Antenna tracker use with Alexmos gimbal

AntennaTracker
1

I am trying to use antenna tracker installed on pixaracer in conjunction with a brushless alexmos (gimbal like) tracker. 2 axis system, yaw and pitch. As AT only option is to control servos trough pwm i can not get the system to work. On the gimbal side i get ahrs gps and rc but no control. When connected the servos to the alexmos rc the gimbal jerks alot not mainting the position. What PID should i use for the servos on the tracker so the pwm is stable ? i belive that sevos pid messes with the pid on the alexmos. Any idea or help much appreciated.

2

make sure the gimbal control mode alights with the tracker settings, i think you should use rate (i think they call it speed) control on the gimbal and continuous rotation servo setting for antenna tracker.

3

thanks, tried already. Have to do more test. Unfortunately AT documentation is incomplete

4

DId a real test with a connected vehicle. Tracker was auto. No RC out signal. On GS all worked fine, i can see the tracker and the vehicle no prob.
Ideea is to have mavlink and mount implemented. with a feature like ROI updated from the vehicle beeing tracked. I think the Pixracer will just send the angles instead of pwm. Copter with Simplebgc as cam mount it does just that.
I have added a new bin to the drive folder, on auto there is no rc out.

6

Hello there,
I wake this idea up, to know if there was some improvements from Jack, or if there is some new features in arducopter to use a brushless gimbal for tracking drone.

My need is for drone laser show, with that goal: following and pointing precisely a flying UAV with a laser mounted on a brushless gimbal. i assume the fact that the positionning would use RTK for accuracy.
I plan to do test on next month, but idea and advices would be appreciated!!
Thanks,
Julien

7

Hi Julien how are you going with this project? I have a gremsy T1 that I would like to turn into a tracker for camera to follow the drone- similar to your laser.

8

Hi @Steven_Young,

As a work-around until we allow the Mount driver to be used by antenna tracker, you could instead install Rover on the autopilot and then set:

  • MNT1_DEFLT_MODE = 5 (SysId)
  • MNT1_SYSID_DFLT = xxx (the system id of the vehicle)

You’ll also need to set the SYSID_THISMAV on each vehicle to be unique and the position from the vehicle will need to be sent to the Rover somehow but this is the same as for tracker.

Now, I should warn you that I’ve never personally tried this but it should work.

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