Discussions

Hello, I'm pretty new to the quadrotor field. I built a quadrotor using an ardupilot and arduIMU, but pretty much used the cookbook recipe to do it. I'm not really sure how things work. I've tried to do some reading, but I'm not sure if I understand correctly. What I understand about the IMU is that it combines data from multiple sensors (GPS, gyro, etc) to obtain a more accurate fix of location that with GPS alone. It then passes data to the ardupilot, or Arduino MEGA, which does the neccesary computing to control the quadrotor to the desired position.

That being said, I want to do something completely different that I think could use the arduIMU. I want to use the arduino as essentially a more accurate GPS for a vehicle. I have installed a car PC in my car, but the GPS doesn't work as well as some factory systems (which use wheel speed and angle sensors in addition to plain GPS). For example, it loses fix in tunnels, and sometimes thinks I go off raod when in windy hills with lots of trees.

Long story short, I want to know if it is possible to use jsut the arduIMU or the arduIMU plus another arduino to determine position (as it would on a quadrotor), but instead of using that data to control a quadrotor, convert it into NMEA sentences, which could be passed on to a usb-serial adapter which the PC simply treats like a gps reciever.

TL;DR How can I make and arduIMU and/or arduPilot output NMEA sentences to be parsed by a third device which typically only understands NMEA position data.

Thank you.