steveme1973/open360tracker

Open source antenna tracker for FPV featuring a slipring for continuous 360 degree rotation.

Introduction

This project is about an antenna tracker that is easy to build. It features a slipring that offers full 360° continuous rotation and support for lots of different telemetry protocols and flight controllers like FrSky, HoTT, Mavlink, MultiWii, Naza, ArduPilot, Arducopter.

More Information: http://fpv-community.de/showthread.php?49179-open360tracker-Der-Community-Antennentracker-Made-in-Germany

Details

The slipring offers free 360° continuous rotation without the hassle of twisted cables. For this we use a robot servo that has no fixed endpoint. To measure the direction the antenna tracker points it antenna to we use a compass. This has many different advantages like no need for pointing the tracker to north or calibrate it somehow to the servo travel of the used servos.

The initial version will make use of the Frsky Protocol as there are so many different easy to build arduino projects that support all kinds of flight controls.

Here you can find a list of protocols that are supported: Protocols

Current state of the project

FRSKY_X, FRSKY_D and MAVLINK seem to work:

Short Test in the garden:

First in flight video:

Short Video of tracker working on the ground:

For furter information, please have a look at our Wiki Howto's:

Connections

Buttons

Tracker GPS