan if you look at a Green Bay VFR Sectional, besides the Class Bravo around KORD and Class Charlie around Midway, north of Chicago you have Class Delta around KENW. And then back to Class Charlie at Milwaukee Mitchell. And note all the shaded areas where Class Echo extends into what would normally be Class G space.

There is a 30nm Mode C ring around KORD all the way to the surface. There is actually few places you can fly a drone there without ATC authorization. There is hardly no place that’s not within 5nm of an airport, and only commercial Part 107 can fly in those areas.

107 operators will likely have ADS-B installed in a UAV if they operate in that airspace. But the average hobbiest won’t because it requires interaction with ATC in the first place, which the typical hobbiest drone pilot has no clue how to do, nor has the radio equipment to do it. And this is where all these 100+ reports of drones operating in controlled airspace come from every month. It’s hobbiests that don’t know what airspace they’re flying in, they got a drone and they think it’s a free-for-all. It’s like the poor fellow that flew his Phantom drone right into a UH-60 in New York, I think it was. He sent his drone out on a “mission” BVLOS, below 400AGL, and it never came back. Because it collided with a UH-60 and destroyed a $50,000 rotor blade on the helicopter. The poor chap had no idea he was not supposed to be flying BVLOS. He had no idea a military helicopter could be flying in that airspace. There was a TFR in effect at the time, and he had no clue about that.

ADS-B is not going to “fix” any of this for drones. Aviation is not like driving a car. It has long required extensive and quite expensive training for a pilot to even kick the tire before flying an aircraft of any type. What’s eventually going to “fix” it is requiring training and licensing for anybody flying an aircraft, like it always has been in aviation. Automation in drones to try to keep people from flying where they’re not supposed to doesn’t work. It can be easily over-ridden. And that’s what the UAV industry is trying to push. But the FAA don’t bend easily and unless the UAV industry changes its course the FAA will eventually make it so expensive to put a drone in the air it will essentially be regulated out of existence except for a select few that can afford it. Which, considering it costs ~$20,000 and over a year of training and studying to get a private pilot certificate today, is what General Aviation has come to.

So, IMO, ADS-B for anything but commercial drones operating in controlled airspace is a non-starter.

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Heavily disagree, but that’s just my $.02. So many commercial operators are operating DJI P4P’s in that airspace without ADS-B. In reality, only Class B and C airspace needs that ADS-B, NOT all controlled airspace. My local class D towered airspace won’t require it, and Ag planes will likely never need it even though they are probably at the most risk.

That’s because Class D doesn’t have a TRSA. ADS-B out is replacing terminal radar. And you have to consider what the FAA has in store - they are going to require ADS-B out on commercial drones operating in controlled airspace of any type. But a certified, TSO’d ADS-B out transponder is not within the price range of the average drone.

Right now the FAA is running their “two year study” on allowing drones to carry property for hire. And Amazon, the big push behind it, was denied participation in the “study” because they thought they were going to tell the FAA how to do it. Like I said, the FAA don’t bend.

Look again at the Green Bay Sectional for the Class B around KORD. It has a 30nm Mode C ring to the surface. Nothing, including a drone, flies in that airspace even if it’s below the B tier, unless it is equipped with a Mode C transponder. A Mode C veil extends from the surface to 10,000 MSL. The equipment to fly a drone in that airspace, even though it’s not in the Class B, does not currently exist for drones. A certified encoding altimeter alone costs $700 a year to operate it, just due to the annual re-certification costs. This is where ADS-B out for commercial drones will come in handy. They’ll be able to operate in that Mode C veil.

Thanks for the input. There places north of Chicago where you can fly and stay out of Class B as long as you are comfortable putting your plane at risk! Believe me I have looked.

My PingRX may not make much difference but hey why not use it now that I have it.

Yeah, my first foray into ADS-B was a ping2020i that I bought and figured I could use it in the specs for getting a BVLOS waiver for ag survey flights. The inspector at FSDO looked at it and told me it’s a really cool little thing, but I get caught installing it in an aircraft of any type and I’ll get nailed to the wall because it’s not a certified transponder. Unless it has been tested, certified and TSO’d to FAA spec, it does not fly.

That’s when I decided ADS-B is a total waste for drones. The current cost for equipping a full-size aircraft to meet the 2020 mandate is ~$2,400 if it’s already equipped with a certified RNAV. If it doesn’t have a certified GPS receiver, the cost is $10,000 - 20,000, depending on what RNAV system is installed.

The uBlox M8N does not qualify as a certified GPS receiver. You can connect the Rx ones to a GCS all you want, and play Air Traffic Controller on your ground station. But as soon as you put a transmitter in it and connect to ATC’s network it has to meet all the same requirements as for full-size. Which is not cheap.

This is all good info. For those of us that are hobby geeks it is nice to have ADS-B awareness – but I can see it has practical limitations unless the GCS is improved before we even consider the fact that not all planes are equipped with transponders. I will have a better sense of whether it makes any sense at all in my situation when I log more flights with it. I have discovered that a $20 receiver with a decent antenna connected to MP can push this info back to the FPV plane so I am not even sure you need a PingRX.

hey all! I just realized this PR was never merged. I just now merged it.