Replies to This Discussion

3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on January 22, 2012 at 1:13pm

Welcome, Jeff!  ArduCopter is based on Arduino, which is essentially C and C++. You can learn more about it here. 

Permalink Reply by Jeff Smith on January 22, 2012 at 1:25pm

Thank you for the quick reply, and I cant express how happy I am that what I've learned in C wasn't a waste LOL

Permalink Reply by Chris Pitts on January 22, 2012 at 1:45pm

Yep. you're in good shape. With most microcontrollers, you'd normally have to learn all kinds of bitwise operators and spend hours learning how to set the internal clock registers, among a laundry list of other things. The reason everyone likes the Arduino environment is that it has libraries that abstract all of those things for you, so you just use commands like you would in desktop C programming.

 

I'm in a similar boat to you. I'm working on my electrical engineering degree, focussing in control theory. My senior design project involves doing some interesting things with the PID controllers in the Ardupilot code (like, replacing them with fuzzy logic based controllers), so I've got quite an adventure ahead of me as well.

 

I couldn't be called an expert, but I can say from what I've seen of the code so far that it's pretty well written. It's nice and modular, and there's enough use of preprocessor defines that the code is immensely easy to read and understand, even from the perspective of a novice such as myself.

 

Good luck with your adventures. Add me to friends, and if you run into anything crazy, feel free to shoot me a message. It'll likely be the blind leading the blind, but it's always fun.

DeveloperPermalink Reply by Randy on January 23, 2012 at 5:18am

Jeff,

     Welcome!  For the heli related stuff you can find a few of us hanging out on the monster TradHeli thread.

Permalink Reply by malcolm churn on January 24, 2012 at 1:31am

Hi there, great see to another traditional helicopter flyer as Randy said a few of us hang out on the discussion he linked to.

I suspect you already have a simulator, but its well worth getting a good one, a few hours spent on it will pay dividends. :) 

DeveloperPermalink Reply by R_Lefebvre on January 24, 2012 at 2:45pm

Wow, I didn't even know this forum existed.

Yeah, you're best to join us in the regular forums.

Permalink Reply by Luke B. on February 1, 2012 at 9:46am

Hi Jeff, I will be following your posts as I am interested in some of the same topics as you are as well as eventually flying a larger heli.  Right now I am starting with a small quad copter with a 150 gram camera, but later I'd like the freedom of much greater speed, range, and payload.  I don't think I will get as far into writing and understanding code, but you never know... a big part of this hobby is learning new things.

Permalink Reply by Jeff Smith on February 1, 2012 at 6:45pm

A quick update, I have recieved my Flysky TH9X Tx/Rx set yesterday and should recieve my digital pitch gauge, swash plate leveler, and 600EFL in the next few days. Though I don't have any tracking info on the heli yet :-( but it is supposed to arrive before the 6th.

I am going to start saving now for a pile of 6S lipo's and of course an Adrucopter.

I have read about 1/3rd of the big traditional copter thread and I'll likely post there after I've read through it. I find one has less questions having read the previous discussion before asking.