Hey fellow pilots!
So for my college senior design project, my team has been assigned to build a UAV for tracking painted dogs in Zimbabwe. The purpose is to increase the range of the tracking antenna by redesigning the antenna and collar, which will be done by a team of electrical, computer science and computer engineering students, and by mounting it on an aerial platform.
My task along with my team is to build a platform with the ability to land/take off in a 20 meter area, to fly a minimum of 15-20 kilometers (20-30 minutes) and to be transported easily from the United States to Zimbabwe (Africa). Those are the very basic of requirements aside from making sure assembly and dis-assembly is easy, since it'll be biologists who'll be operating this.
Now I have built and flown RC planes for almost 3 years now, so building one isn't really an issue for my team. I have almost zero experience with autonomous flight i.e. long range systems and autopilot/GPS unit.
I am aware of the ardupilot and pixhawk, but I wanted your input and advice on the selection.
Also recommendations for long range systems would be awesome! Thoughts on Dragon Link TX+RX?
Just some additional information that we have as of now is that the collar/tracking antenna operate on the 400MHz and 1GHz bandwidth, so those frequencies cannot be used.
I look forward to everyone's input and I'll try and keep updating this thread as things move along
Additional Links and Info:
Once my team gets a general idea of the AUW of the UAV + tracking antenna, any advice on motor, battery and ESC combos will also be highly appreciated.
Painted Dogs Research Trust
http://www.spanglefish.com/painteddogresearch//
So for my college senior design project, my team has been assigned to build a UAV for tracking painted dogs in Zimbabwe. The purpose is to increase the range of the tracking antenna by redesigning the antenna and collar, which will be done by a team of electrical, computer science and computer engineering students, and by mounting it on an aerial platform.
My task along with my team is to build a platform with the ability to land/take off in a 20 meter area, to fly a minimum of 15-20 kilometers (20-30 minutes) and to be transported easily from the United States to Zimbabwe (Africa). Those are the very basic of requirements aside from making sure assembly and dis-assembly is easy, since it'll be biologists who'll be operating this.
Now I have built and flown RC planes for almost 3 years now, so building one isn't really an issue for my team. I have almost zero experience with autonomous flight i.e. long range systems and autopilot/GPS unit.
I am aware of the ardupilot and pixhawk, but I wanted your input and advice on the selection.
Also recommendations for long range systems would be awesome! Thoughts on Dragon Link TX+RX?
Just some additional information that we have as of now is that the collar/tracking antenna operate on the 400MHz and 1GHz bandwidth, so those frequencies cannot be used.
I look forward to everyone's input and I'll try and keep updating this thread as things move along
Additional Links and Info:
Once my team gets a general idea of the AUW of the UAV + tracking antenna, any advice on motor, battery and ESC combos will also be highly appreciated.
Painted Dogs Research Trust
http://www.spanglefish.com/painteddogresearch//

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