Android Ground Station running Tower with Video + Telemetry downlink


Hello everyone ,

my name is Enerik Kapllanaj , i am a beginner in FPV racing .
Started my adventure almost 8 month ago by building a custom quadcopter .
When i discovered the Ardupilot project i was really exited by the community support and the ardupilot capabilities .
Alot of time has passed since i started my project . I learned alot , it is a great experience .
I had my setbacks but still i pushed forward , also my built is staying strong and flying well.
I needed a Ground Station for my quad , i really wanted something mobile to mount on my Taranis Radio.
So i built a mobile ground station using an android phone , 5.8 GHz receiver , 915 MHz telemetry module and a USB splitter .
Attached the post you will find some pictures of the project , hope you like it .
If anyone is interested for the project i can create a github project so anyone can build it .

Cheers
FPVEngineer

8 Likes

Looks good! I have so far only used the ROTG01/2 so very interested in this.

iteresting project.

How do you transfer video from 5.8GHz analog receiver to mobile?

Hey Phil,

i use the same module for receiving analog video signal .

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i use a usb splitter wich connect to my phone via OTG .
It gives me the opportunity to connect the telemetry and video receiver and transfer the data to Tower App

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This is still work on progress, as soon as i finish and test that everything works good .
I will create a github respiratory with all the necessary documentation to setup and build the ground station as described.

Cheers
FPVEngineer

2 Likes

Hi @FPVEngineer,
Very interesting. There is a Chinese product T12 from Skydroid. They use the Tower app also and they stream the video also into the Tower app. I believe they use the uvc library for Andoid, maybe it will help you, because it will give you a better user experience.
Gal

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Hey @gnitzan,

Thanks for the info.
At the moment Tower v4.0 support UVC video in .
I manage to get video+telemetry from my quad at the same time .

I still need to do some more testing .
However i will keep updating this thread with the progress i make .

Cheers
Enerik

Unfortunately the Tower app is no longer even available in the play store, nor is anyone continuing to develop it. You may want to try Solex or QGC.

Hey @Pedals2Paddles

Yes that is true , in fact i tried tower v4.0 the latest release but unfortunately kept on crashing so i switched to SkyDroid Tower app.
This app seems to work good .
I managed to 3D print an enclosure for the system .
Here are some pictures on the progess done so far.

Cheers
Enerik

5 Likes

The case is great! Looks very clean.

What is SKyDroid Tower? I see nothing called that in the play store. The AeroHawk version is gone too.

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Thanks @Pedals2Paddles :grin:

Until now is working great .
SkyDroid Tower is a newer version of the traditional tower app .
It is mantained by the company wich has made the T12 series transmiters .
It is basically the same thing as Tower except runs very smoothly.

Cheers
Enerik

Great explanation @Matt_C :+1::grin:

Cheers
Enerik

It could be even better if they (Skydroid) released their version of tower on github.

1 Like

Yeah that would be great , although i dont seem to find any difference from the latest relase of Tower 4.0 and SkyDroid 5.9 .
The only difference i can find is the operating system .
I tried running Tower on Android 8 and as soon i started pluging in Video + Telemetry module it crashes .
Surprisingly SkyDroid did not , so i think that the only difference is the update of the build files wich include compatibility with newer versions of android.

Cheers
Enerik

1 Like

I run the SkyDroid Tower (I use T12) with Android 8 without a problem.
Gal

Hey @gnitzan

Yes , SkyDroid Tower works well but the original version Tower 4.0 does not unfortunately.

Actually I have spent two days trying to build the code in AndroidStudio and failed miserably :shushing_face: since I am not that familiar with Android…

Did you failed in updating the actual tower project from github ?

Yes, the project is so old and many plugins are now obsolete, so I’m kind of stuck with it. But I am still trying