Airborne Innovations Picoradio, Manual

Page 1: ... 16 Initial version 02 24 17 Added serial configuration 07 17 17 Updated safety precautions radio options serial port info added mechanical drawing long range comms ethernet switch info 08 11 17 Added technical note on J5 serial 08 08 18 Updated serial port pinout diagram Airborne Innovations LLC ...

Page 2: ...ersity 9 3 4 3 Long Range operation 10 3 5 Serial Port Configuration 10 3 5 1 Hardware serial port connection between two units TCP 10 3 5 2 Hardware serial port connection between two units UDP Point to Point 10 3 5 3 Logical TCP connection to one remote serial port easiest method to test with Pixhawk bidirectional telemetry 11 3 5 4 Logical Point to Point UDP connection to one remote serial port...

Page 3: ...r devices It is intended to be a complete full featured but minimum size replacement for the Microhard radio motherboard Bandwidth of up to 25 Mbps is possible Advanced features such as mesh networking will be available in the near future AES128 256 encryption available subject to control under the Export Administration Regulations EAR 2 1 Interfaces Interfaces on the board include Wide range powe...

Page 4: ...ble in the near future 2 4 Connectors Figure 3 Picoradio Connectors 2 4 1 J1 Power Input Power input uses a wide input range efficient buck boost converter Typical efficiency 94 Input voltage range is 5 58V note for full RF power radio operation the minimum voltage may be limited to about 7 8V Short pins 1 2 and 3 4 together for full current capacity Mating connector is a JST PA series latching co...

Page 5: ...fficient The connector may be limited to approximately 2A You can bypass the connector and solder directly to the board for higher current or test accordingly In some cases and for high volume customers we may be able to factory adjust the output voltage within the range of 8 20 volts or even leave off this feature for a cost reduced version if you can provide 8 20V regulated input Mating connecto...

Page 6: ...rent low enough for the connector and ethernet cable typically 48V Do not connect unless using this feature note they will also mirror the input voltage if powered from the main input power connector 2 4 4 J5 Serial connector This serial port can be configured as a transparent serial connection to a serial device either with RS232 voltage levels or 3 3V TTL voltage levels with 5V tolerant inputs N...

Page 7: ...hardware implementation a loopback test between TX and RX of the same serial port will need a pull up resistor to function properly A 1K pull up to 3 3V does allow this test to pass Connecting the two pins directly without this may cause somewhat increased current draw A serial loop between J5 and J6 works fine without a pull up as does interfacing to an FTDI interface or our own SBUS to serial an...

Page 8: ...r and password are both admin Microhard s firmware insists on changing the password with a minimum of 5 characters so we change it to 99999 To communicate with the radio it is easiest to set your PC to a fixed IP address such as 192 168 168 100 You can then access Microhard s web page which allows changing radio settings To get two radios to communicate with our default configuration we make these...

Page 9: ...lso if you are using accessory power depending on the input voltage and power demands the power modules on the opposite side from the RF module can also generate significant heat they are very efficient but have high load capacity As a result we recommend blowing air over both the radio module side first priority as well as the opposite power module side Failure to cool the radios properly can res...

Page 10: ...1 Hardware serial port connection between two units TCP This is an easy to configure hardware connection which connects serial ports on two different radio modules An advantage is that data will never arrive out of order due to the TCP connection state It has some potential disadvantages in terms of connection and reconnection since it does have a connection state connected disconnected Below is a...

Page 11: ...dware serial port connection between two units TCP above Note that the base station serial configuration should remain unconfigured i e should not connect as a TCP client to the airborne port To connect to the serial stream you make a direct TCP connection to the airborne radio on the TCP server port Recent versions of firmware also have a TCP timeout it may be necessary to increase this value som...

Page 12: ...derstand hardware serial connections you can use a virtual com port driver which would typically run on Windows or Linux There are freeware and commercial drivers available This makes the logical connection and creates a virtual serial port on the PC which can be connected to exactly like a hardware serial port on the PC 3 6 RF Amplifier Support The Picoradio may be used with a number of different...

Page 13: ...Airborne Innovations Picoradio Manual 3 8 Mechanical Drawing Page 13 Figure 4 Picoradio mechanical drawing ...

Page 14: ...Airborne Innovations Picoradio Manual 3 9 Picoradio Cable Antenna Kit 3 9 1 Picoradio_Picoraptor Ext Ethernet Cable Page 14 ...

Page 15: ...Airborne Innovations Picoradio Manual 3 9 2 Picoradio Input Power Cable one end cut Page 15 ...

Page 16: ...Airborne Innovations Picoradio Manual 3 9 3 Picoradio Ext Aux Power Cable one end cut Page 16 ...

Page 17: ...Airborne Innovations Picoradio Manual PicoRadio Ext Serial Cable one end cut Page 17 ...

Page 18: ...le 3 9 4 Antenna Cable U FL to RP SMA Female No Drawing Available 3 9 5 2 4 GHz Dipole wave Antenna Connector RP SMA Male No Drawing Available Antenna provided is for short range and bench testing 3 9 6 DC Power Female Jack to Terminal Block Adapter No Drawing Available Page 18 ...