In one fell swoop i've bought almost everything i need for this project. Hoorah! This means its time to post because, well, too many people are in the dark. Since i already did the Goals List in the last one, this will be the materials listThis plane will use solid wireless broadband to accomplish the goals of flight control uplink and video and sensor output downlink There will be no receiver. The reason for this is that i will be well out of range of most, if not all radio transmitters. If it fails, i do have a failsafe "come home" signal, emergency drop zones, and an emergency parachute that will be separate from the wifi, but i do need these options explored further.Ground station-Hardware*R50e Laptop- Basically my spare laptop. It needs some love. That and its usb ports work lol.*Saitek x45 Joystick- Call me the Mad Hatter. mucho Hats= mucho control for my cameras!*Buffalo WHR-HP-54G loaded with DD-WRT and some sort of directional antenna that is TBD- This model was picked as not only did it have hte best range of all the DD-WRT models, but it did it at a high bandwidth with the built in amp! overclocked, pumped up with power, and full bandwidth dedicated to one purpose: data between the R50e and the Predator. Should get a minimum of 1000 feet of high bandwidth (esp since those are stock numbers) and a max of 2-3 miles. The Direction antenna will post likely have stepper motors on it to control where it is pointing.Software*VLC- have to. I am torn between having the onboard Boser HS-2605 just streaming the video, or having it do all the preprocessing and it streaming just the desktop and me using Remote Desktop, Maxivista, or the like.*Joystick2mouse3.0- does as the name suggests. Allows you to control while a bit of the joystick's functions and map them to keys. This is just so i don't have to do additional programming; i'd rather someone else do it ;)*My stuff- whatever God forced me to program, or in other words, forced me to ask a friend to do it lol.*Firefox 3.0- I think that, if i do it just streaming video, i will do a flash and java/C++/C# based webpage.Possible problems?*Video Latency- hopefully solved due to such a powerful router*Me sucking- generally solved by me asking someone else to help*Lost connection- to be solved by the HS-2605 monitoring the tx/rx of the wifi. If i do get out of range, a simple program to tell it to come back into range (come Home) is all that is necessary. "Home" will have a GPS location to it that will be updated every 10 seconds. I will also try to use a parachute where, if connection is completely lost, or there is a catastrophic failure, it is given several "safety zones" where it flys down to about 80 ft, kills power, and depolys a parachute. I will retrieve it from there.UAVHardware*Boser HS 2605- Via processor, 256 ram, PC104 goodies. this is what is the brains of the UAV operation*Jupiter JMM-512- This PC104 vechicle power supply can take a wide range of voltages and also has a +/- 12 and 5V outputs. Pumps out 50W of power.*Sensoray 311M Framegrabber- This PC104 frame grabber will be what is getting the camera feed. If i can get VLC to interface with this, all is good. Does 30fps with one camera, 15-8 with 2. Since i will be having two, i will be giving one high priority and the other low priority and switching between the two as neccessary, ie, if i tell hte plane to circle an area, i do not need to get a "realtime" feed of the FPV, but i would like a nice realtime view of the panoramic. The SDK allows for this. Another thing the SDK allows for is image scaling.*Parallax USB servo Control- From the computer, this sucker gets all the info it needs to guide the plane*FMA Co pilot 4 w/interface cable- To do all the cool things Chris said it can do and make life easierHawkings HUWG1 USB wireless adatper- picked SOLELY for the extremal removable antenna, all in a USB stick module. Range is exceptional. Hopefully the gain will be too*GM-11 GPS (magnetic mount removed)- GPS. nothing more i can say.*VTI SCP1000 MEMs Barometric Pressure Sensor- for an altimeter.*Ultrasonic Range Finder - Maxbotix LV-EZ0- So someone once said that take offs were not currently possible with the software and abilities. At some point, i want to change that :) I figured giving the plane the ability to see objects in its path up to 255 inches would be a good thing.*Sony SUPERHASS CCD and Computer (Some crazy number wiht AMS at the end, i'll read it later)- wiht manual zoom and focus, and the JMM512, i hope to power this camera lens and use it to spy at the ground belowSoftwareAUTOPILOTVLCRobo control (or whatever else parallax has for free on their site)FirefoxThe interface thing for the Co PilotGPS softwareMSRS
thanks. at the moment, i'm done building the main sensor board. Just have to glue the mounts on now. I was going to go through all new updates on the 21st as that is my one month mark since i decided what to do:). All i know is that this camcorder is pissing me off lol:)
lol you and a friend of mine would get along well. I'm the same way, but sadly, i have the summer to work on this, so i am under a bit of a time constraint with limited skills. I also suck balls at soldering:). I'm working on it though, as i am with programming:). Bought me some "helping hands". lol. Tell me how that IMU is coming! I too will one day like to make my own :).
Budget...hehe, you wouldn't believe me if i told you. Its under a grand. That's all i'm going to say. I'm not doing LiDAR for a bit though (like, after the thing flies, and does what i propose it to do well)
chopsuey, hehe thanks, but don't give me props till i'm done. Ambition without followthrough is about as good as a dream. why didn't you go to sparkfun and buy the $109 IMU? I got it for my heli.
I need help porting the autopilot from BASIC or WM5 to 2000/XP. I know the WM5 uses VB, so i'm hoping that someone can smack me, tell me that its easy, then tell me how :)
I think when this sucker flies, i want to add LiDAR. I was thinking of doing a simple rangefinder, where using simple trig, i can get the GPS location of the object that i am tracking, and then i thought it would be nice to do LiDAR
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Budget...hehe, you wouldn't believe me if i told you. Its under a grand. That's all i'm going to say. I'm not doing LiDAR for a bit though (like, after the thing flies, and does what i propose it to do well)
chopsuey, hehe thanks, but don't give me props till i'm done. Ambition without followthrough is about as good as a dream. why didn't you go to sparkfun and buy the $109 IMU? I got it for my heli.
I need help porting the autopilot from BASIC or WM5 to 2000/XP. I know the WM5 uses VB, so i'm hoping that someone can smack me, tell me that its easy, then tell me how :)
I think when this sucker flies, i want to add LiDAR. I was thinking of doing a simple rangefinder, where using simple trig, i can get the GPS location of the object that i am tracking, and then i thought it would be nice to do LiDAR
BTW, autonomous take-offs are pretty easy (use a catapult)--it's autonomous landings that are hard.