3 The first thing to do after you open the box is to hook up a
4 battery and charge it if necessary.
8 ifdef::telemetrum,telemega,easymega[]
9 For TeleMetrum, TeleMega and EasyMega, the battery can be charged by plugging it into the
10 corresponding socket of the device and then using the USB
11 cable to plug the flight computer into your computer's USB socket. The
12 on-board circuitry will charge the battery whenever it is plugged
13 in, because the on-off switch does NOT control the
15 endif::telemetrum,telemega,easymega[]
17 ifdef::easytimer[EasyTimer, ]
18 ifdef::telemini[TeleMini and]
19 EasyMini battery can be charged by disconnecting it
20 from the board and plugging it into a standalone
21 battery charger such as link:http://altusmetrum.org/LipoCharger[LipoCharger], and
22 connecting that via a USB cable to a laptop or other
25 You can also choose to use another battery with
26 ifdef::easytimer[EasyTimer and]
27 EasyMini, anything supplying between 4 and 12 volts should
28 work fine (like a standard 9V battery), but if you are planning
29 to fire pyro charges, ground testing is required to verify that
30 the battery supplies enough current to fire your chosen e-matches.
32 ifdef::telemetrum,telemega,easymega[]
35 On TeleMetrum v1 boards, when the GPS chip is initially
36 searching for satellites, TeleMetrum will consume more current
37 than it pulls from the USB port, so the battery must be
38 attached in order to get satellite lock. Once GPS is locked,
39 the current consumption goes back down enough to enable charging
40 while running. So it's a good idea to fully charge the battery
41 as your first item of business so there is no issue getting and
42 maintaining satellite lock. The yellow charge indicator led
43 will go out when the battery is nearly full and the charger goes
44 to trickle charge. It can take several hours to fully recharge a
45 deeply discharged battery.
47 TeleMetrum v2 or newer, TeleMega and EasyMega use a
48 higher power battery charger, allowing them to charge
49 the battery while running the board at maximum
50 power. When the battery is charging, or when the board
51 is consuming a lot of power, the red LED will be
52 lit. When the battery is fully charged, the green LED
53 will be lit. When the battery is damaged or missing,
54 both LEDs will be lit, which appears yellow.
56 endif::telemetrum,telemega,easymega[]
59 === Ground Station Hardware
61 There are two ground stations available, the TeleDongle USB to
62 RF interface and the TeleBT Bluetooth/USB to RF interface. If
63 you plug either of these in to your Mac or Linux computer it should
64 “just work”, showing up as a serial port device. Windows systems need
65 driver information that is part of the AltOS download to know that the
66 existing USB modem driver will work. We therefore recommend installing
67 our software before plugging in TeleDongle if you are using a Windows
68 computer. If you are using an older version of Linux and are having
69 problems, try moving to a fresher kernel (2.6.33 or
73 === Linux/Mac/Windows Ground Station Software
75 Next you should obtain and install the AltOS software.
76 The AltOS distribution includes the AltosUI ground
77 station program, current firmware images for all of
78 the hardware, and a number of standalone utilities
79 that are rarely needed. Pre-built binary packages are
80 available for Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX. Full
81 source code and build instructions are also
82 available. The latest version may always be downloaded
83 from http://altusmetrum.org/AltOS
86 === Android Ground Station Software
88 TeleBT can also connect to an Android device over
90 link:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.altusmetrum.AltosDroid[AltosDroid
91 Android application] is available from the
92 link:https://play.google.com[Google Play system].
94 You don't need a data plan to use AltosDroid, but
95 without network access, you'll want to download
96 offline map data before wandering away from the