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The RF Protocol.

A project log for Collective Flight for Aerial Robotics

Development of a machine vision payload to allow aerial robots robust collision avoidance and advantageous collective flight formations.

mr-kar0sh1Mr kAr0sh1 04/09/2015 at 20:400 Comments

Lots of coffee and staring at a big long list of hexadecimal numbers later, I think I am gradually beginning to recognise a pattern that will lead me to the communication protocol of the drone I'm trying to link to.

Below is an annotated print-off of the sequence that the TX rattles off when it's paired to a drone. Note the repeating blue boxes? They're the ID packets of the transmitter, presumably to tell the drone that it's still there or to authenticate. Then things get a little odd - the green, yellow and pink headings indicate different starting values for the 'data packets' that are then sent through, packets that contain info like throttle, yaw, pitch etc values. Can you see a pattern in them? I sure as hell can't!

And then the oddest, the pink box indicates a unique packet sent every fourteenth cycle of data. I have no idea what this is for, but if my comms lecturer taught me anything it's that there's error checking everywhere, so maybe that's it's purpose?

Time for a quick break, then to press on.

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