Ateryx is airborne and looking great! (homebuilt imu autopilot)



Ateryx 2.3 has been in different levels of development over the past year or so but I finally got some motivation to clean up some code and pull it all together.

Cloud layer has been at 800ft for the past three days so I have been weather canceled with my Navy schedule. Considering the UAV development is all low altitude stuff this was the perfect time to get some flights out on the autopilot. I got all of the gains tuned and let the navigation code go to work. The only bad part about the time off is that it has been really windy (25 knots gusting at times) that and I'm missing the T-34. Navigation code could be tuned tighter on the gains but even with the windspeed being 75% - 85% of the trim airspeed commanded, it still maintained its flight path in my small local park!

I will have video up soon as well as data (if I can get my new sd card drive to work).

Here is the platform I am using as a test bed:
http://www.horizonhobby.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=EFL2825

Views: 157

Tags: autopilot, imu

Comment by Scott Plunkett on September 24, 2009 at 9:45pm
Incredible work! - I see you are using the MatLAB Aerogaugegui - did you write code to customize it or just select and place all of the readouts in that format (mine doesn't look that good...lol) Could you tell us more about the hardware you are using? Are you planning to open-source this...or is it going to get productized at some point?

Developer
Comment by Ryan Beall on September 24, 2009 at 9:52pm
Honestly the groundstation is my weakpoint in this project. I copied a real simple gui from matlab's website and just kept building on it and tweaking it. There is a lot about it that I don't like but I'm not a visual programmer so... its all I can do. But yeah everything is just an activeX control that I just feed from my simulink model.

As for the hardware: Homebuilt circuit board with the everything hardware wise that composes a TRUE auto pilot

pitot statics
3 axis gyros and accel
3 axis magnetometer
gps
conventional servo jacks
9-xtend modem port
extra a2d and serial
Comment by SciFly on September 24, 2009 at 11:07pm
Sweet, nice job on the ground station. Perhaps we could collaborate on it- I work mostly in the MATLAB environment aswell.

Developer
Comment by Ryan Beall on September 24, 2009 at 11:11pm
Thanks! I honestly will probably be moving away from it. It's too unreliable. I've had it completely lock up on me in flights. I had to add a second fail safe method at least until my groundstation becomes more reliable. You have anything cool in yours?
Comment by High Society on September 25, 2009 at 2:38pm
It looks as though you may have gone to school at BYU :) from the looks of some things. Anyway, good job on your AP and programming.
Comment by Peter Meister on September 29, 2009 at 2:23pm
Nice work, Ground Station looks good.

Comment

You need to be a member of DIY Drones to add comments!

Join DIY Drones

Social Networking

Contests

Season Two of the Trust Time Trial (T3) Contest has now begun. The fourth round is an accuracy round for multicopters, which requires contestants to fly a cube. The deadline is April 14th.

A list of all T3 contests is here

Groups

Advertisement

© 2013   Created by Chris Anderson.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service