daveake/flextrak

Down link extra telemetry

Closed this issue · 22 comments

jonathanmichel commented

According to the FlexTrak manual, there is a way to downlink extra telemetry through the flexavr. However, I'm not sure how it is supposed to be done. The extra_telemetry() function seems to be unused and I was not able to locate how it is handled in the flexavr code.

In the manual, it is indacated that "Changing fieldlist is an advanced subject that will be covered in a separate document". Any additionnal information on that ?

Thanks !

daveake commented
  • 👍1
jonathanmichel commented

Great, thank you for your fast reponse !

jonathanmichel commented

Btw I tried to reprogram the flexavr in order to add features. I was able to build and send the compiled .hex.ino through serial. However, I now have an issue with the serial communication. If I check serial reception with picocom, it seems to have an encodage (?) issue with the line. Any idea ? I took the last version of the code on the flexavr GitHub.


format

daveake commented
jonathanmichel commented
daveake commented
jonathanmichel commented
daveake commented
daveake commented
jonathanmichel commented

Good call concerning the processor speed. In fact, I'm using VSCode to verify, send and program the AVR and I found that it uses the default configuration for the 328p (16MHz). Before noticing, I was indeed able to figure out that 19200 works for the serial line:

Custom firmware printing the AVR version each second

19200o

But sometimes it doesn't. This intermittent behaviour is quite strange:
19200n

I'll check in VSCode how to change the processor speed and try to understand why my issue is not constant.

Thank you for your help!

daveake commented
jonathanmichel commented

The avr board? It reboots after reprogramming so it should be ok. Not sure what you mean.

In any case, I made a custom card in the Arduino board.txt file copied from the Nano one but with a CPU frequency @8MHz. Now it works, no more intermittent issues. It is strange, I never changed the serial speed in the avr code so even with the CPU freq issue it should be constantly working at 19200… Anyway I'll see in the future.

Keep me posted concerning the custom fields, thanks!

daveake commented
  • ❤️1
001Mario commented

Surprisingly, I came across the same issue today - also wanting to add extra telemetry for a custom downlink message. What a coincidence that someone asked this just yesterday! :)

I tried to implement this using the callback set_sentence_callback from the Tracker-class, e.g.

# tracker.py
def extra_telemetry:
    return "my,extra,telemetry"

# ... some more code here ...

mytracker.set_sentence_callback(extra_telemetry)

but then I realized that the SentenceCallback-function is actually never called (or have I overlook something?)
Anyway, thanks a lot & I'm looking forward to the update!

daveake commented
  • 👍1
001Mario commented

Great, thank you very much indeed!

jonathanmichel commented

Thank you for the V1.20 update !

I saw that you also uncommented part of the code concerning uplink. Any news on that side ?

I currently have the LoRaGo OTG module as a receiver. According to the Lora Serial Protocol I should be able to transmit text by sending ~T<text> over the serial line. I made a few tests but received ? as a response. (Same when I send D and V btw, which is strange, other commands work correctly). I trie to reprogram the LoRaGo module with the LoRaArduinoSerial code, but was unable to do it, probably due to programming restriction. I could be interrested in using it for uplink too!

daveake commented
jonathanmichel commented

Any chance I could do it on my side ?
I opened it and identified the ATmega32U4 with a 6-pins connector, I suppose I can't reprogram it over USB and should use this one. Is that right ? But I would need additional information for the Arduino IDE configuration. Thanks !

daveake commented
daveake commented
jonathanmichel commented

Ok noted, i keep you posted. And I close the issue sorry !