Antenna tracker for P4 -phantom 4

[Sim597]

the best option would be not to sit in the van when using your phantom.
stay outside the van for a full vue of your sounderings.

Not true anymore, look at the numbers Jeremiah has posted, 6 miles out, due to omni directional L-Com antennas, and LMR-400 cables and a couple Sunhans amps, will BLOW away whatever you can push out standing outside all day long, and twice as far on Sunday's (lol because we all know resting inside the airco on Sunday, flying your rig out 5.5 miles, is the shiznit!)

 

[Sim597]

I think you need to talk to Jeremy and use omni directional antennas.

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look a post above and you'll see this has already been done

 

[IBV]

Right, I checked his post. I could test omnidirectioanl antennas and run them via Sunhans boosters. If that's not enough I could go for the tracker. The Mid tracker ( and some others I guess too) are working based on the Nmea GPS data they read from the data stream. The question is if lightbridge 2 is sending this protocol/standard?
Does anybody know about? I have not come across this in other threads.
Apart from longe range I assume that a directional antenna helps to penetrate better and thus keeps the link more stable at mid- and long-range distances.The drawback is it makes it more complex ( and is not for free..)
So does lightbridge send Nmea Gps data

 

[Jeremiah Nelson]

Right, I checked his post. I could test omnidirectioanl antennas and run them via Sunhans boosters. If that's not enough I could go for the tracker. The Mid tracker ( and some others I guess too) are working based on the Nmea GPS data they read from the data stream. The question is if lightbridge 2 is sending this protocol/standard?
Does anybody know about? I have not come across this in other threads.
Apart from longe range I assume that a directional antenna helps to penetrate better and thus keeps the link more stable at mid- and long-range distances.The drawback is it makes it more complex ( and is not for free..)
So does lightbridge send Nmea Gps data

Don't get me wrong it would be a good project for sure. I just wanted to chime in to save you the trouble if you didn't want hassle of additional setup. I am getting awesome penetration with the l coms. It would be harder to ask for any better. So, I would appreciate if you would carry on with this tracker and report back here Range so far for me with them is 6.83 miles and about 250ft altitude full signal with the m100.. Removing x3 for small fpv camera with n1 encoder and adding a 9000mah thunderpower lihv in addition to a tb48. I think I can do 10 miles with them.

 

[IBV]

Don't get me wrong it would be a good project for sure. I just wanted to chime in to save you the trouble if you didn't want hassle of additional setup. I am getting awesome penetration with the l coms. It would be harder to ask for any better. So, I would appreciate if you would carry on with this tracker and report back here Range so far for me with them is 6.83 miles full signal with the m100.. Removing x3 for small fpv camera with n1 encoder and adding a 9000mah thunderpower lihv in addition to a tb48. I think I can do 10 miles with them.

No worries ya. I will report if I go for that..
What's a "m100" and the other gear you mention.
Not yet so familiar with abbreviations yet.. Especially English ones.. 8-}

 

[Jeremiah Nelson]

No worries ya. I will report if I go for that..
What's a "m100" and the other gear you mention.
Not yet so familiar with abbreviations yet.. Especially English ones.. 8-}

Dji matrice 100. It has an inspire 1 camera and holds 2 factory dji batteries. I can remove the inspire camera and use the dji n1 encoder to replace with light weight fpv cam. Then add an additional big *** battery. All this hassle for additional flight times needed. So a tracker would be good for super long range. Like 10 miles +

 

[IBV]

Dji matrice 100. It has an inspire 1 camera and holds 2 factory dji batteries. I can remove the inspire camera and use the dji n1 encoder to replace with light weight fpv cam. Then add an additional big *** battery. All this hassle for additional flight times needed. So a tracker would be good for super long range. Like 10 miles +

OK.now I get it. Do you know about this Nmea Gps data and lightbridge?

 

[Jeremiah Nelson]

OK.now I get it. Do you know about this Nmea Gps data and lightbridge?

No sorry not yet I don't. I will be reading up on it. Have Lightbridge 2 and waiting on an a3 flight controller for a custom build. I am going large props and low kv motors and intend for no less than 45 min flight time with fpv gear. When I max out the omnies this is an obvious direction to go in.

 

[IBV]

No sorry not yet I don't. I will be reading up on it. Have Lightbridge 2 and waiting on an a3 flight controller for a custom build. I am going large props and low kv motors and intend for no less than 45 min flight time with fpv gear. When I max out the omnies this is an obvious direction to go in.

Great. I also try to find out how this could work out.
I tried out 2pcs 8db omnidirectional antennas with magnet holder. It seems penetration is better than the itelite dbs02 when making direct compare.both on "auto channel" settings.Didn't check for range today.
Yeah.. Your project seems ambitious. What about a tuned matrice 600 or just buying frame, motor, gimbal,etc.. Directly from China (e.g. trumpuav)? You can tweak and tune on your terms then..

 

[bhgtuu]

This is the good option

 

[Draettig]

Hi out there,

I was searching on the net for a solution to P4 challenge without success..(obvisously ..)

What I want to do and the problem:
I want to sit in a van (with my colleague as passenger) and fpv-fly the P4 out for specific missions (inspection/ environmental..).
The problem is when I sit inside the van the range is too low and I cannot turn to follow the bird.
So I thought it would be great to just mount antennas on the roof! - This solves the range problem but not the directional issue. The solution I understood is an auto-antenna tracker. Antenna wise I use en itelite db02 and this works fine.

I thought this would be an easy one as there are plenty of models out on the market. However, I soon discovered it might not be that easy..
I don't want to glue a seperate GPS sender onto the P4 (weight and battery issue). So the option would be to use an auto antenna tracker that reads out the GPS signal from the lightbridge data stream, right?
I understood there are different standards and NME- GPS protcol is one.
There is a whole lotta antenna trackers available. Which system could work?

Main question:
What should I do?
and..:
Does lightbridge use NMEA GPS protocol?
Is there any other solution without mounting a seperate GPS sender onto the P4.
Which system would work and how?

Hope for some creative people out there!

Cheers,
Robert

 

[Sim597]

You know, really, if there was a tiny little thing to clip on, but I don't even know if that is an option, not sure, what I do think is, we should start getting someone to post two of these up

One for each channel, that's two watt amps from our 100milliwatt tx/rx and this would then make the bird easy to track and follow, and keep great communication with, up and down, and would eliminate all the expensive antenna and amps, I wish I was smart enough....


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[potluckman]

Hi there,
I got a reply from them and it seems there is not any auto antenna tracker. Most likely because most people haven't got the licence to fly fpv out of sight....
So I'm still lokking for a solution. Ithought of tracking the P4 with a pan/tilt servo connected to a wired joystick. - Better than nothing..

Anybody having some ideas?

Glad you brought up this whole issue. Excuse me fellow flyers but when you are older and live in places
like Missouri like I do, the cold in the winter and the 90 degree, 60% humidity make it really tough to stand out in the middle of a field for an hour the idea of a shelter is pretty important. I for one have been considering building a small potty house size glass sided shelter on a small trailer. I would heat and cool the shelter but I need an external tracking antenna to make this work. As a licensed pilot from years ago I can tell you that winter flying is some of the best as the air is generally very stable and fun to fly in.

 

[IBV]

Glad you brought up this whole issue. Excuse me fellow flyers but when you are older and live in places
like Missouri like I do, the cold in the winter and the 90 degree, 60% humidity make it really tough to stand out in the middle of a field for an hour the idea of a shelter is pretty important. I for one have been considering building a small potty house size glass sided shelter on a small trailer. I would heat and cool the shelter but I need an external tracking antenna to make this work. As a licensed pilot from years ago I can tell you that winter flying is some of the best as the air is generally very stable and fun to fly in.

Same for us here in the north. In the thread "antenna jungle.." I posted some pictures of my remote controlled pan/tilt unit and some amplified omni antenna posts and pictures are there as well. In March I plan to get an auto antenna tracker via UGCS controlling the pan/tilt unit. We will see then how it works. Omni antennas with good amplifiers work great but if you got trees around and need range same time directional antennas do the job. I often use the pan/tilt unit. It works great!

 

[potluckman]

Same for us here in the north. In the thread "antenna jungle.." I posted some pictures of my remote controlled pan/tilt unit and some amplified omni antenna posts and pictures are there as well. In March I plan to get an auto antenna tracker via UGCS controlling the pan/tilt unit. We will see then how it works. Omni antennas with good amplifiers work great but if you got trees around and need range same time directional antennas do the job. I often use the pan/tilt unit. It works great!

IBV I have been flying the Phantom 4 for about two months now and still trying to catch on to all the Abev. and terms so please forgive my ignorance. You mention a "auto antenna tracker via UGCS" for
control, what are you referring to. I had hoped someone would be making a tracker that was directly
compatible with the dji controller as I do not really want to add any modules to the drone. When you mention trees which I also have so penetration is a concern. One issue people may not be aware of but when using power amps driving omni antennas, the amps only help up stream. The down stream using added receiver gain has
diminishing returns due to the amplifier noise floor and adjacent signal rejection. On the other hand, gain obtained by a directional antenna has neither issue.

 

[IBV]

IBV I have been flying the Phantom 4 for about two months now and still trying to catch on to all the Abev. and terms so please forgive my ignorance. You mention a "auto antenna tracker via UGCS" for
control, what are you referring to. I had hoped someone would be making a tracker that was directly
compatible with the dji controller as I do not really want to add any modules to the drone. When you mention trees which I also have so penetration is a concern. One issue people may not be aware of but when using power amps driving omni antennas, the amps only help up stream. The down stream using added receiver gain has
diminishing returns due to the amplifier noise floor and adjacent signal rejection. On the other hand, gain obtained by a directional antenna has neither issue.

UGCS is a great software to create missions. Dji does not output Gps Nmea data via their controller directly. However, it's part of the stream and UGCS might create a module for their software to allow controlling certain pan tilt units. I will follow it up in March.
The other part you mention regarding amplification is partly correct, but when using high quality amps with band pass filters of high quality in a low noise forest area it indeed will help a lot to keep Rx above readable threshold. To blind out noise directional antennas are of course superior..

 

[potluckman]

UGCS is a great software to create missions. Dji does not output Gps Nmea data via their controller directly. However, it's part of the stream and UGCS might create a module for their software to allow controlling certain pan tilt units. I will follow it up in March.
The other part you mention regarding amplification is partly correct, but when using high quality amps with band pass filters of high quality in a low noise forest area it indeed will help a lot to keep Rx above readable threshold. To blind out noise directional antennas are of course superior..

Will be watching to see what you come up with. With regard to my comments on receiver gain, I did not
say it would not help but unlike increasing transmitter power which has no immediate limits, receiver gain does. Many people think you can just slap a amp on receivers from tv sets to drones and get 15 or 20 db
gain. Most good receivers can have a sensitivity of -110 db. To improve this you need an amp with a very
low noise floor, which are available but usually not the dirt cheap chinese stuff. Far as bandpass filters,
you can only narrow the bandwidth so far before you restrict the data rates. Course you could use liquid
cooled amps like space telescopes but a little over kill. Anyway my real point was that we can easily add
25-30 db of clean gain IF a simple inexpensive tracker becomes available. Little surprised on one makes one already for the Phantom 4 series.

 

[IBV]

Will be watching to see what you come up with. With regard to my comments on receiver gain, I did not
say it would not help but unlike increasing transmitter power which has no immediate limits, receiver gain does. Many people think you can just slap a amp on receivers from tv sets to drones and get 15 or 20 db
gain. Most good receivers can have a sensitivity of -110 db. To improve this you need an amp with a very
low noise floor, which are available but usually not the dirt cheap chinese stuff. Far as bandpass filters,
you can only narrow the bandwidth so far before you restrict the data rates. Course you could use liquid
cooled amps like space telescopes but a little over kill. Anyway my real point was that we can easily add
25-30 db of clean gain IF a simple inexpensive tracker becomes available. Little surprised on one makes one already for the Phantom 4 series.

The tracker should then work with any drone handled by the software. However, it's not a cheap solution.

 

[lb650]

Drone valley.com. Sell a vehicle mount antenna kit that comes with 2 5 or 7 dbi Omni directional ( I cant remember which one) antennas with suction cup mounts to go on your windshield. But you have to do the 2.5 ghz antenna upgrade to your controller so you can Attach the vehicle to controller


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[IBV]

Drone valley.com. Sell a vehicle mount antenna kit that comes with 2 5 or 7 dbi Omni directional ( I cant remember which one) antennas with suction cup mounts to go on your windshield. But you have to do the 2.5 ghz antenna upgrade to your controller so you can Attach the vehicle to controller


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Good for many things but directional antennas listen and send better to put it simple. In some circumstances this is the only way to go. On other bands and systems, antenna auto tracking is standard.