Originally Posted by gerhardf

Brett and Fabian were reporting that they used successfully this WiFi stick..

Yes, this is te Wifi USB dongle I used from the beginning and that I recommended to Brett. It boosts the signal, but the consumption is a bit higher.

Hey Pierre!

This is very similar to the one we use that I helped design the process for that Simon Watts developed for competition, and we have used it in competition successfully many times.

It also is able to use the handheld wireless buttons as well as multiple PiCam units. It does not use WiFi for the connection to the bases though. It uses Zigbee modules for 2.4GHz connections that have very low latency. It has Wifi enabled to talk to F3XVault as well to download the event (with a draw if wanted), and then to upload the individual flights that include the detail lap times and wind data for some nice looking graphs on the F3XVault website.

In ours, we actually announce the different phases of the flight, which I think is really good to know where you are, and has proven to make it easier to know when a mistake has been made and a reflight is needed. ( Like if someone forgot to press the button when launched, or pressed it twice and started them when they were going off course, which happened to me at this last worlds at Vitt)

For instance, when the button is first pushed, the system announces "Launch Window Started" and it announces the time remaining to launch (25, 20, 15, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1).

Then once you press the button again, it says "Launched" and starts the next 30 second countdown announcing those same countdown increments.

When you go out of the course then it says "Out of Course", and when you come back on it says "Started"

And then it proceeds to say "1 lap", "2 laps"..."Last lap" before the finish.

I'm just saying that since you are developing this with Joel, that this might be a really good feature. It makes it so that you don't have to have someone telling you how much time you have left to get on course, and it is more definitive of where you are in the flight instead of just beeps and a double beep when you are on the last lap.

We have also developed a formula for forecasting the pilots time, and show it on an LED board that everyone can see, which has also proven to be a nice feature for the other pilots watching.

I uploaded an example of a flight using it that has the audio...

Simon Watts CD unit (1 min 35 sec)

It doesn't have all the bases or cams turned on, but its exactly what would happen when we would have it all hooked up.

Tim

Hi Tim,

All these is already in except the flying time forecast. And it is available in french and english, both screen and voices.

Pierre

Pierre!

Awesome! Great minds think alike...

Tim

Originally Posted by prondel

Hi Gerhard,

We are using standard PiCamTrackers, nothing special....
BR,
Pierre

Hello Pierre,
thanks for the explanation.
I mainly asked about cameras and settings because you mentioned a 100% detection rate which surprised me a little bit.
I will give this configuration a try.

best regards
Gerhard

Hello Gerhard,

If you have read my post, the goal of using 2 PiCamTrackers was to improve detection by setting a different angle between the PiCamTrackers so the reflection of the light on the UV filter is different and at the end, they look at the same plan but differently.

The first PicamTRacker which sees first the glider is sending the UDP frame to the center timing system which just ignore the second PiCamTracker UDP frame. In theory, you can even put 3, 4 or more PicamTracker as the timing system is developed to handle it. Same behavior, first see first beep, other are ignored.

For your info, it was my 2 PicamTrackers on this base B and I haven't updated them for almost 1 year, at that time the UDP sending was added manually in the python script by Joel on top of the release. Settings are also default ones.

Hope this helps.

Pierre

Im having issues setting up the access point on my new piCam. Ive followed the instructions and i cannot connect. My phone sees the AP and it attempts to connect but fails. I try from my laptop and it fails also.

Im using:
- a pi 3B+
- imaged the SD card with 0.6.3 (2019-11-28-sdcard-v0.6.3.img.zip) using imager
- It all boots and runs perfectly fine. detects crossings, raises signal etc. no problems there.
- Wifi adapter works fine, can download stuff over my house wifi no issues.
- apt-get update
- apt-get full-upgrade
- I started out with the AP disabled in the config.json
- changed the Wifi region to NZ
- set locale, keyboard etc to correct values and rebooted.
- enabled the access point in config.json
- rebooted
- Using the default SSID "PICAM" and password "Olav0101" i cannot connect.

I note that when it boots with the access point enabled in the config.json, the WIFI country seems to be unset again. Ive also tried to hard-code the country code in the start-accesspoint.sh bash script to 'NZ' - that makes no difference.

Im not a linux guy, but i am reasonable technical. Im not sure what to try next.

Have i forgotten something? Can you suggest something to try? Are there some logs somewhere i can check?

thanks, Pete

ok so had another look and noticed that dhcpcd was not installed. so i installed that with apt. rebooted and i still cant connect with my pixel android 10 phone. I can see the network but attempts to connect fail. Oddly, i can now connect with my windows 10 laptop - although the connection takes quite a while and it moans theres no internet (obviously). Once connected im assigned 192.168.16.68 by the pi DHCP. I can browse the web app at 192.168.16.1 ok.

Still cannot connect from my phone.

The bases need to connect to your phones wifi network, not the other way around.

Start the app on your phone, then boot up Base A, wait for it to connect to your network and confirm, then boot up Base B and so on.

I used a pocket router as the hub which each device connected to.

Originally Posted by taurineman

ok so had another look and noticed that dhcpcd was not installed. so i installed that with apt. rebooted and i still cant connect with my pixel android 10 phone. I can see the network but attempts to connect fail. Oddly, i can now connect with my windows 10 laptop - although the connection takes quite a while and it moans theres no internet (obviously). Once connected im assigned 192.168.16.68 by the pi DHCP. I can browse the web app at 192.168.16.1 ok.

Still cannot connect from my phone.

Hi Pete,

I checked with iPhone and with my Xiaomi (Android) both worked flawlesly. (DE)

- is there the correct country code in /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf?
- I am not sure if channel 7 is valid in NZ


Best regards

Barney

Originally Posted by Andy852

The bases need to connect to your phones wifi network, not the other way around.

Start the app on your phone, then boot up Base A, wait for it to connect to your network and confirm, then boot up Base B and so on.

I used a pocket router as the hub which each device connected to.

Hi Andy,

that is one way to generate a connection between your phone and the bases. It works fine for a lot of people.
The base is also able to act as wifi access point. In this case the base has always the same IP which is an advantage to my mind. (Disadvantage is that you have to change wifi network if you want to change base)

Cheers

Barney

Heres the content of the wpa_supplicant file:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cat /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=NZ

network={
ssid="BAROMETER"
psk=3de154cba2d5c760c4c3644454b8bbb31af2983f4d1608 d08bb2fd838f4e29a7
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
disabled=1
}

network={
ssid="MrAccessPoint"
psk="*********"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}
pi@raspberrypi:~ $
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

note MrAccessPoint is my phone's hotspot - which is disabled when i try connect phone to the pi's access point.

my homes 2.4g wifi uses channel 7 and both my phone and laptop can connect no issues.

ive tried a few more things. Nothing is really working. Here are some observations:
- I can still "connect to the wifi" from my PC, however i cannot access the web app at 192.168.16.1 I have an DHCP assigned address on the correct subnet. Yesterday i did have some connectivity to it (albeit very patchy, and sometimes not at all).
- i note the information about the PICAM network says its now 5G and "PICAM 2" on my PC.
- The piCam web app *is* running - i can access it from the piCam device using chromium on http://192.168.16.1 no problems
- i attempted to connect using my ipad. It said the WPA2 password was wrong. So i changed the password on the piCam to be sure there wasnt some unicode or non alphanumeric character in the default password. Once i changed it and rebooted my ipad can connect (i takes easily 30-50 seconds to fully connect - very long), but with the same symptoms as my PC (get assigned valid address by DHCP ok). Cannot access http://192.168.16.1 in chrome.
- Still cannot connect at all from my android phone at all. Seems my android phone gives up on the network much quicker than the PC or ipad.
- tried to get my android to use a static IP address 192.168.16.100 and 255.255.255.0 - but still the same. Tried the same with ipad and PC, no change.

Im out of ideas...

Originally Posted by taurineman

ive tried a few more things. Nothing is really working.
Im out of ideas...

Im sorry Pete, that's weird!

can you give me the output of the following 3 commands pls?
(looks a bit complicated because I just want the last 50 lines ;-)

1.) dmesg | tail -50
2.) tail -50 /var/log/messages
3.) ip a s


... then we will see a bit more ...

Do your bases have fixed IP addresses?

I remember having use fixed IP addresses to get it to work for my setup.

Example:
Base A: 192.168.1.118 
Base B: 192.168.1.119