I don't know how I missed this before, but there is a pretty mature project for a Arduino-powered quadcopter, called AeroQuad (also known in RC Groups as Quadrino, which is a much better name IMO!). Rather than using a custom board, they use a standard Arduino devboard and off-the-shelf Sparkfun sensors (although they did make a custom Arduino shield to solder them on to, although that doesn't seem to be available anymore)
Hi David! Thanks to the links to the UAVP projects! DIY drones popped to my eyes looking into the site stats... ;)
I'm one of the head developer of the new UAVP-NG (http://ng.uavp.ch/). We sometimes hear that "over engineered" argument, but it mostly comes from 2 or 3 year old projects which did not improve over time. We like the KISS principle too, but there are reasons sometime to improve things. Improving things and trying new design and implementation methods were one of the main targets of the NG development.
Let me make a simple example to point out the differences: Most of current designs are implemented as fully synchronious systems. We asked us if this really has to be always the case... So we went another way: The NGOS is a fully asynchronous system which does synchronisation where needed.
I could go on with more arguments and features, but I don't want to hijack your AeroQuad thread!
Further information can be found at http://ng.uavp.ch/moin/Documentation/TheNGOS
Be sure to read the AeroQuad Discussion Forum on RCGroups and the Support Forum on the AeroQuad website. The reason I am suggesting this is that the information on the AeroQuad website concerning the construction of the AeroQuad is not necessarily the latest version of the project. Also some of the information on the website needs clarification which can be found in the Discussion/Support Forums.
I have visited the AeroQuad website and have been very impressed with its organization and technical information concerning your designs. I am very tempted to build an AeroQuad as I like the roll your own philosophy of your AeroQuad project. Keep up the good work.
Hey Chris! Thanks for the honorable mention at DIY Drones! I'm the developer of the AeroQuad and have been a long time admirer of what you guys have accomplished over here. I got hooked to quadrocopters a couple of years back, but was always frustrated with the long shipping times and expense ordering stuff from Europe. When I saw the Arduino, I thought to myself we could use Sparkfun sensors and build our own quads! So the AeroQuad has been a GREAT time of learning and experimenting and we look forward to accomplishing more with it in the future. With respect to the Shields, we have our standard one for the Duemilanove (will be back in stock soon) and are developing a more capable quad using the Mega (love the additional I/O). Although we sell these Shields, we also put the schematics up so that a user can wire up their own if they want. Thanks for the kind words all!
I also love this one. A very interesting thing about Mikroquad/Quaduino/AeroQuad is that it implements its own IMU, complete with Kalman filtering, and is opensource. This makes it an excellent learning tool for everyone who's interested in doing something similar.
I also love this project and it is one of the best price / performance ratio quads around. There are a couple more Open Source Quad Projects around also, Booz you know about; the Paparazzi guys Quad and obviously MikroKopter (the source is there, not so open though) but there are a few more Open Source Quads about that are not so well known.
Also there is UAVP-NG: http://ng.uavp.ch/moin this is a different code base than UAVP, the devs got carried away and some people say it is over engineered. However, if you want a Quad that you can SSH in to in flight and change parameters and view stats this can do it.
Comments
I'm one of the head developer of the new UAVP-NG (http://ng.uavp.ch/). We sometimes hear that "over engineered" argument, but it mostly comes from 2 or 3 year old projects which did not improve over time. We like the KISS principle too, but there are reasons sometime to improve things. Improving things and trying new design and implementation methods were one of the main targets of the NG development.
Let me make a simple example to point out the differences: Most of current designs are implemented as fully synchronious systems. We asked us if this really has to be always the case... So we went another way: The NGOS is a fully asynchronous system which does synchronisation where needed.
I could go on with more arguments and features, but I don't want to hijack your AeroQuad thread!
Further information can be found at http://ng.uavp.ch/moin/Documentation/TheNGOS
Best regards
- Amir
Be sure to read the AeroQuad Discussion Forum on RCGroups and the Support Forum on the AeroQuad website. The reason I am suggesting this is that the information on the AeroQuad website concerning the construction of the AeroQuad is not necessarily the latest version of the project. Also some of the information on the website needs clarification which can be found in the Discussion/Support Forums.
Just a thought.
Regards,
TCIII
I have visited the AeroQuad website and have been very impressed with its organization and technical information concerning your designs. I am very tempted to build an AeroQuad as I like the roll your own philosophy of your AeroQuad project. Keep up the good work.
Regards,
TCIII
It's nice Quad using Arduino !
Here is the Code folloup @Google;
http://code.google.com/p/ardu-imu/updates/list#
First there is UAVP: http://uavp.ch/moin
From that Project came UAVX: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1093510 by Professor Egan, it is a rewrite and vast improvement over UAVP and supports navigation, position hold and auto take off and land.
Also there is UAVP-NG: http://ng.uavp.ch/moin this is a different code base than UAVP, the devs got carried away and some people say it is over engineered. However, if you want a Quad that you can SSH in to in flight and change parameters and view stats this can do it.