Hi all! I've been interested in building a UAV for a while, and have done lots of reading here and on other websites. I recently took the plunge and started making my own UAV!I've already started documenting my findings on a blog at:Piper Arrow II UAVIt may be of interest to you! I'd love to hear feedback!
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The compass is tilt-compensated, but it uses an accelerometer to determine orientation. It is just me, or is the movement of the UAV likely to be interpreted as a false horizon, therefore invalidating the tilt-compensation. It seems better physics to use GPS vectoring to establish compass bearing?
The Arduino project has several references for interpreting PPM. If you are lucky, the fasst output includes a composite serial line you can tap.
I would second Chris's suggestion that moving from micro-basic to micro-c (ie Arduino) is quite seemless (And I say that as a VB nerd who breaks out in hives around c++) The beauty of Arduino and C is the existing libraries and samples for this work - much more powerful than BasicStamp.
This may be a good time to explain how a gyro maintains a good horizon without an infrared reference. Can the GPS be used to make corrections? Someone? My understanding is that these gyros will drift - am I wrong?
That's an ambitious project! Are you sure multiple atmega128s are the way to go for the microprocessors? Running a proper IMU is asking a lot of them (the only reason we use a simlar dual-core approach is that we're running simpler theromopile-based stabilization). You might have better luck with a single, more powerful processors, such as an Propeller or (if you can handle the complicated toolchains) ARM7.
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The compass is tilt-compensated, but it uses an accelerometer to determine orientation. It is just me, or is the movement of the UAV likely to be interpreted as a false horizon, therefore invalidating the tilt-compensation. It seems better physics to use GPS vectoring to establish compass bearing?
The Arduino project has several references for interpreting PPM. If you are lucky, the fasst output includes a composite serial line you can tap.
I would second Chris's suggestion that moving from micro-basic to micro-c (ie Arduino) is quite seemless (And I say that as a VB nerd who breaks out in hives around c++) The beauty of Arduino and C is the existing libraries and samples for this work - much more powerful than BasicStamp.
This may be a good time to explain how a gyro maintains a good horizon without an infrared reference. Can the GPS be used to make corrections? Someone? My understanding is that these gyros will drift - am I wrong?