OK, here is what the "RSSI" or signal strength screen looks like when everything is working the way it is supposed to. I hit "connect" on this screen, and soon the packets come in and are compared in what looks like relative S/N ratio.
If I can get this to install on the XP laptop this afternoon, this might be very useful for analyzing in the field when I travel away from the transmitter with the laptop in hand (or in vehicle).
Something is amiss on your system for sure. I did find that when using the FTDI cable, the GPS was correct on RX/TX cable. It seemed to be the air transmitter that had the TX/RX reversed. I hooked my GPS module up to my oscilloscope, and verified this. I got the pulses from the yellow (orange?) wire on the GPS while it was in operation status (red solid and blue blinking).
View attachment 326774
Yeah, something is amiss. I'm using the v2 radios and totally screwed up. I reversed the TX/RX back and forth and actually got the solid red lock and flashing blue LED on the GPS both times. I totally recommend that utility you found
for 3DR programming because it can tell you the signal quality between the Local and Remote station. I didn't see that with Mission Planner.
When I get to working with the v1 radio, I'm going to configure the radios first. I created a battery harness I can plug into the remote "just" to provide regulated 5V power with no GP attached. Once I get them communicating,
I'm going to wire the GPS exactly like you show in message 184 above. I'll just connect the red + and black - (no brainer there of course) and do the orange to green signal wire and leave the other wire disconnected.
I might have scrambled the GPS chipset when I left is attached while doing some programming.
So, the orange wire is the "received GPS signal going OUT the wire". That is going into the "transmit line" for the 3DR radio. Hmmmmmmmm, maybe I shouldn't have connected the other two wires.
This is why the lines should be labelled transmit "out" and receive "in". Some GPS boards are marked that way.
The only programming I did with my v1 3DR radio was adding the B/T module to the receiver and configuring the Rf link to the transmitter/remote without a GPS attached to it. It should be fine.
Oh, one
IMPORTANT thing I did find out with the v2 radios. Note this well people. When using the micro USB for Data and power, no problem. I tried my battery harness to apply 5V through that JST-SH (or whatever) socket (my v2 radios are 4 pinned sockets) and the only thing that happened was the red LED lit and not the green one. Seems like power can
ONLY be input from the micro USB socket and regulated 5V comes out of the the 4 pinned JST-SH socket which is where the data comes in
to be transmitted. Hopefully, the two GPS's will arrive soon and I can jump on getting that set up and running like ecarson has. Me suspects, the B/T module on the receive end will allow data to be piped via B/T to different tracking apps.
Nice not to have an easily jostled USB cable to dislodge. Kurt
P.S. I've just thought I've been connecting all four wires coming off the GPS chipset to the 3DR radio. Stupidhead here is going to "cut" the blue wire which is used to "program" the GPS chipset. In reality for a tracker, only the received signal "out" from the
GPS which ecarson has determined to be the orange wire and has valid NMEA strings to prove it, along with the + and - wires need to be attached to the 3DR radio technically to telemeter the strings. The blue wire serves on purpose for us and
I have a hunch might be messing things up here for me. I'm going to try again later. There's still a chance I messed up the GPS chipset by trying to program the radios with it attached. Stay tuned.