Antenna Tracking with Pixhawk

AntennaTracker
1

Howdy,

I’ve been trying to get an antenna tracker going using the pixhawk method (without mission planner in the loop.) I’m currently using Antenna Tracker V1.0

Calibration and pixhawk orientation appear correct. I have an external GPS module and am using the compass on the pixhawk.

Here’s a pic of my setup:

[Album] Imgur

The antenna tracker pixhawk is able to see the drone to be tracked. The mavlink ID of the drone is set as the target ID in the antenna tracker pixhawk’s parameters. The servos test fine with control through the pixhawk.

The behavior I am experiencing is that the antenna tracker system will scan like I assume it should. However, when it “locks on” it just stays fixed in place, even when the target drone moves. You can see in the screenshot what I have been seeing.

[Album] Imgur

It looks like the antenna tracker has determined the heading which it needs to point to (the orange line), but it just doesn’t, as you can see by the actual heading (the red line).

I’ve experimented for a couple of days and have had no luck. Any help would be greatly appreciated :slight_smile:

2

Hi David,

Can you try Auto mode? It should certainly track the vehicle in Auto mode…

I’m sort of thinking we should release an updated version of Tracker soon-ish. It wouldn’t have much new functionality for the tracking software itself but it would at least add a bunch of more general features like support for new flight controllers and sensors.

3

Thanks for your reply.

The behavior I’ve described was in auto mode. From what I understand the tracker will scan until locked to a target in auto mode.

4

Could be wrong, but there may be a minimum range (distance) away before the tracker starts working. Have not done tracker yet, so take this for what it is worth.

Also - get your 433 MHz antenna away from the servo wiring. Not a good thing to have the RF that close to the servo wiring/controller.