radio signal testing (development)

After confirming the command signals reaching from the smartphone to the arduino uno through Bluetooth connection, now it is viable to proceed signal detection at the quad copter which is transported from the arduino through the rc module. The command signal was received by the arduino uno in serial data through the serial port. The data is then processed and encoded into a PPM signal. The RC module then decodes this signal and changes it into a PWM signal which is recognised by the APM flight controller board. Therefore testing is done to confirm correct signal transportation through all these stages.

The overall interaction and the commands that go through the system can be simulated with mission planner software. Set up is done by connecting the APM flight controller board to the laptop, and then everything is activated as normal operation, only that the propellers are taken off. This way all the input signals that are detected by the APM flight controller board are transferred to the mission planner software on the laptop to be analysed. The default main purpose of the mission planner software is to tweak the settings on the APM flight controller board which will decide how the firmware will react to the input and produce output from it. However this automatically produces simulation on the input signals which we can use for testing.

The function on the mission planner that we used for this testing is the radio calibration setup. This function provides visual representation of the command input received at the APM board’s input port which is connected to the receiver of the rc module. The testing is done by observing default radio input and then see the changes which occur due to application of command on the smartphone application.