Gender
Male
About
Location
Fredericksburg, VA
About Me:
self-taught computer programmer, novice RC flyer, engineering college student
Please tell us a bit about your UAV interest
Interested in testing the limits of small-scale automatic aviation, trying to find a project that I can contribute to
Hometown:
Fredericksburg, VA
Activity Feed
"@Tom,
We did not use two autopilots, by any rational definition of "autopilot". We used Aries to fly the airplane, and Arducopter to provide position data. I think that's pretty clear from our technical paper and from my previous posts. I assume…"
We did not use two autopilots, by any rational definition of "autopilot". We used Aries to fly the airplane, and Arducopter to provide position data. I think that's pretty clear from our technical paper and from my previous posts. I assume…"
"@Tim Thanks for the heads-up. I've just sent the following message to Gary of SUAS news:Gary,
I see that our listing again includes ArduPilot. Can you please clarify in the listing that our Flight Controller is VCU Aries, and our position sensor…"
I see that our listing again includes ArduPilot. Can you please clarify in the listing that our Flight Controller is VCU Aries, and our position sensor…"
"Sure. I think you pretty much described it though - we've swapped out actual GPS and Magnetometer signals for the equivalent data coming from the Pixhawk, which benefits from their inertial navigation and Kalman filter algorithms. We did this by…"
"I'm on Virginia Commonwealth University's team. We run our own flight control system, both hardware and software. Chris, could you please fix this on your posting? We're quite proud of our FCS. (Nothing against ArduPilot either, it's great and…"
My university has been experimenting with their own flight controller for some time now. It's got pretty solid airplane control and simple copter control (angle and rate mode), but for the time being we can't create a Kalman filter to get good…
"David, noone's arguing against that. I think we all, including the OP, understand that Ardurover can do boats. Dat0 prefers to work from scratch, maybe for learning, maybe for other reasons. It's a perfectly reasonable decision. Sometimes having…"
"Sure, what you're talking (at least in part) about is called crosstrack correction. (APM actually replaced this with an entirely different navigation algorithm, but it still works...).
The basic idea is that with simple movement, you constantly…"
The basic idea is that with simple movement, you constantly…"
I think the title pretty much says it all. I'd like to control the yaw acceleration particularly, and the yaw rate while in auto missions. Seems like there must be a parameter for this, but I can't find it.Edit: maybe a bug? I've found…
"I finally figured it out, and (perhaps not surprisingly) it wasn't APMs fault, but a slightly loose motor mount that would rotate sideways in flight (only slightly though, so they still made enough lift not to crash the copter).
There was a clue…"
There was a clue…"
I'm having an issue where the copter frequently yaws unexpectedly. I believe the copter is accurately controlling it's yaw, so the yaw movement is being generated somewhere within the control system. I've checked that my RC Rudder input is…
"Huh, I stand corrected. So GPS is always being used to more accurately level the aircraft, even when it's not active for position control. Thanks for pointing that out."
"That's totally understandable. Although it's a bit frustrating not to go full-auto right away when you bought this flight controller that does all this cool stuff, it's going to save you a lot of money and headache in the long run by being able to…"
"Stabilize, AltHold, and Acro don't use GPS at all. They don't make any attempt to hold position and the aircraft will definitely drift in these modes. You can fly an APM aircraft in these modes without a GPS attached at all.
Land mode will use…"
Land mode will use…"
"That's the key thing I was going to write in with. Make sure you test the copter one system at a time, and take time to learn which sensors contribute to which types of motion, and learn to set them one at a time.
In Stabilize mode, you're using…"
In Stabilize mode, you're using…"
"Um, the accelerometers DO measure gravity. Z should be about -9.8 when at rest. They couldn't separate acceleration due to gravity from acceleration due to motion, even if they wanted to."
"Painting over the pixracer will destroy the barometer, ruining the flight controller."
