Comment by Ritchie on March 5, 2011 at 5:51am

I am loving the plane its just sexy as hell.

I would believe the dimensions of the hole would be highly important. Once you have them (36mm bore will probably shrink after the motor) you can then use the schematics from the APM or UDB2 to develop a specific variant. The bad part is you will absorb a larger cost as you will pay for all the components and presumably the reflow work of the boards to then function. The good part would be that if you do it all right you can just upload code from the established code bases and fly happy.

Comment by Michael Zaffuto on March 5, 2011 at 7:12am

The narrowest solution I can think of is using the standard original ArduPilot mated with an ArduIMU+ V2.  This will get you all the basic functionality you need.   It can control 4 rc channels with some slight mods.  The maximum width with this two board combination is 30mm.  For the cleanest installtion, avoid the 0.1" headers on the boards, use direct wires with inline connector disconnects for the lowest profile, you may be able to use double sided sticky tape to mount the two boards back to back for a pretty low profile solution and it will keep your board to board connections very close with short wires and less mess. Remotely mounted airspeed sensor and gps will let you take advantage of the some of the room in the wings.  All these are in the diydrones store too.

 

http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot/wiki/ArduIMU

ArduPilot it is really quite tiny, be sure to read the whole ArduPilot for the necessary modifications:

http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot/wiki/Ch4

 

Developer Comment by Doug Weibel on March 5, 2011 at 7:15am

I was going to give the same recontamination as Michael. I could find no pictures of the servo hatches, so no idea how well it would fit.

Comment by Hopper on March 5, 2011 at 7:16am

You might be able to squeeze a Femtoduino (http://www.varesano.net/projects/hardware/Femtoduino), Razor IMU (http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9623), and a GS407 GPS (http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9436) into different areas of your airframe. You might need a power regulator (depending on your ESC). I think the remaining challenge would be to get the code to work with them. Not difficult, but I think there's some work there.

You should ask yourself "why" you would want to do this. "It would be fun" is a good answer. But imagine you've got it working. Now what would you want to do to it next? If it involves piling more stuff on (camera, video, etc.), then consider other platforms.

Certainly a beautiful bird.

Comment by Matthew Coleman on March 5, 2011 at 7:17am

These aircraft are quite amazing.  They are capable of everything from air tearing speed to lazy floating through thermals.  Caution: like some other beautiful creatures, it is easy to get addicted and they tend be hurt the wallet.

 

It gets pretty lonely doing those one off board developments.  It is all too easy to branch off into an oblivion of code hacking.

 

UDB2-3 has been pushed to the raw raggedy edge of its capacity.  What the team has achieved with 2Kbyte RAM is stunning.

UDB4 is on the way.  That design has been shrunk to a slender 31*65mm which is promising.

Maybe I will just have to wait for it...

Comment by Hopper on March 5, 2011 at 8:03am

It gets pretty lonely doing those one off board developments.  It is all too easy to branch off into an oblivion of code hacking.

I couldn't agree more, Matthew. I purchased the ardupilot board and a razor. Then noticed that everyone was running down the ArduPilot-Mega route. Didn't want to lose out on all the great stuff that was happening over there, so I switched. Maybe one day I'll put that ArduPilot board in a Roomba or PowerWheels or something.

 

I would think that doing FPV in one of those Vladimir's would be pretty interesting.

Comment by Matthew Coleman on March 5, 2011 at 10:02am

@Michael. I forgot to mention, these aircraft have 6 servos plus ESC.  The old ArduPilot is not the way to go.

Launching a new project on an old platform lead to disappointment.

 

@Doug,

Not sure I can get anything other than servos into those hatches.  The servos are 30*30*10mm and fill the hatch space.

Was it you that connected a spektrum satellite rx direct to a serial port?  This could be a real space saver.

Do you have a link to any information on this?

@Hopper,I had a project last year that fell between the chairs, also due to an unforeseen system change.

My main goal of a sailplane is to fly for longest with the least power.  This means accurate airspeed and altitude measurement and well controlled turns in the centre of the lift.  Radio telemetry is essential.

I would like the autopilot to ofload me from flying duties so that I can do more of the co-pilot duties.

The femto is interesting but I fear for its limited capacity.  A mini version of AP32 might hit the sweet spot.

 

Thanks for all the comments, Matt

Comment by MarcS on March 5, 2011 at 11:12am

Hi Matt,

the idea of using a spectrum satellite and feed it directly into the AP could be a start. But for this and the GPS think about the structure, which is most likely to be built from carbon fibre. So you need to get both antennas ouside (evil holes in a beautiful skin :-(

Probably you can cut a bigger hole in the wing where its joined to the fuselage. Its not clear, how much spce is there from the pictures...

The coming Lisa/M of Paparazzi looks like an option considering size, but it´s not clear, when it will be ready :-( (http://paparazzi.enac.fr/wiki/Lisa#Lisa.2FM)

Marc

Comment by Michael Zaffuto on March 5, 2011 at 11:14am

This one may have potential for you then....It uses the same STM32 processor that is used on LeafLabs Maple.  Due to the pinout selection it may not work with MP32's code base directly possibly due to pin multiplexing conflicts...but it's go poetential..it has all the goodies you need..only 25mm wide, 7 rc inputs, 5 rc outputs (may have to get creative with ailerons here) but I like the size of this one:

 

http://code.google.com/p/flyless/

http://flyless.wikidot.com/hardware-hart-stm

 

Comment by Matthew Coleman on March 5, 2011 at 12:35pm

@marc,  No need to make evil holes.  The fuselage is radio friendly kevlar.

There is carbon strengthening in the fin, battery bay, main spar and wing joiners.

Not a bad idea to put the radio telemetry out on a wing.  It would help to counterbalance the pitot-static in the other wing.

 

@Michael, GENIUS!  I knew it was worth asking.

It should not take much effort to re-write the drivers.  The MP32 code is well written. 

There are ways and means of expanding the servo I/O. 

Have you built any boards built yet?

 

also:I believe it is best to have an independent failsafe device that can route radio inputs directly to the servos when the autopilot fails (as it has and will do).  I know this adds an extra board but believe me it has been worth it. 

 

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