Antenna Tracking Project Solution

Paranoia · April 8, 2026, 9:28pm

Here is my Ardupilot Tracking Antenna solution, 3D Printed design.

Ardupilot Drone Tracking Antenna Pan 360 & Tilt, Table Top or Tripod by bgiannes - Thingiverse

I’ve been running Tracking Antenna ver 1.0 for a long time… But have just upgraded to 4.6.X

Thank you

Setup;

Ardupilot Tracking Antenna Pan 360 & Tilt, for Table Top and/or Tripod. Ground Station for Drone & UAV’s

All parts are designed to be 3D Printed in PLA and or PETG (best for geared setup).

There are better solutions out there but my goal here is to provide a v low cost design that is easy to print with few parts. I’ve tested the movement using the mission planner simulator mode for hours and I feel it’s robust enough, but with the direct drive tilt and the “25kg” servo. A 360 servo can be used for tilt but will eventually shred the 3D printed PETG tilt internal gear.

Designed for +360 degree pan movement no tangling of pan servo wire. Big selling point

-–RECOMMENDED PARTS—

Pan servo is a standard +360 Servo, HS-1425CR C24T.
32 Pitch, 16 Tooth, C24T Spline Servo Mount Gear, (Acetyl / Brass) for Pan gear, similar. Use a spline gear with a 32 Pitch & 16 +/- 1 teeth & MOD 0.8 combatable all should be good.
Tilt Servo is a standard, Budget Miuzei 25Kg 270deg 25T Servo. Yep the antenna will tilt 270 degrees, full up and full down, not sure how practical that is.
2X Budget turntables, Lazy Susan 3".
Universal Servo Horn Aluminum Alloy 25T Standard Silvery Servo Disc, for direct drive tilt servo. These uni servo adaptors will fit in the center of the gears 3D prints as well.
M3 (assorted lengths), M3 X 12mm & M3 X 8mm machine screws and Nyloc nuts.
Base standoffs are four M3 X 36mm.
1/2"-20 stainless insert, insert using a soldering iron into “Bottom Base” hole for adapting to tripods.
M3 brass/stainless insert for adapting to “Top Mount Adaptor”, insert using a soldering iron for best results.
GPS Antenna Stand Mount Folding Seat Base Holder for FPV DIY Drone QAV.
Servo plates are for geared and/or direct drive setups, choose the ones that fit best depending on your spline gear tooth count. The servo position is important to ensure correct gear engagement. Use M3 X 6mm self-tapping screws for geared option and soft mounted stock servo mounting screws for direct drive. In this build i’m using servo plate 02 for tilt and servo plate 03 for pan.
Any silicon stick-on feet.
The monitor holder is basic but does the trick for this 7" screen. Use CA glue and 1/2"-20 insert & 1/2"-20 X 1/2" bolts to assemble.
Pixhawk flex mount, (G10 material is best).

Note, If needed for some reason the Pan servo can be assembled the other way around with a uni adaptor screwed to the bottom of the 90 deg geared mount so the servo is not rotating with the rest of the assembly and thus could be controlled from another source.

--CONTROLLER–

Antenna Tracker This firmware can be install on different hardware but here i’m using a Pixhawk.

Holybro Pixhawk flight controller w/ Ardupilot Antenna Tracking firmware installed. GPS with Mag and I2C display.
Holybro Telemetry SIK 915Mhz radio, communications to aircraft.
Bluetooth HC-06 serial module 2.4Ghz link to laptop, (don’t use another 915Mhz radio because of interference with the other aircraft SIK radio).
ImmersionRC Fatshark SpiroNet 5.8GHz Patch 13dbi Antenna.
Dimension Engineering SmartBEC for servo power auto lipo voltage cutoff, or similar.
Diode is needed for Pixhawk servo power rail! Diode Setup
I don’t have a TBS 915MHz Yagi so I got this Yagi 915MHz Antenna.
Battery is a 4S 1500mAh Lipo, this acts as a counterweight.
Pixhawk power module with your favorite plugs
Note; the Ardupilot servo PIDs, it did take some time to work this out.

xfacta · April 8, 2026, 10:19pm

Nice - see if you can put a couple of key picture in your post, like the whole tracker assembled and the settings.

Paranoia · April 9, 2026, 2:41pm

Added some pictures of the tilt(180deg) and pan (360deg) and details on setup. There is a 5.8Ghz patch antenna for FPV and a 915Mhz yagi for Mavlink data. Connection to the GS is Bluetooth.

Ishitbh · April 9, 2026, 2:50pm

how much gain does that yagi have? it seems huge

How much range does it get with what tx power for the mavlink?

it looks quite nice.

Paranoia · April 9, 2026, 2:59pm

Range? I’ve only used this with my Holybro X500 V1 Quad and I’ve only had that out about 1000m. I’m using two Sik 915 radios btw. I need to setup a plane with this thing and see what it does?!

This is my AT ver 1.0 setup. (Very time consuming to setup ) My first setup included two continuous servos but using the “25Kg” servo on direct drive is much better. Grains don’t change with and without the Yagi. The key is using a strong servo

ddegn · April 9, 2026, 5:17pm

Very cool project.

Did you worry about trying to balance the weight of tilt section? Do you know if the tilt servo requires power to hold position?

I’ve been seriously considering making something similar. Thanks for sharing so much detail.

Paranoia · April 9, 2026, 7:40pm

With the Yagi installed it needs power to hold position, but there is a bit of balancing happening not all the Yagi weight is on the servo maybe +250g? (never tried to measure it). Also I’ve tested it for hours tracking a virtual plane flying round and round without issues . I’ll have to make a video at some point.

Also note the servo are setup with reasonable ranges of movement.

Before I got the Yagi I used a Moxon antenna (Pics below) which doesn’t need power to hold. The battery is enough to balance everything seems ‘neutral enough’ btw.