Diy Antenna Tracker by zs6buj

Just another antenna tracker which is easy to build. You can use every 180/360 servo for pan/tilt.
As target board you can use stm32 “bluepill”, even a esp32 dev board with wifi to connect wirelessly to groundstation (tried once, but compiling failed with actual firmware). Several protocol types are supported, Mavlink as well.

Link to github (firmware) :
GitHub - zs6buj/AntTracker: Antenna Tracker for tracking a moving model aircraft or drone with a small high-gain UHF or SHF antenna


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Receiving the telemetry wirelessly with ESP32 is something that’s been brought up a few times in the past, I think it’s a good idea.

Yes, got it working with esp32dev board now, too,after getting some help from @ABLomas. Turned out my Arduino libraries were just too old, after updating it worked.
Connecting to groundstation via WiFi works, sometimes it does not establish a connection at once, but some restarts later it did!


Good to know. Thank you !

I have esp32 and blupill order coming after I failed with the esp8266.
Mechanics are printing right now… Hope I get it up and running till the end of the week.

I swapped out the bluepill and built the esp32dev board into my antenna tracker. Flawless heart transplant :grin:.Took maybe 5 minutes.
Definitely a plus to have one cable less in the field and groundpi Hotspot was already in use.


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Good work!!
Having no compass in the antenna tracker, is this a sort of problem because you always need fix the orientation of the antenna tracker everytime you want fly.
What do you think about this? What is your experience?

Not a big problem, you have to make sure, your Tracker is pointing in a direct line to your Uav. The tracker relies on the heading of your uav at start, so tracker and uav must have the same heading. You can also add a compass to the tracker, will try that next

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Thanks for the feedback

Marcel, do you have a eu link for your dev board, display?
Would like to give it a try…

It’s a common Esp32 development board you can get everywhere, e.g. like this:

https://www.ebay.de/itm/253059783728

From Ali you can have them for about 3 €, in Europe about 7-8 €

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Oook, ordered that ebay card😊
For flashing it, just use the latest fw from github?
Thanks.

Wemos ESP32 Compiled successfully

I made a u360gts AAT and it works well, but I want to make a simpler AAT, I just saw your post.
How does your tracker communicate with OPEN.HD groundpi, using rx tx signal or WIFI?
How to use if in WIFI.

@knputyi:
You can download latest Fw from github and edit it to your needs in Arduino IDE before compiling. Make sure you have installed Esp32 support in Arduino IDE in board manager.

@mysharp:you can use rx/TX or wifi, you have to chose the telemetry source before compiling. If you use wifi, you only need to enter groundstation Hotspot’s SSID(Open.HD) and pw(wifiopenhd), this has to be done in “STA mode”, If connection to Hotspot fails antenna tracker sets up a own Access Point, which cannot be used for OpenHD so far. Wi-Fi connection works fine, but sometimes it needs multiple tries (restarts) to establish a connection.
P. S. : Nice ESP module with on board Oled!

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Is there a wiring diagram for this board?

Not directly, you can find the assigned pins for the supported boards in the Config.h
For esp32 the numbers are referring to the board printed “d numbers” (gpio)
https://www.google.com/search?q=pinout+esp32+wroom&oq=pin&aqs=chrome.2.69i60j69i57j35i39j69i65j5.1786j0j4&client=ms-android-huawei-rev1&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=KxCwtX09LkPJ2M

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OK,thank you. I should still use tx/rx pins.

Hi.
Could someone ad support for lcd display (Serial 2004 20x4) to antrack ?
If it is / can be supported, instead the oled. Just asking, because I’m 100% noob at programming …

like one of this :
https://www.sunfounder.com/iic-i2c-twi-serial-2004-20x4-lcd-module-shield-for-arduino-uno-mega2560.html

and LCD has much bigger characters, hard to put on reading glasses every time, just to watch the display’s messages…