If you're like me, you've been asked plenty of times if your RC unit can be controlled by an iPhone. Now you may be able to answer yes!
Hobbyking IOS & Android 4CH WiFi Receiver
Four channel, talks over wifi, app works by pseudo-stick or tilt control, mysterious reference to "video function", failsafe... seems pretty nifty!
It looks like the unit joins a hard-coded network name, and the password is printed on the receiver.
Reference manual here. The Internet believes this to be the app.
I've been wanting an indoor-sized quad for a while, so when HK announced their new MicroQuad I sent off and got one. I was having some motor problems, and Andreas suggested it that the problem might not be in the motor or ESC, but in the HK controller board.
We swapped out the board with an APM2, and as you can see it flew quite nicely modulo some PID tuning. It's pretty neat that the APM2 is small enough to fit with no problem!
It's definitely the smallest APM-controlled thing I've seen -- any other tiny things out there?
If you've been wanting to understand a bit more about PID controllers, unit 5 of Sebastian Thrun's Udacity course "Programming a Robotic Car" has some nice coverage of that topic and the theory behind it.
.... While waiting for his green card, the 21-year-old was marooned in his apartment, unable to work, attend school or obtain a driver’s license.
On the other hand, he had an Internet connection. A Nintendo Wii. A radio-controlled toy helicopter his mother had given him to help kill time.
Tinkering with the Wii’s control wand and a $60 gyroscope he had purchased on eBay, he modified the helicopter to fly itself, just like the $5 million Predator unmanned aerial vehicles deployed by the U.S. military.
Five years later, Mr. Munoz is co-founder and CEO of 3D Robotics, a San Diego-based company that has 18 employees and earned more than $300,000 in revenue in December producing components for hobbyist drones.
Here's NASA's presentation at the recent AMA expo. It's about 75 minutes in five parts.
Are you a pilot looking for a handy means to help keep you out of trouble -- such as, say, flying into immoveable objects like mountains or the ground? Well, in the future, there may be an app for that!
Sebastian Thrun, most well know for the Google Car and his recent online AI class at Stanford, is branching out with a new startup focussing on online education.
He will be teaching a free 7-week class "Programming a Robotic Car" starting on February 20.
There's no direct link to the class, but http://www.udacity.com has a click-through at the top of the page. The other class currently on the site is "Building a Search Engine".
The Syllabus:
Description: This class, taught by one of the foremost experts in AI, will teach you basic methods in Artificial Intelligence, including: probabilistic inference, computer vision, machine learning, and planning, all with a focus on robotics. Extensive programming examples and assignments will apply these methods in the context of building self-driving cars. You will get a chance to visit, via video, the leading research labs in the field, and meet the scientists and engineers who are building self-driving cars at Stanford and Google.
Prerequisites: The instructor will assume solid knowledge of programming, all programming will be in Python. Knowledge of probability and linear algebra will be helpful.
Week 1: Basics of probability
Car localization with particle filters
Week 2: Gaussians and continuous probability
Tracking other cars with Kalman filters
Week 3: Image Processing and Machine Learning
Finding objects in sensor data
Week 4: Planning and search
Determining where to drive with A* search
Finding optimal routes with dynamic programming
Week 5: Controls
Controlling steering and speeds with PID
Week 6: Putting it all together
Programming a self-driving car
Week 7: Final Exam
Exam testing your knowledge
Background:
Professor Departs Stanford U., Hoping to Teach 500,000 Students at Online Start-Up
If by "Stormy" you mean "Somewhat Cloudy", and by "Sea" you mean "San Francisco Bay"...
Radio contact lost, Zephyr II with APM flies to points unknown, rescued with APM and most other electronics functioning.
Full story and pics:
http://eastbay-rc.blogspot.com/2012/01/zii-in-east-bay.html
We're pulling some information from the log to see if there's anything interesting.
The 2012 AMA Expo (happening this week) will be featuring the NASA DROID, a drone that's being used as an educational vehicle for high school students.
Come and see and learn how NASA Dryden Flight Research Center uses the DROID or Dryden Remotely Operated Integrated Drone for flight research, pilot training and the INSPIRE student internship program.
The DROID is one of four aircraft used for INSPIRE or Interdisciplinary National Science Project Incorporating Research and Education Experience. INSPIRE is a multi-tiered year-round program designed for students in ninth-to-12th grades who are interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and careers.
“The INSPIRE summer internship program provides the opportunity for students interested in careers in engineering to get direct project experience prior to entering their senior year of high school or first semester of college,” said Candace Clements, Student & Faculty Programs Coordinator at NASA Dryden’s Office of Education.
Didn't intend to take any pics (the hat portion of ye olde hatcam being misplaced), but things went so well I was able to fly one-handed and hold the iphone in the other hand. Beautiful!!
From the air. I hadn't planned on doing this either, but things were so smooth I taped the GoPro and sent it off. Simple mode is going to be a Godsend for arial photography.
Spinning one-handedly. This is cut from the first video, but it's so unique and impressive I wanted to hilight it by itself.
An oscilloscope turned out to be a pretty handy debugging tool when trying to troubleshoot my APM2 ESC problem. Here's a shakycam showing how I used mine to verify the problem was with the ESC and not with the APM2.
I got everything together last night and couldn't wait until the morning to go out, so I took a quick flight in the basement. Stability was pretty good. I made a quick video of simple mode too.
Both Andreas and I had the same problem... fortunately he had it before I did, and had figured out a workaround.
Problem: when powering up, not all motors will spin.
Workaround: apply power to the APM2 before attaching the main battery. You can do this either via USB or by attaching a spare battery/ESC to one of the output lines. As soon as the board boots up, hook up the main battery and remove the second battery.
Had a great time maidening Andreas' new RiteWing Zephyr II with the APM. The Zii flies very nicely, and works well with APM.
We flew in manual, stabilized, fbw-a, and auto modes. We reduced the default speed from 45 to 35, which gave a nice smooth flight with a comfortable airspeed for our flying site.
There's some onboard video as well. It's interesting to see the differences in turning in manual, fbw-a, and auto mode.
Next up: try using APM in conjunction with FPV.
More details and videos here:
http://eastbay-rc.blogspot.com/2011/12/ritewing-zephyr-ii-ardupilot-maiden.html
I recently presented a brief overview of my current Arcticopter project and some of the underlying technology. I added some notes and uploaded the slides here. This slide got the most laughs, and there's a cautionary note at the end.
Using two gyros and a PID controller in custom hardware, this bipedal robot stabilizes itself as it rides around on its bike.
(in Japanese, but Google Translate provides something reasonably understandable.
Inspired by the recently announced APM carrier for the Bixler, I made my own carrier for the Hawk Sky. Build notes and more photos here:
http://eastbay-rc.blogspot.com/2011/10/apm-carrier-for-hawk-sky-and-related.html
You're probably familiar with Al Shan Mao who vblogs on RC topics from China. He's got a new video up previewing a UAV he will be receiving and reviewing. Does anybody know anything about this unit?
Highlights:
Hooray! Finally got the xbee assembled and tested... still seems somewhat miraculous to be logged into to a computer flying around overhead.
Went with copilot Andreas and his friend Reto, (an old schoolmate visiting from Switzerland -- they did their robotics project together), to the park to try fully automatic flight controlled by waypoints.
Had some initial difficulties connecting the xbee. It turned out that rebooting the vmware windows session on my macbook fixed that problem. The pre-cached map tiles worked well.
Shiny laptop screen + Full Sun = invisible.... will figure out some boxy thing to provide some shade for the screen.
Video cap of part of the flight is attached below. The waypoints are wrong. Be sure and save the waypoints to a file after you fiddle with them if you intend to play back the log files later.
The main goal was to get the unit in the air, and exercise all the modes. All of that worked and we finished up with everything intact, so we considered it a great success... Hooray!!
Still need to hook up the magnetometer, pitot tubes, and battery monitor. But it seems things are so far going not too badly! Also need to do: hook up APM to the simulator, build APM from source and fly that.
note: having problems displaying video; post mirrored here:
http://eastbay-rc.blogspot.com/2011/10/first-test-of-apm-auto-mode-drone.html
Hooray, got to the point where I've got APM set up and in a plane (Hawk Sky). Now I need a bit of help diagnosing a flight problem.
I took off and got some altitude, and then flipped into stabilize mode. As you can see from the video, as soon as I did this, the plane started spiraling down and to the right.
I brought the plane back in and recalibrated gyros, but still couldn't get it to work.
Any advice appreciated!
Update: As noted in the comments, I had the ailerons reversed.
Revised ground test and setup notes here.
Following that, here's what I did to reset and try again.
An interesting photo essay "Chasing Nature" which shows several flying projects inspired by bugs and birds. Not much detail, but enough context to allow googling of the original project pages. This picture is captioned:
Instead of working to build and control robotic insects, Michel Maharbiz and collaborators at the University of California, Berkeley, hijacked the real thing. This six-centimeter-long flower beetle is fitted with electronics that stimulate its brain and flight muscles. Signals delivered by radio waves command its flight. Maharbiz is working on miniaturizing the electronics to control smaller insects, such as houseflies.
