P13
Well-known member
I thought I'd do a quick post on this subject as it's a subject that comes up on forums regularly and clearly there is confusion on the topic.
Anyone thinking of investing in a multicopter will likely have read all the marketing information and be excited by the new opportunities aerial photography presents, whether for fun or something more serious. One of the main features that multicopters are sold on is failsafe, also known as return to home and return to launch.
The ability for a copter to hold steady, to failsafe and return and to do autonomous missions is currently dependent on GPS along with a compass module. The compass is usually in the same puck as the GPS with the exception of the Phantom that has the compass on the leg.
In the future other sensor inputs will be used to perform at very least a position hold; there are working sense and avoid systems that have been trialed, albeit neither DJI or 3DR have them included on current products, this situation will likely change in the next few years.
Right now, a problem with the compass or the GPS can result in a fly-away where the multicopter will speed off in an unexpected direction to possibly never be seen again. Also on some flight controllers frame vibration can cause similar behavior by confusing the IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), lastly a software crash in the flight controller can also see your gear flyaway.
In the event of a fly-away a change to an altitude hold or manual mode could return control but this is not always the case, so it helps, especially on an expensive multicopter to have a GPS tracker so you can recover your multicopter even though you'll likely have some damage to repair.
Most multicopter owners go for the cheap and cheerful TK102B tracker, this works using its own GPS module plus a GSM sim card, the idea being it tracks your multicopter and if you ever need an up to date GPS location, you call the simcard and the tracker will send you an SMS message with a Google maps link or co-ordinates.
The Fi-Li-Fi tracker does exactly the same albeit weighs less but costs more as a result. There is a new version of the Fi-Li-Fi currently in development which will have multicopter specific features, with for example remote parachute launch being suggested as one of them.
Finally there is the Flytrex which works with a number of multicopter brands but offers the most benefit to DJI owners as the new Droneshare website will offer many such features to APM/Pixhawk owners. The Flytrex is more than a tracker in that it keeps a telemetry log, this log is then uploaded and people can see your flight and you get various achievements, so it's almost like a game or competition the way people use their flight data, the important point being the latest version is offering real-time logging so you always know the last GPS position.
Links for further reading:
http://www.flytrex.com
http://www.quadinnovators.co.uk
http://www.droneshare.com
For the TK102B see eBay as most are sold from China.
Anyone thinking of investing in a multicopter will likely have read all the marketing information and be excited by the new opportunities aerial photography presents, whether for fun or something more serious. One of the main features that multicopters are sold on is failsafe, also known as return to home and return to launch.
The ability for a copter to hold steady, to failsafe and return and to do autonomous missions is currently dependent on GPS along with a compass module. The compass is usually in the same puck as the GPS with the exception of the Phantom that has the compass on the leg.
In the future other sensor inputs will be used to perform at very least a position hold; there are working sense and avoid systems that have been trialed, albeit neither DJI or 3DR have them included on current products, this situation will likely change in the next few years.
Right now, a problem with the compass or the GPS can result in a fly-away where the multicopter will speed off in an unexpected direction to possibly never be seen again. Also on some flight controllers frame vibration can cause similar behavior by confusing the IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), lastly a software crash in the flight controller can also see your gear flyaway.
In the event of a fly-away a change to an altitude hold or manual mode could return control but this is not always the case, so it helps, especially on an expensive multicopter to have a GPS tracker so you can recover your multicopter even though you'll likely have some damage to repair.
Most multicopter owners go for the cheap and cheerful TK102B tracker, this works using its own GPS module plus a GSM sim card, the idea being it tracks your multicopter and if you ever need an up to date GPS location, you call the simcard and the tracker will send you an SMS message with a Google maps link or co-ordinates.
The Fi-Li-Fi tracker does exactly the same albeit weighs less but costs more as a result. There is a new version of the Fi-Li-Fi currently in development which will have multicopter specific features, with for example remote parachute launch being suggested as one of them.
Finally there is the Flytrex which works with a number of multicopter brands but offers the most benefit to DJI owners as the new Droneshare website will offer many such features to APM/Pixhawk owners. The Flytrex is more than a tracker in that it keeps a telemetry log, this log is then uploaded and people can see your flight and you get various achievements, so it's almost like a game or competition the way people use their flight data, the important point being the latest version is offering real-time logging so you always know the last GPS position.
Links for further reading:
http://www.flytrex.com
http://www.quadinnovators.co.uk
http://www.droneshare.com
For the TK102B see eBay as most are sold from China.
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