Hey guys, I just came across the site and I have to say, I've learned a lot more about autopilots in the last hour than I have in my last week of looking into the topic. Good stuff you've got here.Alright, so I'm a junior in high school involved in a pre-engineering course and the goal of the course is to use the engineering process to design and construct something of our choice. The course lasts until the end of my senior year, right now i'm learning basic physics and engineering and applying them towards a class project, but it's time to start focusing on my individual project. That's where I need help.My vision Is a solar powered UAV on a reasonably sized budget (<$2000 for sure, preferably closer to $1000). I know from reading around that the plane minus the autopilot is possible on that budget, but I would like to take the extra step and add the autopilot. The biggest thing standing in my way is my lack of knowledge (and interest, for that matter) in computer science. I have the capability to install the autopilot and tinker with settings, but when it comes down to hardcore modifications, I'm pretty useless. This sucks because of two things: my budget, and I want an extremely capable system.I like the look of ardupilot and I think I could set it up, but it seems limited to me. I would like the capability of manually inputting values like altitude and speed while the plane is in the air, as well as changing the flight plan at any given time (things like holding patterns would be great too). Basically, something more like an autopilot you'd find in a real plane. It doesn't have to be THAT advanced, but something with a bit more functionality and the ability to manually input ap parameters would be real nice to have.So, are there any options out there that have that sort of functionality without a $5 grand price tag? I understand ardupilot has a lot of people working on it, so how far is it from having a true gcs (versus just telemetry)? Sorry if I missed some info regarding the subject, I'm limited to an iPod for awhile and surfing can be a bit of a pain with it.Thanks for your help fellas, I'm really looking forward to getting involved in this hobby and hopefully working with some of you.
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At the moment, Ardupilot is limited to one-way comms, so it's telemetry downlink only. The new ArduPilot Mega will support two-way comms, I believe, and it should be out soon(ish). That would let you send short coded instructions up to the aircraft, so you could program it to recognise codes for altitude hold, 'fly to' instructions where you tell it to head for a certain waypoint, 'hold' instructions where it'll loiter until told otherwise (or for a certain amount of time, if you want). If there's enough bandwidth you could send it new waypoints too; you'd have to wait for someone who's involved in the Mega development for more details, though, because I only know what I've read on here.
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