We love FlightGear and all that it stands for, but the truth is that it's a bit complicated for beginners. For the rest of us, there's the old stand-by, Microsoft Flight simulator. There's a free plug-in for MS Flight Simulator 2004 called GPSOut that simply outputs GPS of the current flight to the serial port of your choosing, with whatever NMEA sentences you want. If you've got FS 2004, download that, copy the dll and ini files to your Flight Simulator modules folder and edit the following lines in the GSPout.ini file so that they read like this:
Sentences=RMC,GGA [add any others you want]
Port=COM2 [change to whatever port you're using for your serial connection that substitutes for your GPS]
Speed=4800
There's no sign of the plug-in in the FS program when it's running, but if you've copied it to the right directory, it should be silently outputting the GPS in the background while you're flying. So fly to the area where you'll be testing your real UAV and you should see the correct GPS data streaming into your Basic Stamp autopilot.
Here's a video of this working (that's me and my ten-year-old):
When I get some time I will use CHcomm and GPSout to make a UAV breakout test box for FS2004 - Servo leads input to FS2004 with pitch sensor outputs. This will be Ideal for testing UAV hardware at home for extented periods of time. I already have GPS out working just need CHcomm and a PIC circuit....
Now, an autopilot has more inputs then just GPS.
Is there a way to also get attitude and altitude-data
from MS-FlightSim to translate into fake-sensor-readings?
I've been looking at using X-Plane (www.x-plane.com) from Laminar Research for testing my code. It has a setting that allows it to be used in the big simulators, so everything is outputable (is that a word?). The plus side is that you can also custom build planes in X-Plane too. You can also get an adaptor to use with your radio at http://www.milehighwings.com/
Comments
see; http://www.jimspage.co.nz/main.htm
Portdrvr is faster but I think it only reads instruments, you cant write to the control surfaces as with CHcomm.
http://www.simprojects.nl/interfacing_2.htm
When I get some time I will use CHcomm and GPSout to make a UAV breakout test box for FS2004 - Servo leads input to FS2004 with pitch sensor outputs. This will be Ideal for testing UAV hardware at home for extented periods of time. I already have GPS out working just need CHcomm and a PIC circuit....
Is there a way to also get attitude and altitude-data
from MS-FlightSim to translate into fake-sensor-readings?