Hi all,
I'm new here, looking to get into UAVs and looking for a few pointers. Rather than going straight for flying vehicles and chopping my fingers off, I thought I'd start with a remote control car and learn how to control it through the computer and how to integrate things such as cameras etc.
I'm a software developer so I have no worries on that front, but one thing I am wondering is, what is the modern day way to control electronics through the computer (as parallel ports are now long gone)? I did find the mbed[1] development board, which looks like it may do the job, would this allow me to control electrical signals through the computer or will it only allow me to upload code onto an IC?
While I would like to eventually get onto flying vehicles with automated systems etc, I would still like to be able to connect through the computer to control it.. how do you guys usually do this?
Looking forward to your replies.
Regards,
Adam
[1] http://mbed.org/
Replies
The main aim of this community is more focussed on getting the control within the aircraft rather than ground based. The reasoning is mostly that modern microcontrollers can handle the navigation and sensing needs onboard just as well as ground based CPUs and involve less risk of loss of communications.
We are moving toward increased capability to upload waypoints and further adjust the mission parameters during the mission, but again the onboard AP runs the show.
The FPV community has several remote sytems involving PCs (usually laptops) sometimes using joysticks etc., which assist the human pilot, but still maintain control on the ground using downlinked video.