Blog #7 - Dylan Haley - Wireless Ardupilot and Frame update 


After researching into making the pixhawk connection to the QGroundControl application on the laptop wireless we decided the best way would be to connect the companion computer directly to the router using the LAN cable and then connecting the laptop to the routers WiFi. Although it wasn't as simple as it sounded. Due to the companion computer being configured to have a specific static IP address, and searching for a specific IP address for the laptop we had to reconfigure our router. 

The router was changed to assign different IP addresses in order for the companion computer and laptop to communicate with each other. Once the connection was established we executed a small test. First we connected outputs 1 and 2 on the pixhawk to an oscilloscope in order to check each one worked as expected. This is shown in the video below.




After connecting the motors to the pixhawk we tested the motors using the motor test in QGroundControl. However we came to the conclusion that the ArduSub software we used along with the frame we had selected was not the best fit for our boat. The frames did not match our own motor setup which caused some issues. To combat this we researched and found another project which uses ArduRover for their boat. The project can be found at https://squirm.tech/pixhawk-firmware-rover-setup/ . We decided to use this along with the rover frame which implements skid steering.

After setting up this new frame we setup a test using a base with 2 motors and 2 wheels. The test was a success in regards to the test vehicle following a pre determined path. However, there are still some issues with regards to plotting the path in QGroundControl.

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