BloodHound is a project that creates a drone / drone with an Autonomous Location Radio Signal Location using a Passive Radio Detection (RDF) technology. The project constructs around the open source ArduPilot automatic driving system and inexpensive software radio (SDR) technology, which is designed to produce a radio positioning system for economic benefits (based engineering students) to speed up the process of positioning emergency beacons, track wildlife beacons, Find the amateur rocket or find the source of the wrong radio signal.
All original hardware associated with this project is licensed according to Cern Ohl V1.2.
All original firmware / software related to this project is licensed under LGPLV3.
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problem
Emergency broadcast
The radio signal is used to track or locate people, animals and other important assets in many departments. They are also widely used in search and rescue (SAR), and there are people in most aircraft, marine vessels, and people who are adventurous into remote areas, where they are called emergency position indicating radio signal (EPIRBS) . Although some emergency beacons can send an accurate GPS location, most beacons can only be systematically locked to the square kilometers, requiring traditional SAR mesh search in this location, whether it is a manned aircraft.
Photo: Search Rockets on the Scottish mater using Marshall Falcon Tracking System
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Amateur rocket tracker
More personal is, radio signal ("tracker") is often used in amateur rockets. This makes the rocket to locate the rocket after landing because they can usually move a distance at the descending umbrella. The rocket tracker is also divided into two categories, and one is GPS, and the other is not. Although GPS is getting cheaper during the day, non-GPS trackers still have advantages in size / weight and transmission.
Rocket Tracker uses traditional ham radio "foxhunting" technology, AM / FM radio receiver and directional antenna. This is definitely a skill that improves with exercises. If your rocket falls in places where there is a hill or ditch, it may be very difficult.
The problem with all of these systems is that even rationally understand the location of the beacon, there is still a few hours and miles of walking to find it. If you use a manned aircraft to search, things can be done more efficiently, but it is obviously an expensive proposition, and may not always be available due to the search position or the current weather conditions.
The Bloodhound DRONE project is designed to develop an autonomous drone payload that helps search for a radio signal and provide a more accurate target location for SAR people or trackers.
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However, do you have this item with a GPS function?
In fact, no. Although the GPS beacon is great, they still have some problems, which can help relieve. According to the terrain around the beacon, the signal may not be able to move horizontally. If the lighthouse is lying on the ground (may be some aircraft debris), the situation is especially the case, the range of radio signals is quickly eaten by the ground. Having an air reception platform helps to solve this problem. The GPS beacon also depends on a beacon with a clear sky vision to obtain a GPS location. If it can't determine your own location, then you must return to the traditional radio positioning technology to find the transmitter.
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Solution proposed
The project will create an electronic / radio payload for mounting on a drone (fixed wing or multi-rotation) for this situation, the drone is integrated with the ArduPilot automatic driving platform, indicating the drone execution of wireless telecommunications Search in the air.
Initially, the project will focus on positioning the beacon used in the amateur rocket and then ultimately expand to the common EPIRB format. Testing using a rocket tracker brings a lot of advantages because the real EPIRB transmitter (understandable) has a very stringent rule to manage usage and test. Rocket trackers can be used anytime, anywhere, anywhere and global amateur launch pads have a wide range of environmental and terrain.
Of course, it is hoped that the SAR system will use this system to accelerate the process of finding an emergency positioning beacon without having to use expensive driving aircraft. It seems that this drone radio positioning technology is only limited to military drones, fast Google does not even show any price of commercial products. By maintaining project open sources, teams should be able to integrate payloads in a manner that best suits their specific needs, without having high cost.
Anyway, the initial block diagram of the proposed system is shown below:
Drone
Specific useful drones are quite casual - the main problem is to install the antenna in the correct position without impacting the propeller or hinders the takeoff / landing. In addition to control, the FRSKY R / C receiver is also used to provide telemetry feedback to the R / C controller, including all standard ArduCopter telemetry that is usually seen in the task planner in flight.
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Radiation positioning payload
The Raspberry Party used in the payload is automatically commanded by MAVLINK and the Pixhawk interface, automatically directs drone aircraft, acts as a "partner computer" in ArduPilot terminology. It is hoped to interact completely through software running on Mavlink and PI, which can utilize the drone telemetry radio as the control link of the radio positioning system, rather than adding a third radio transceiver to the drone!
The current radio receiver will be a BOG standard RTL-SDR USB encrypted dog. You can spend £ 5 £ 5. This is inserted with (at least) two different antenna systems, and allows the strong signal to attenuate the SDR before reaching the SDR by using a RF switch (controlled by PI control) and a step-by-step attenuator (similarly, by PI control). To a useful level.
The actual useful antenna system will vale to the development and testing of this project because the challenge is to find effective, small / light and can use SDR to implement automated systems. At least in the initial, the plan is to install a whole-directional antenna next to some orientation antenna, but who knows?
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progression stage
The project is divided into several different stages, some of which can be performed simultaneously:
A drone
Walk test potential radiographic positioning technology
Built a moon car (automatic ground vehicle)
Autonomous test radiation positioning technology on the ground detector
Move independent system to drone
Find something 3
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Source: HackADAY.IO
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