I am a newbie when it comes to quadcopters so I am looking for someone to bounce ideas off of. I have a design in my head I just want to make sure it works in implementation. I would like to design a drone/uav. I think I understand the drone part or the uav part when taken separately but once they are combined the complexity goes up. I am also on a bit of a budget so that complicates issues.
Concept:
Flying - I would like to implement a arducopter and by using the data uplink from the telemetry send the arducopter live commands from my laptop using the mission planner but I would also like to be able to remotely control it via mission planner using a gamepad (mainly because I do not want to buy redundant systems control systems to keep the cost down and to minimize the number of transmitters and receivers on the quadcopter thereby keeping interference to a minimum). I understand from reading the documentation for the arducopter that both of these are able to be done using mission planner. I would also like to be able to set preset paths and let the copter make the flight by itself with no external inputs.
FPV - I am thinking that I will use my laptop as my single command base and as such I would like to take the FPV video feed and put it into the computer so that I can monitor the video as well as control my quadcopter from a single device (minimizing the chance for me to forget crucial pieces at home since there are fewer of them and to minimize how much equuipment I need to lug around). My plan is just to use a generic usb video capture card to capture the video input and some simple software to display it.
Homemade parts:
Frame - I currently envision the frame as a couple of aluminum tent poles set up in an X shape. The reason I chose tent poles is that they are very strong but also flexible enough to take a good crash without breaking. The other nice thing about tent poles is by cutting the ends back a little bit and flattening them you have a pretty solid mounting platform for the motors. I am unsure what I want to use for the legs yet my preliminary idea is maybe a bent paper clip since the legs will take the hardest beating in the beginning while I am getting it dialed in and who want to spend loads of money on something that is just going to break.
Parts List:
This is the parts list as I understand it I would welcome comments on whether or not I need more things than I am listing.
- Arducopter
- Telemetry transeiver set (900Mhz)
- Computer
- Game pad
- 4 ~850KV motors
- 4 ESCs (
- 4 props (2CW, 2CCW)
- gps
- 5000 mah 3S 25C LiPo battery
- Computer video input
- camera
- video tx/rx modules (1.2Ghz)
- Frame
Thanks for your time and suggestions.
Replies
Windows... Just rethink it.
you mentioned Mission planner, it doesnt not run well in MONO, thanks to the unholy .net mess which MONO is trying to keep up with.
You can run APM Planner 2 natively on Mac or Linux
Still, any joystick input will have a bit of extra latency due to mavlink transmission, and, telemetry is not exactly a safe communication channel : http://madhacker.org/?p=13
I would have a radio around.