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+== Getting Started
+
+ The first thing to do after you open the box is to hook up a
+ battery and charge it if necessary.
+
+ === Batteries
+
+ For TeleMetrum, TeleMega and EasyMega, the battery can be charged by plugging it into the
+ corresponding socket of the device and then using the USB
+ cable to plug the flight computer into your computer's USB socket. The
+ on-board circuitry will charge the battery whenever it is plugged
+ in, because the on-off switch does NOT control the
+ charging circuitry.
+ The Lithium Polymer TeleMini and EasyMini battery can be charged by
+ disconnecting it from the board and plugging it into a
+ standalone battery charger such as the LipoCharger product
+ included in TeleMini Starter Kits, and connecting that via a USB
+ cable to a laptop or other USB power source.
+
+ You can also choose to use another battery with TeleMini v2.0
+ and EasyMini, anything supplying between 4 and 12 volts should
+ work fine (like a standard 9V battery), but if you are planning
+ to fire pyro charges, ground testing is required to verify that
+ the battery supplies enough current to fire your chosen e-matches.
+
+ [NOTE]
+ ====
+ On TeleMetrum v1 boards, when the GPS chip is initially
+ searching for satellites, TeleMetrum will consume more current
+ than it pulls from the USB port, so the battery must be
+ attached in order to get satellite lock. Once GPS is locked,
+ the current consumption goes back down enough to enable charging
+ while running. So it's a good idea to fully charge the battery
+ as your first item of business so there is no issue getting and
+ maintaining satellite lock. The yellow charge indicator led
+ will go out when the battery is nearly full and the charger goes
+ to trickle charge. It can take several hours to fully recharge a
+ deeply discharged battery.
+
+ TeleMetrum v2.0, TeleMega and EasyMega use a higher power battery charger,
+ allowing them to charge the battery while running the board at
+ maximum power. When the battery is charging, or when the board
+ is consuming a lot of power, the red LED will be lit. When the
+ battery is fully charged, the green LED will be lit. When the
+ battery is damaged or missing, both LEDs will be lit, which
+ appears yellow.
+ ====
+
+ === Ground Station Hardware
+
+ There are two ground stations available, the TeleDongle USB to
+ RF interface and the TeleBT Bluetooth/USB to RF interface. If
+ you plug either of these in to your Mac or Linux computer it should
+ “just work”, showing up as a serial port device. Windows systems need
+ driver information that is part of the AltOS download to know that the
+ existing USB modem driver will work. We therefore recommend installing
+ our software before plugging in TeleDongle if you are using a Windows
+ computer. If you are using an older version of Linux and are having
+ problems, try moving to a fresher kernel (2.6.33 or
+ newer).
+
+ === Linux/Mac/Windows Ground Station Software
+
+ Next you should obtain and install the AltOS software.
+ The AltOS distribution includes the AltosUI ground
+ station program, current firmware images for all of
+ the hardware, and a number of standalone utilities
+ that are rarely needed. Pre-built binary packages are
+ available for Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX. Full
+ source code and build instructions are also
+ available. The latest version may always be downloaded
+ from http://altusmetrum.org/AltOS
+
+ === Android Ground Station Software
+
+ TeleBT can also connect to an Android device over
+ BlueTooth or USB. The
+ link:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.altusmetrum.AltosDroid[AltosDroid
+ Android application] is available from the
+ link:https://play.google.com[Google Play system].
+
+ You don't need a data plan to use AltosDroid, but
+ without network access, you'll want to download
+ offline map data before wandering away from the
+ network.
projects / fw / altos / blobdiff