I am new to building drones. I am also a student pilot (on manned planes).My knowledge of electronics e.g. changing volts and so is a bit bad but connecting the wires and stuff - pro. I am also an professional programmer. Just so btw, I live in South Africa and ArduPilot etc is inaccessible.
Enough about my background, I want to build a drone consisting of the following components and need a few answers before i give out money.
Airplane and parts I will use:
- An Arduino Duemilanove (already have one)
- Gyro Breakout Board - MLX90609
- A Piper Cub J-3 Model plane (cheapest plane accessible)
I need to know how I can connect with the drone's XBee Pro 50mW from my PC for control purposes? Must I use another Arduino with a XBee connected to the pc/laptop? I firstly want the plane to transmit its GPS coords and also maybe an image every second from an onboard JPEG camera. Is it possible to transmit these thru the XBee?
Also, is it fine to put the Arduino between the onboard receiver and servos/motor? To add custom coding to prevent manual over steering etc.
I will code my Arduino to fly straight and level by checking the gyro and then adjusting the servos, this will be overwritten by the receiver's incoming signals into the chip.
Thanks a lot people!
Replies
Thanks for the previous assistance - I have bought an accelerometer as well.
The reason for not buying/ordering an Ardupilot is, it takes 2 month for shipment from the USA to my country...
I now own the following:
GPS: EM 406a
Gyro & Acc:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=252
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9423
Processing: Arduino Duemilanove
Airplane: Piper Cub J-3
All I need still before continuing with my coding of the waypoints & returning home with parachute deployment is to get the process the readings from the Gyro&Acc and combining them etc to determine top&bottom to accomplish straight & level flight. To cut to the point, I am struggling to figure out how the Kalman filter works and can't find suitable sample code to work from...
Do you know of some or have some sample code for processing and filtering the readings from the sensors please? I am really fed-up for searching everywhere for it - even though so many people has used it already.
The Autopilot is also tricky because my airplane only has elevators & a rudder.... i.e. no ailerons! :-(
Or, is the software for the Ardupilot open-source or not? I will be able to work from that.
Thanks a lot in advance!
Why do you say that ArduPilot etc are inaccessible because you live in South Africa? We ship anywhere.