First of all Hello everyone, its great to be on the forum.
I'm new to Arducopter although I've been playing with various controllers for some time now. I'm currently developing an all carbon frame with NHP (Northern Helicopter Products) for general production in the UK and after a long search I think the final designs will be for Ardu, its certainly the most versatile controller we've had.
However I'm still getting very confused, reading various web pages its hard to understand what is old and what is new - the project is moving so quickly !!
I have two questions at the moment, I've read lots of pages but ended up unsure as to the answers to these questions, your help would be appreciated.
1. PID Tuning - There are many pages on this some detailing D values in the configurator. I can't find the configurator but I have Ardupilot Mega Planner. Which Is the a current Guide to PID
2. Nav lights and frame lights. I've seen articles on using LED on 4-7 but that seems out dated. It would appear you can connect LED to the output ports - some ports already have motor LED outputs assigned - Is this true ? Can we connect more LEDs and update the sketch to control them.
3. If I add my own code to the sketch, what happens on the next release. I assume my code will need to be ported into any new firmware.
Thanks in advance
Mark
Replies
No, don't have a ready made 4 output pde unfortunately, but editing my pde for 4 outputs shouldn't be that hard. Maybe if you tell me what went wrong with your modification I can help ?
1)The wiki I guess
2) Yes it's true, yes you can, if you use something to drive the leds cause the APM ports can only supply 40mA.
3) No, you can use userhooks. You can put your own code in a seperate file (eg usercode.pde) and through userhooks in the code the functions in your file can be called. This eliminates the need to integrate your modifications again with every new firmware release.
For 2 and 3 I have developped 'showleds' for my hexacopter, which indicate motorarming and low battery, and in between I can display a multitude of different blinking patterns.