@stephendade This looks like a great addition. Do we have any estimates as to how much data this will use per hour or the expected cost of use in real-world scenarios?
Here are the rates.
So if I purchase 1000 credits that looks like I would get 50kb of mavlink 1 data. I am guessing that will not last very long if the standard GCS connection failed over to this modem. Does anyone have any real world experience with this? I am guessing it is most appropriate as a backup and we would probably want to be sending the bare minimum mavlink packets.
The Rockblock connection is a cut-down MAVLink connection. It only sends/receives a very small subset of MAVLink messages. The intent would be to monitor the vehicle during auto missions.
The Rockblock connection uses 1 credit (sends 1 MAVLink message) per 30 seconds for telemetry in the UAV->GCS direction. Only MAVLink commands (1 credit per command) are sent in the GCS->UAV direction, so the credit consumption depending on how many commands you send.
So, a typical mission would use 120 credits/hour for UAV->GCS, and a handful of commands in the GCS->UAV direction. So call it 130 credits/hour.
Based on the credit costs, this would amount to £10-15 per flight hour, excluding the monthly line rental.
For expectation management:
This link is very low update rate. It will send the HIGH_LATENCY2 MAVLink message once per 30 seconds. This will give a basic location and status of the vehicle. There’s no ability to read/edit parameters, waypoints, geofences and definitely no ability for any manual flight modes.
Is it possible to alter the frequency that the packets are sent at? My application is for a multi month long endurance application, I would be looking for a message every 6 hours or so.