One of the first problems is that the router cannot be communicated with over the wired LAN link initially. It will not respond to IP 192.168.0.254 like the TP-Link N150 Wireless Travel Router that he used. I have been able to talk to it over its WiFi link and have changed the Working (Operating) Mode to AP per his instructions. I have then verified that I can talk to the router over the wired LAN Link at IP 192.168.0.254, however when I set the wired LAN link to a Static IP of 192.168.254.2, to be able to communicate with the OpenROV Cockpit, and reboot, I can no longer communicate with the router over the wired LAN link using IP 192.168.254.2 from my laptop.
Perhaps this 300 Mbps version of the original 150Mbs router has substantially different firmware and may not work in this application?
Updating this thread, I did some further testing with the i5 laptop I have here and found a measured 250 ms. lag (compared to the 200 ms lag Rusty gets with their Samsung i7 laptop). I tried various video quality settings in the Raspberry Pi software but none resulted in less lag. The lower quality settings seemed to cause more shearing and video artifacts, but no performance improvements.
I wasn’t able to test any of the tablets here (yet) as none have ethernet ports.
After searching the Amazon user reviews for the TP-LINK TL-WR802N Wireless N300 Travel Router it turns out, unlike the TP-Link N150 Wireless Travel Router, the TP-LINK TL-WR802N Wireless N300 Travel Router must be setup over its wireless link and not the wired LAN link as was done in Nils Jakobi’s project.
So I am going to have to figure out if the TP-LINK TL-WR802N Wireless N300 Travel Router can be setup over the wireless link the same way the TP-Link N150 Wireless Travel Router was setup over its wired LAN link.
Good news! I was able to get the TP-LINK TL-WR802N Wireless N300 Travel Router communicating with the OROV 2.8 Controller Board.
What I did is follow Nils Jakobi’s instructions for setting up the Wireless Router, but did it over the Router’s wireless link instead of using the Ethernet LAN cable. Also, instead of selecting each setting individually like Nils did, I used the Quick Setup in the Wireless Router’s menu and set each parameter per his instructions as it came up in the Quick Setup dialogue. Worked great.
It’s been a year or three since anyone posted on this topic but rather than start a new one thought i’d ask again on here to see what the current recommendations are.
Windows - Obviously Win 10 but what processor?
Mac Book - What year would be a cut off if buying a 2nd hand machine?
RAM - more is better, is 8GB enough?
Graphics - integrated Graphics Card acceptable?
ta
Can’t really answer this as it depends very much on your operating requirements and the extras you might use on/with your ROV. For reference, the QGroundControl documentation recommends
As a few pointers, consider:
screen brightness, especially if you can’t guarantee you’ll have some kind of sun-shade or cover while operating
ruggedisation, if you’re operating in unstable or dusty/splashy environments
waterproofing/water resistance, if you’re operating close to splashing water
a box with an integrated joystick and monitor can be useful to get a larger screen than a laptop and have your equipment in a single package (but does confine you to where the screen is while you’re operating)
we generally recommend a computer/laptop rather than a tablet because of the standard tether+joystick setup, although if you’re setting up wireless control via a separate boat or buoy or something that’s tethered to the ROV then this is less of an issue
Cool,
Integrated graphics such as found on a Dell latitude 14 5404 acceptable.
At the fairly low end of the budget scale…comes with 8 but easy to add more RAM.
If you configure that to meet the minimum QGC requirements then I expect it should work acceptably, although from a quick search I couldn’t easily find screen brightness so I’m unsure whether that could cause issues
Most PC laptops I have seen no longer offer an intel core processor (i5 or greater) with Nvidia or AMD graphics and are usually now set with intel graphics. Does it have to be specifically intel core processors with Nvidia or AMD graphics?
Looking into this a bit, those recommendations were seemingly added in 2019 based on what was considered to be ‘definitely sufficient’ at the time. Note that the docs don’t actually specify a minimum requirement (I’d recommend reading the full paragraph that provides the context for the part I quoted), and it’s very possible that integrated graphics are sufficient in many cases - particularly with recent devices.
The docs recommendation is effectively something that can be pointed to in cases of poor performance as an “are you sure your device has enough processing capability?”, while also serving as a peace of mind check for people who are looking to start using QGC and already have a device like that.
It’s worth noting that QGC is used for a variety of vehicle and communications, and the graphics requirements vary considerably across those (e.g. a drone with just a GPS position and some telemetry will have much lower processing requirements than an ROV with a HD video stream). Accordingly it makes some sense that the QGC developers haven’t bothered to do extensive testing on which generation and version of intel processor has sufficient graphics capabilities, because it depends on how QGC is being used. There’s also no strict requirement for Intel-based CPUs, although that’s what the pre-built downloadable files are targeted to.
Hopefully that’s clarifying
If you think that documentation should be changed or made clearer in some way, feel free to raise an issue on the QGC docs GitHub repository.
