If I wanted to recreate the wheel and go through the same things that the ArduPilot team went through, I was hoping I would find that information here. So, I'm wondering if Chris or anybody else have some links for me to explain things like,
Telemetry - How it works, what it needs to do and provide.
GPS - What it needs to provide and how it is used
IMU's - How it takes that information in, processes it and decides on how to correct the aircraft.
The big one is the electronics.. How did the appropriate parts on the IMU get selected? (i.e. Math behind it, etc)
I know this is a tall order, and it may be something that the team doesn't want to explain for reasons of someone copying it, but as a person who likes to look inside the hood, I'm super curious. Maybe under the introduction section we can have links and explanations in technical detail.
I'm not an EE or have any sort of electronics background. I work in IT, but I'm not a software engineer, but I can go through code, but enjoy reading about how it all works and seeing the code together.
Any help would be great.
Replies
There are some great starting points on here if you want to self-educate, and can stomach the math. My starting point was the various Mahony papers, then Bill Premerlani's DCM IMU Theory paper, followed by his matrix rotation paper, Euler angles paper, wind estimation paper, and all his relevant discussions on here. That's in addition to reading several dozen research papers on IMU PID controls, IMU fusion algorithms, unscented kalman filters, extended kalman filters, and novel approaches at estimation and correction.
It took me about a week of poking around and reading all the project descriptions on here before being able to assess what it was I didn't know. At that point, I at least knew what to look for. Then, the real education began. But... you have to have a stomach for math if you want to develop "the better mouse trap."
Good luck in your search. Until you master everything, please keep your UAV away from my home. :)
I think that is the real problem. Yes, I do know the old saying of RTFM, it would just be great if there was a semi-organized manual to read. Instead it's tons of posts, comments, links that give you no starting basis or anything. It is truly trying to find a needle in the haystack type of learning. While, that may work for some as they are lucky and come across a link that takes them off in their progress, some sort of organization in the documentation is necessary for the majority.
Again, thank you for the starting point Lew. That is exactly what I was looking for and not just the draconian method of learning that seems to be found on most corners of the internet.
The threads, blogs, and forums posts here on the site show the development of many of the DIYDrones projects and all of them show the growth from an idea to their present point.
Being open source, the "under the hood" part is entirely transparent and open to input from anyone.