RSSI

Purpose

• determine signal strength from different sources / GPIO pins

Considerations

• Need to keep functions generic for GPIOs

• What is providing the RSSI signal? What is the form of the data (Need to ask Aidan Bowers)

• Related hardware: An RC Link

  • RFD900.

    • https://files.rfdesign.com.au/Files/documents/Software manual.pdf

    • Need to see how RFD900 sends RSSI signals and how it interfaces with the actual flight controller. Then can determine what signal needs to be "decoded"

• Will the PPM driver be what calls the RSSI module?

  • (2021 year was PWM, this year 2022 will need to look into RFD900)

• We are no longer using singleton, need to get rid of that

• Functions:

  • Normalized and unnormalized function returning signal strength

  • Threshold function returning a bool representing ‘good signal' and bad signal, or a function returning one out of a scale of judgements, e.g. ‘no signal', ‘bad signal’, ’ok signal' , ‘good signal', 'strong signal’ represented as an integer

• For pull request:

  • Make LOS/RSSI branch (after weekend)

Research

• RSSI signal can come as analog or PWM

Ardupilot implementation reference

• RSSI.cpp calls on AP_HAL_SITL/AnalopIn.cpp class for its ‘channel’ function

  • https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/blob/master/libraries/AP_RSSI/AP_RSSI.cpp

  • https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/blob/master/libraries/AP_HAL_SITL/AnalogIn.h

• AnalogIn.cpp has ‘channel’ function which returns a pointer to an AnalogSource object by calling the ADCSource object constructor. Pointer is stored in rssi_analog_source variable

  • (ADCSource inherits from AnalogSource, is declared in AP_HAL_SITL/AnalogIn)

  • https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/blob/master/libraries/AP_HAL_SITL/AnalogIn.cpp

  • AnalogSource is an abstract class, defined in a different AnalogIn file, AP_HAL/AnalogIn

    • https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/blob/master/libraries/AP_HAL/AnalogIn.h

  • AnalogSource constructor requires inputting a pointer to a SITL_State object

    • SITL_State class files:

      • https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/blob/master/libraries/AP_HAL_SITL/SITL_State.h

      • https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/blob/master/libraries/AP_HAL_SITL/SITL_State.cpp

• In RSSI.cpp, AnalogIn object is actually a member variable of AP_HAL::HAL.h class

  • A hal.h object called hal is accessed using ‘extern’ keyword

• In RSSI.cpp read_pin_rssi function

  • ADCSource voltage_average() function is called on rssi_analog_source variable

  • voltage_average() returns a manipulated output of ADCSource read_average() function. read_average() returns return of ADCSource read_latest() function.

    • read_latest(), depending on the pin, returns the appropriate pin value from the _sitlState member variable of ADCSource, which holds a pointer to a sitlState object