Relay Mode Broken

[htcohio]

This issue has been documented a couple times.

relay mode is where a user has a large ground station then relays using openhd on a different frequency usually 5.8 to a smaller portable ground Raspberry Pi.

Justin Healey:
hey there, did you ever test if the relay over open HD was working?

Zipray:
Simultaneous insertion of rtl8812au and ar9271 on the ground will be stuck in smart synchronization

Justin Healey:
do you mean for the relay only? or simultaneous use of atheros and Realtek cards?

Reference Notes:

TELEGRAM

Justin Healey:
hey there, did you ever test if the relay over open HD was working?

Zipray:
Simultaneous insertion of rtl8812au and ar9271 on the ground will be stuck in smart synchronization

Justin Healey:
do you mean for the relay only? or simultaneous use of atheros and Realtek cards? Or both cause smart sync to freeze?

Zipray:
It doesn't matter with relay, even if you disable smart sync, it will get stuck.

Including relay, external WiFi hotspots are not available

RCgroups (Khomyakk)
https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?p=42086253

My setup looks like this

Pi Zero (2312) to Pi 3b (2312)+(5800) relay to Pi 3B(5800)

AR9271 to (AR9271 + RaLink RT3572L) relay to RaLink RT3572L

Hotspot I turned off. I need only Relay mode.

In the image of EZ 1.6, this setup does not work

[htcohio]

Closing this because there is a very minimal need for this among the community. Also, with all of the communication programs between smart sink, the openhd app etc. The complexity of getting this going and defining the different configurations while keeping everything house listed above in good working order would simply require too much time at the moment.

Perhaps we can revisit this in the future after higher priority items are addressed.

[htcohio]

Reopening due to popular request...

Need to figure out how to integrate relay mode with all of the other bi-directional remote settings and QOpenhd features....

#43

[SummerSeaSun]

Feature request:

Discussed on TELEGRAM with Luke:

Luke Shanks, [04.03.20 09:01]
How many repeaters do you need?

Tb10, [04.03.20 09:02]
Actually one, distance 2 km, imagine a triangle. One corner is airpi, other one groundpi, and repeater can see both.

Luke Shanks, [04.03.20 09:04]
If you just need one repeater I would think the currently broken "relay mode" would work well if it was fixed. 

Use 5.8g

Groundpi some low 5.8g freq
Airpi on a high 5.8g freq 

And of course you have the relaypi

Tb10, [04.03.20 09:12]
Thank you, so another raspberrypi with an ALFA AWUS036ACH will work?  
Can you please give an idea of costs and timing to fix the relaypi?

Luke Shanks, [04.03.20 09:19]
Your relaypi will need 2 WiFi adapters compatible with the airpi and groundpi. So 2 awus036ach.

1 is on groundpi freq
1 is on airpi freq

Luke Shanks, [04.03.20 09:22]
But don’t count on me 😀

I am not that interested in relay mode at the moment... it’s a bit of a pain to play with as you need 3 pi and 4 nics- which I have but I find just one pi to be aggravating to debug 😅

Luke Shanks, [04.03.20 09:24]
Have you tried it? You should attempt to enable relay mode and then post the errors you see on the relaypi

Tb10, [04.03.20 09:28]
I've don't have tried it. I'm not much of a C developer. I'd prefer pay an expert to get it really work.

What is needed that will work (and now works fine on Openhd):

• airpi:

   sending video from raspivid  (1280x720 30FPS)
   receive rc 
   send mavlink telemetry 

• groundpi:

  send rc
  receive mavlink telemetry to show in OSD
  original OSD 
  

Please make a quotation: with delivery time and costs.

[pilotnbr1]

I’ll just point out the obvious a bit...

Airpi and groundpi require no changes as far as I can tell

Relaypi
The main relay script should start from rx_functions.sh as there is no cam
Smartsync should be disabled across all 3 pi... don’t want frequency syncing on air and ground
Hotspot needs to be disabled
Certain tx functions will need to be enabled explicitly

[HenrySully]

I tried to be clever, and it didn't work.

In short, I am trying to drop multiple repeaters over a large distance as needed to maintain a connection from a rover to the ground station. From reading the thread above, I get the impression there are a few issues with the Relay Mode.

Therefore, before beginning to tackle the Relay mode problem, I thought it might be possible to extend the hotspot using off the shelf tech. I grabbed two AC Netgear Wi-Fi repeaters, made a quick Mod, so they ran off a wee battery, set them up, and got testing. As you can probably already guess, I didn't get the results I was hoping for. Still trying to figure out an exact reason as to why not, but results are results.

Ok then, so back to the broken Relay mode. I don't mean to be blunt, but just how broken is it? Would more than one even Relay Pi be possible without a massive overhaul?

I plan on doing some more testing today. Specifically working through setting up a relay Pi in the way described above just to
see what happens. I might not be the best technically capable person to solve this, but it is a need, so I'll give it a shot. My goal is to determine the project's whole scope or problem that needs fixing to better outsource to a developer.

[raphaelscholle]

Relay is possible via normal wifi or ethernet, wifibroadcast-relay is currently not planned
..
issue can be reopened on request