Is Mavlink data supported?

[qwerty009]

I have Sky9x v3 board mounted on my 9x transmitter and i would like to have some additional telemetry data on my screen (besides TX/RX signal strength and battery voltage that comes from frsky). I did some searching but i didn't manage to find no clear tutorial nor i was able to understand is it even supported atm or in future..
If It's supported can someone point me to some tutorial or write down how to use it? I'd like to be able to plug it into serial 2 (and keep my frsky in serial 1) and have both working.

[Kilrah]

That won't work as of now.
The only currently implemented solution is to compile with EXT=ARDUPILOT, and have a radio modem feeding the same serial port that would be used for frsky with "pure" data (with no framing like what frsky would add).

[qwerty009]

Ok, but is it on TODO list and what would be approx ETA?

[Kilrah]

No it isn't, first time someone asks for it...

There has never been much interest in the mavlink version as far as I know. Someone had made an er9x version with it, and the code was pulled into open9x because it was there, but nobody in the development team uses it and we haven't had much feedback from users.

Sent via mobile

[bertrand35]

Yes, someone worked on it, openTX is now using the very last version, but it's only on stock board, not on sky9x / taranis / gruvin9x!

[Rob Thomson]

Pretty sure that someone made a small mavlink to frsky Protocol convertor. Seems to mr this is a sensible option.

Just cant remember who!

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[qwerty009]

There is a "JoJo" board that converts signal, but adding extra boards to copter creates wiring mess.
Imo the main reason why noone has been interested is that noone knows that it could be possible. I use mavlink and frsky telemetry for a long time and only now i found mostly by accident that someone has made some sort of mavlink support at one point.
I don't know how many multicopter fliers are here but basically everyone who uses APM board would greatly benefit from such telemetry support. For stock board it would be hard to add maybe because of it's limitations, and sky9x and gruvin owners are limited in numbers.

[jhsa]

Doesn't the APM board support frsky?

[WendoNZ]

Not directly, APM outputs MAVLINK. To translate you need to use a JD IOBoard or a standard Arduino Pro Mini (if you don't care about the lighting features of the JD board) and load this firmware on it

https://code.google.com/p/arducodes/dow ... x&can=2&q=

then run D6 to your receivers digital telemetry port. You also have to be careful to only connect TX from the APM to the board if you're running telemetry radios

[sgofferj]

There's not much point in running MAVlink telemetry through the FrSky system because the data rate is so low. The 3DR radios run on 56k and you really need this speed to get the data in any meaningful manner.

[WendoNZ]

That's odd, since apart from actually programming an APM, the telemetry port only puts out the same data as a FrSky hub that's populated with all the sensors, so I don't understand why you would think it's a bandwidth problem. Essentially you're talking about GPS, a couple of voltages, altitude and maybe speed. Sending that once a second over a 1200bps (which is what the FrSky radio link runs at I believe) link shouldn't be a problem

[ReSt]

Don't know about the rf speed, but input and output speed of FrSky is 9600 Bd

Reinhard

[MikeB]

Yes, the actual baud rate is 9600, but user data must not exceed an average of 1200 bps. This is because it is 'packaged' into data packets when delivered at the transmitter end.

Mike.

[sgofferj]

That's odd, since apart from actually programming an APM, the telemetry port only puts out the same data as a FrSky hub that's populated with all the sensors, so I don't understand why you would think it's a bandwidth problem. Essentially you're talking about GPS, a couple of voltages, altitude and maybe speed. Sending that once a second over a 1200bps (which is what the FrSky radio link runs at I believe) link shouldn't be a problem

If you are satisfied with updates once a second... On the default settings, the APM outputs e.g. attitude data for the GCS HUD at 5 or 10Hz. It also outputs much more than what a sensor hub transmits! I'm working on my own embedded groundstation project since a while and the 56k bandwidth of the 3DR modems is well filled at APM's default settings.
People have tried before running the APM's telemetry through the FrSky backchannel and found it way insufficient.

[WendoNZ]

Yes but you're not trying to run a complete ground station on this link (at least I would hope not). The point of getting that into the TX is usually so you can put some alarms on things. a 1sec update rate at that point would be fine for anything other than altitude. Certainly for battery monitoring etc it would be fine

[Peter]

I use a arduino pro mini with the converter software for frsky. And a separate mavlink to my phone if I want. Works great.

What I would like is better support for FrSky telemetry in MultiWii and Arduplane. Then I would not have to hack MultiWii and add an extra board to Arduplane. But that is for an other forum

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[sgofferj]

Well, I use the FrSky telemetry for monitoring voltage including alarm. The rest goes via 3DR radios to my tablet or laptop. Plus I have a MinimOSD which also shows all relevant parameters.

Edit:
For 433MHz 3DR radios, a nice high-gain antenna in the GCS works wonders regarding range! I use a 2m/70cm dualband antenna from Diamond with 7,6dBi gain on 70cm on my ground radio. Gives me about 2km range with the factory antenna on the air radio.

[Ozzy]

People have tried before running the APM's telemetry through the FrSky backchannel and found it way insufficient.

Please provide a link showing this.

I was going to try the Pro Mini method, this $2.50 board will send the 5 sensors on APM to my Taranis (from what I read), and without needing to duplicate those sensors on the FrSky side. TIA

[SamPik]

Edit:
For 433MHz 3DR radios, a nice high-gain antenna in the GCS works wonders regarding range! I use a 2m/70cm dualband antenna from Diamond with 7,6dBi gain on 70cm on my ground radio. Gives me about 2km range with the factory antenna on the air radio.

Do you use the 2m band for anything? I'd like to use Gitsly's OpenLRSng https://github.com/gitsly/openLRSng or flipflap's code (for 1W Tx and 1W Tx as Rx modules) http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2037442 for radio control and pixhawk telemetry but with a 144 MHz transceiver module instead of RFM22B/RFM23B. Any suggestions would be appreciated

[sgofferj]

No, I just had the antenna lying around.

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[SamPik]

kha says it shoudnt be too hard to adjust the openlrsng firmware http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost ... count=5010