Offboard control with DISCO+Ardupilot with wireless communication

[dhhan]

Hello!

I have a laptop on the ground and aim to perform offboard control by sending and receiving MAVLink messages to CHUCK, the autopilot controller of the Parrot Disco.

I've successfully installed ArduPlane on CHUCK and verified its connection with Mission Planner on my laptop.

However, I'm unsure how to establish wireless communication between my laptop and CHUCK using WiFi or LTE for offboard control.

Could anyone provide insights on how to implement offboard control with ArduPilot and Parrot Disco through wireless connections like WiFi or LTE?

Apologies for any confusion, and thank you in advance.

 

[flyingblind]

The Disco probably supports WDS like the Bebop 2 - you can connect most any router to it to use as a range extender. Except powering a router outdoors can be a little difficult unless you want to lug around a 12v battery. You can use a PD or QC capable USB trigger module (9v, 12v, 15v) with 5v USB power bricks to power most any low power device.

With the right USB network adapter (Alfa ACHM, mt7610u chipset) it's possible to lower the transmit power via a registry hack in Windows, then you can connect an amp (4watt/8watt). You must be able to lower the transmit power of the adapter or it doesn't work. Without the amp you're restricted to ~1.2watts or below (most network adapters are well below that). The amp has a removable antenna so you can put larger ones on. One drawback is that the Alfa adapter does not have adjustable power levels in linux.

You could use a USB powered wifi range extender although quality ones can be difficult to find, most of them don't have removable antennas, and they're not as powerful as a boosted Alfa adapter. That being said, they're inexpensive and easy to setup.

Another option is to buy a travel router such as the GL.iNet GL-AR300M16-Ext with removable external antennas and boost it with two amplifiers. It runs OpenWrt and can be configured as a wifi range extender via an easy to use admin console if you don't want to mess around with OpenWrt.

You could build a router with a Raspberry Pi and OpenWrt that connects to the drone and extends its network.

You could go the route of LTE with the uavpal softmod.