PeRISKop RHH or rugged hand-held line

peRISKop has expanded its rugged controller line with the latest ground control station format, the RHH or rugged hand-held line. This lightweight and compact modular system represents an important step in product development, which is now aimed not only at custom GCS designs and small batch manufacturing, but also at series production. While the new models are still produced fully in house, the careful development process made sure that all production stages are easily scalable to larger series.

Featuring IP67 grade industrial controls and overall builds ranging from IP54 to IP69K levels the compact controllers go way further than just serving operators in fair weather. While we still mostly associate sUAS flight operations with clear skies, there is a growing number of occasions where operators just can’t get away with a hobby grade RC and a tablet or a laptop. Surface systems are even more affected by weather since neither robotic boats nor all terrain USVs can afford the luxury of only operating under ideal conditions.

The new RHH is currently offered as an all-in-one Android-based ground control station and as secondary pilot/payload operator units. All variants are customised to client specifications and can easily be tailored to operate with various flight controllers.

The overall modular design and the weatherproof docking connectors make it possible to use the same RHH GCS as a hand-held, wearable and a console mounted unit. All current standard long range and transparent IP RF modules are supported as built-in, docking or remote RF box installations and the docking RF box architecture also allows switching between different RF links without changing the controls.

An interesting general image of most current sUAS operations is the crew standing or sitting outside with their big station on a portable desk and some antennas mounted on tripods beside them. If you’ve ever been involved in such a field day endeavour you know that just the preparation and the wrap-up itself adds at least an hour to the proceedings, while you are constantly exposed to the elements. If you already reach your field location most of the time by car or a van, why not keep your options open with a man portable size control station that allows operation from inside the vehicle itself?

Of course, if your RF modules are embedded in your GCS you must opt for at least some mag-mount antennas on coax extensions, so you can get your signal out of the Faraday cage of your car, but that’s not really the solution. Gigahertz signals are highly attenuated even on short stretches of coax, that’s why antenna cable extensions should never be used in any GCS setup.

Unless you are only working at short LOS ranges you should always be using a separate RF box, because the best position for the operator is never the ideal location for the antennas for obvious reasons. If your RF modules are installed in this compact external unit literally at a pigtail’s distance from the antennas mounted on it, only digital and low frequency analogue signals have to travel along any length of cable. Being able to mount this box on top of your van, tripod, mast or even the pan axis of an antenna tracker gives you the real flexibility of a professional grade modular mission control station.

The peRISKop project is a team of professional UAV-USV specialists heavily involved in remotely operated vehicle design and development since 2008. Coming from a technical security, RF, industrial control, imaging and speciality CCTV background they have soon realised that their efforts are best spent at concentrating on the missing or underserved areas of UAV development.

Visit www.periskop.hu for more.