Hello guys and girls. I am new here and I wanted to take time to introduce myself for the community and to tell you little bit of my first steps at jDrones.
I am soon to be graduated electrical and electronics engineer and Jani offered me a change for training here at his company. I am total newbie to UAVs. I have no previous experience in UAVs so everything is pretty new for me, but I have been working with some robotics projects at uni before using PIC controllers and IMU sensors. Here is a sample of one of our projects we designed and built from the scratch with my friends. Balancing Ball Bot. It is a bit wobbly as we run out of time from tuning the control loop better before the submission deadline.
Lets talk abit about drones. First of all wow! It has been overwhelmingly confusing, rewarding and FUN to see and to work with the stuff that you guys have developed!
Arduino world takes a bit time for me to adjust with all the libraries handling many of the things that one has to write in the code by themselves with many other controllers.
I have been working with jDrones heavy duty antenna tracker for the past week now. It is based on ArduStation Mega. It listens MAVlink telemetry to calculate correct tilt and heading for the antenna. Existing software for ArduStation is handling many of the things already. Modifying this software for our antenna tracker is very challenging for me. Thousands and thousands of lines of code! Getting to see the antenna turn and follow the drone just feels so nice after all the hard work. There is still lots of work to do with the tracker tho. I had lots of difficulties of understanding MAVlink messages, and how the protocol works. We want to catch MAVlink messages with the tracker and forward them to USB for Mission Planner usage, so you could use the antenna tracker stand alone or as an extension for Mission Planner.
It is been truly fun and I have already learned lots of new things. I am looking forward of sharing the projects and ideas here at DIYdrones.
If you guys have any advises or recommendations for must see videos or must read books for UAV hobbyist I would be happy to hear. Also if you know some helpful articles or websites that you think are good for newbies to study, please let me know! I plan to write once in a while about my time, confusion, difficulties and success at jDrones. If you have any questions or comments let me know!
Have a great Sunday
Marko
Comments
A formal engineering degree is much more valuable than practical experience with UAV's, nowadays. It might be because the industry has matured.
Hi Colin
Yes, I knew it was your nice work, and the tracker part seems to work neatly. We just need to adapt it for the hardware we are using. Hopefully we get everything set up and some nice video for you guys soon.
Marko
Hi Marko,
Great to see progress on integrating the ASM with a tracker. As I guess you know, I designed the first version of the ASM and wrote the code. Unfortunately I haven't managed to get my hands on a tracker yet, hence the minimal testing of that part of the code.
I hope the software is starting to make sense and I look forward to seeing a video of it in action!
Regards,
Colin
I know that box on the table.. :)
Yes Marko has been working hard here and system starts to work rather well already. It has been a pleasure to assist and look him working and solving several puzzles what we work here.
Here are Marko and UP trying to solve some issues on their programs....
Keep up the good work guys.
great to hear about your experiences.
I am interested to know more about what you are planning to do in terms of further development on the ArduStation Mega. Most importantly, I would like to know if you plan to make the ASM mobile - so that the station can be mounted to a support vehicle for long distance flights?
Onnea ja tervetuloa!
Welcome Marko,
as to advice...... . Not much, just read all you can in this site, ask questions and hang on until you find the answer to it. You will have all the UAV fun you can handle.:))
Cheers
Thank you Andrew
welcome to the world of UAVs Marko!