Terrain Following > Documentation & Questions

Hello everyone,

I’m trying to use the TERRAIN FOLLOWING for the first time.

I’m following the documentation here, but I find it quite incomplete.

First question, is there an alternative with a step-by-step description of how to get this function running correctly?

To my other questions:

  • Is a GPS lock a precondition for the terrain to start uploading to the APM?
    The thing is, I have to prepare a mission at a place I do not get GPS fix. I do no see any terrain data being uploaded or updated after defining a mission and uploading it to the APM

  • And with this, I come to my next question. Do I understand right, that in order to get the data uploaded to the APM, I need to have my ground station with the MP connected to the internet?
    If I’m working in remote areas where there is no mobile internet connection and the mission areas are so big I cannot upload everything a priori to the APM, how can I assure that the SRTM data is stored on my GS-laptop?

So, these are my first questions…

Can some one help me on this,
thanks,
Cheers
Patribus

APM does not support terrain following. only the pixhawk does.

the pixhawk will request terrain data as soon as you upload a mission, to cover the mission area.

Hi meee1,

so, from what I understand from my observations, MP will request terrain data already when loading maps.

If it should be as you say, namely that MP will request terrain data as soon as I upload a mission, that this would be completely useless for me (and I suppose for many). Why? I plan my missions on site when I know the characteristics of the area I’m working in. Normally I will not have Internet on the field, so if MP loads the elevation data only when I upload a mission, than it would not be able to get that information - 'cause no Internet!

I cannot imagine that this works like this, since it would make the whole function useless.

But like I said, I’m convinced, that the elevation data are downloaded to the cache the moment you zoom in to the region your want to carry out your mission later on.

Check my other post where I still have some questions about the exact mechanism of this downloading of data. There I described all the test I went through to try to understand what MP does.

Cheers

Hello, sorry, I got mixed up, so the post I’m talking about was published at DIY Drones, please have a look here http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/terrain-following-documentation-questions

Cheers

You didn’t answer meee1. Do you have Pixhawk or an APM? This will only work on a Pixhawk or equivalent.

If your somewhere with internet (i.e. at home) and you know roughly the area you will be flying just plot any mission there on the pixhawk and the terrain data for that area will be cached and subsequently available at the flying site without interenet. The terrain data that is cached is for a HUGE area around the mission area. Unless your 100’s of km’s away from the original mission you plotted with internet you should have the terrain data for that area.

Thanks, Grant.

I’m using pixhawk.

As far as I see and understand it you do not need to create any mission plan in order to download elevation data. Just by opening the map will make MP to download the data. You see if the elevation data is being loaded by moving the mouse over the map and see if the elevation value shown on the right is different from zero.

There are however a few issues which are unclear for me and which I shared here: diydrones.com/forum/topics/terra … %3A2111955

Cheers