Hello diydrones community :)

For those who are interested:  Part 1.

It has been 3 weeks now since I published my first blog post.

Among other things I introduced a first version of a 3D printed camera mounting for the Logitech C920.

Unfortunately, I had to learn that I haven't planned this through very well.

I didn't take into consideration that vibrations might be an issue. But as you can see on the left they are apparently.

As a consequence, I scrapped the old design and made a new one. Now, the mounting is sitting on four little rubber dampers. Thus, all vibrations will be filtered.

The result is much better now.

A close-up of the new mounting can be seen below.

So much for that. :)

I do also have a questions though.

I have been trying to correct the drones position to hover over my target (fluorescent orange cirlce) using the information collected through the vision system.

The function that I'd like to use is the send_ned_velocity() function (documentation). However, my drone is just not reacting to the commands I'm sending. Alternatively, I have also tried the goto_position_target_local_ned() function (documentation), but with the same result: My drone does not move. Any ideas why?

I would appreciate any feedback and advice!

Regards,

drohnebohne

Hello diydrones community :)

As part of my studies I started working on this 3DR X8+ octocopter almost 4 months ago.

At this point it must be said that this is my very first experience with drones.

Nevertheless, the project I am working on is quite ambitious.

The final goal is to have a drone takeoff a

nd land from an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV).

In light of the fact that I have only 2 months left until my visa expires (I am a student from Germany), that goal probably wont be accomplished by me. However, I try to get as much done as possible.

So far, I have used MAVProxy and DroneKit (awesome tool!) to program and fly my desired flight pattern.

Furthermore, I made use of the SITL simulator to test every python module I wrote before taking the drone out to the field.

The flight pattern looks somehow like this:

The drone shall takeoff, fly towards an object of interest, perform a ROI flight, fly back to the USV, and land there.

I do admit that it took me quite a while to read up on the topic, but thanks to you, 3DR, and the wiki documentation I could achieve some successes.

Now that the mission itself is working, I am focusing on the main difficulty and that is landing on the top deck of the USV.

My idea is to develop a vision system that can be used to determine the relative position of the USV in the final stage of the aforementioned mission.

Therefore, I bought the required equipment (Odroid U3, Logitech C920, etc.) and followed this instructions to establish the connection between the companion computer and the Pixhawk.

Furthermore, I designed a frame to mount the webcam underneath the drone. Here is a picture of the 3D printed prototype.So, I guess I can say that I am making progress :)

However, there is one thing that bothers me and that I just can't explain... maybe you guys can help me out once again.

The python module I wrote will be executed when the flight mode is changed to ALT_HOLD.

Whenever the user changes back to LOITER he will gain manual control.

Now, for some reason I have a varying delay between flipping the switch to ALT_HOLD and the drone showing reaction.

In fact, the props begin to spin only after 15 to 84 seconds. When I did connect to the Odroid via PuTTY I also noticed that the change of the flight mode is equally displayed with a major delay. At this point, I am clueless.

Some further information: The Odroid connects to the telem1 port of the Pixhawk. The telem1 baud rate is set to 1500.

The link cable is built out of a FTDI cable and the DF13 6 Pin connector.

I'd really like to hear your suggestions, comments, or clues :)

Regards,

drohnebohne