I’m pretty new the the ardupilot scene and have finished my first project which is a fishing bait boat. I have used a APM 2.8 with a M8N. Everything is working 100% and I’m very pleased with the result! In the night the boat can fully autonomous move to the desired (saved) spot way out of sight, drop my bait/hook and RTH.
Good GNSS reception is key in this and that’s why I want to migrate to the Pixhawk platform and start using EKF.
I saw there is also the possibility to use two GNSS receivers, but my questions is: Does that make any sense because I understand the pixhawk is only using one GNSS receiver for it’s calculations, the one with the most satellites. Because a baitboat is very small (50cm length) the two GNSS receivers would be mounted 35cm away from each other. My assumption would be they receive exactly the same numbers of satellites.
Anyone experience in this field and can comment if a second GNSS will improve my accuracy?
You are correct. A seconds GPS is really only useful for fail over in case the first one has an issue. Moving to a PIxhawk won’t increase your GNSS reception just the navigation accuracy as the EKF filters the GPS. Honestly, if everything is working I would save the money and not bother migrating.
I didn’t connect these servo’s, I prefer to release the bait manually. This becouse you have to set the distanace in meters when the motor(s) stop before you reach the waypoint. Standard it’s set to 2m. This is perfect so the boat slowly drifts over the spot. And when the boat is exactly on the spot you can release.
This set-up has my preference.
If you want to do an automatic release connect your servo to output 5 or 6 (please mind voltage on outputrail) an give the command in mission planner or tower.