Ever since setting this up, I cannot figure out how to give my vehicle access to the internet. I used to be able to connect to my phone hotspot through blueOS and access the internet, but this doesn’t work anymore
I can connect directly to WiFi at my home, but my main area to work in this robot has university regulated WiFi so I cannot connect directly to it
Any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated
The Blue Boat electronics is killing the Rpi 4 wifi. I have been diagnosing the Blue Boat now since November 2023. The electronics implimentation creates the most noisy (EMI and RF) interference I have ever seen in a drone build. I will be posting my findings overy the next few days. We gutted the entire elctronics bay and built our own over two days that works perfectly to 2km on wifi and unlimited on 4G (where 4G exists) with ZeroTier - no BlueOS though.
People at Blue Robotics are greate but tired of getting sorry you are having GPS problems when I constantly say the GPS works perfectly on 3 other Ardupilot platforms with the same settings. I dont have a GPS problem, I have a Blue Robotics electronics implimentationm problem.
I’ll post in General Descussion for Blue Boat my findings (includiding those from the Professor in electronics I had to pay to test my theroies). Lost a lot of money on this project!!!
Hi @cmarq !
It’s interesting that it used to work, but doesn’t currently. Can you share what version of BlueOS you’re using, and if you’ve upgraded? Does the list of available wifi networks appear correctly, but the connection fails? Maybe you can setup something like this travel hotspot connected to your university wifi if your phone hotspot is the root of the issue.
It’s also worth noting that those instructions you followed are intended for CompanionOS, which is no longer being developed. Everything covered there from a WiFi router setup is correct, but the commands at the start don’t do anything in BlueOS. Are you using companion? Upgrading is easy, and supported for older vehicles that may be using a Pixhawk autopilot- you’ll just need to extract your SD card, flash it, and re-install / setup the system.
@scriffij -
So sorry we’ve not been able to replicate your issues. In the over 200 BlueBoats delivered to customers, we’ve only had 2 similar instances where a user had issues with GPS lock, but the GPS would work fine with other forms of autopilot electronics. With both of these instances, replacing their entire electronics assembly eliminated the issue, so that was the course we chose to follow with you.
I’ve personally used multiple BlueBoat on dozens of deployments, most recently conducting multibeam and sidescan survey of large sections of the Hawaii coastline. The system navigated with LTE and Starlink on board, using the Raspberry Pi 4 WiFi to connect to the on-board Starlink, and using 4G via USB modem. I’m conducting additional WiFi range tests with the default Mikrotik radio and our upcoming directional antenna kit next week. Everything has been conducted with completely stock power systems on the vehicle.
All that is to say, if there is an RF issue, you would think running 3 different forms of high power radio simultaneously, sometimes larger, more powerful motors, and the same Navigator/Pi hardware as the BlueROV2 (of which thousands have shipped with this electronics configuration) we would know about it!
I apologize you’ve spent large sums investigating this, but as you’ve yet to share any concrete findings (or return the hardware you received a replacement for) we’ve been unable to investigate… Please help us help you, rather than raise your issues on unrelated user topics!
So, I am not sure why this is required, but I was able to fix my issue by setting additional dns nameservers of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Upon doing that, I can immediately access the internet now
Hi @scriffij -
Just following up publicly in case anyone else ever has GPS lock issues with their BlueBoat. After testing your returned hardware and encountering the same issue, we resolved the problem by setting GPS_Type back to the default “AUTO.” It was misconfigured to “SBF” and thus causing communications issue.
Our testing of the electronics in another BlueBoat hull lets us say with confidence that no “RF Interference” was causing issues!
Hi @tony-white
I would like to thank BR for all their efforts in trying to resolve the issues we have had with the Blue Boat for the last 10 months. Unfortuinately SBF is the correct GPS_Type for our GNSS.
After 10 months of trying to get our external sensors and instruments to work, we ended up removing all of the BR electronics and power module and replaced it with a Cube Orange Autopilot with companion computer, new PDBs and BECs.Our new configuration works prefectly with verfy little RF Noise and dose not require BlueOS. We had a third party (Professor in electronics) test the BR electronics from two starboard bays and both had the same issues.
Like I kept saying - we did not have a GPS problem as our GPS work perfectly with other Ardupilot FCs usinmg the same firmware and configuration, what we had was BR electronics/config problem. These are two very different problems.
We’ve still yet to see any evidence of RF noise - no FFT plot, or frequencies, testing methods used, etc. - this is frustrating!
Our own investigation found no noise on the 5V rail as measured by oscilloscopes, and all serial communications looked nominal as well.
I agree no GPS problem is present - with the default GPS, correctly configured, a lock with HDOP of 0.6 or better is easily achieved.
The issue seems to have been your decision to use a SBF type GPS, not the default included Ublox NEO M9N GPS. Other GPS hardware used may not be supported by ArduRover on the Navigator, or may have been incorrectly connected / configured with the existing GPS parmaeters. It may be worth sharing the type of GPS you were trying to use, so the community can avoid it, or investigate what configurations are necessary when using it.
If using the hardware as provided, with the recommended software (QGround Control or Cockpit) users can expect nominal performance. As detailed in previous posts, WiFi connections from both the Mikrotik long-range WiFi radio and an onboard Starlink to Pi WiFi radio have all operated without issue at high bandwidth for many many hours.
The only modification we found to the hardware you returned was an extra 6mm hole drilled in the top deck…
Thanks @tony-white for supporting my issue. I refer you to the supported hadware for Ardupilot below under supported Peripheral Hardware>GNSS/Compass Hardware.
I note that the Septentrio GNSS is listed as supported with its proprietary SBF file format and has been supported since at least 2015 when I started using them on all my copter and rover builds. Also noting that the only FC that the Septentrio and alos the ublox F9P GNSS with active antennas does not work properly in is the Blue Robotics Navigator setup in the Blue Boat.
The default ublox gnss supplied with the BB does not do RTK and anyone wanting higher accuracy will need to replace the supplied ublox gnss with one that can hadle RTK correction.
Again I realy appreaciate that you have spent time on trying to solve these issues. we managed to do by removing all the BB electronics and replacing it with ones that have worked for us for years.
