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2 nodes who have compatible parameters and are within range should sync automatically, a solid green LED indicates success. This should be good enough for testing for now.
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A directional antenna would be combined with 2 servos, controlling its pan(yaw) and tilt(pitch). (just yaw)
The antenna would have a GPS chip on board in a fixed location relative to the antenna. The distance and offset would be measured and inputted on the ground staitonstation, and sent to the Nucleo.
During operation, the ground station would stream the GPS position of the drone to the tracking antenna system. From there, simple trigonometry can be applied to find the correct pan and tilt.Note for self: earth is round
Questions to be answered/Discussion needed
The tracking system is currently open-loop, as there is currently no way of knowing how much and which direction the antenna is off by.
Plans of adding a camera to the tracking antenna have been proposed for monitoring its performance visually in ground station. Would it be possible for the ground station to also perform some simple CV on it and track and drone visually, then send this information back to the Nucleo?
GPS tracking can be used as a fallback in this case.is probably fine since we have a 30~60-degree effective angle.
A camera might be added for debugging/verifying the tracking accuracy, but NOT for tracking (as it will probably be very bulky)
How effective is tracking antenna signal wise when there is no light of sight?
How to avoid gimble lock when the tilt angle of the antenna approaches 90. Would this even be of concern (will drone fly over the ground station, or will it stay in a fixed direction) and would it be worth the extra mechanical design considerations.
References
A Portable UAV Tracking System for Communications and Video Transmission (researchgate.net)
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