Posted by Jordi Muñoz on September 11, 2009 at 1:00pm
I have to be honest; i tried to kept this project as a little secret to void people waiting for it, so i have plenty of time to prototype. Not to mention that everything was running very slow because the school and we were moving the business to another location.I would like to give special thanks to Chris Anderson, Nathan Seidle (from SparkFun) and specially to William Premerlani, we've spent a great time together trying to adapt the code into Arduino Environment, a great experience for me (absolutely). Thank you Bill!The ArduIMU V2 is intended to be used for learning and general robotics, also will set the starting point for next incoming IMU based ArduPilot's (at the end of this year) and lot more! The code is based on the very well known Arduino Environment and is Open Source (of course!).The hardware consists on 3 axis accelerometers/gyroscopes, dual power regulator (3.3v and 5v), GPS port, an Atmega328@16mhz and a lot of status LED's.The code uses Direction Cosine Matrix code (By Bill Premerlani) and some other stuff extracted from ArduPilot (developed by me). You can read more about DCM here.The mass production is not clear yet, but the sensors can be purchased now from SparkFun or from our store. For now i will assemble just a few boards (ready to use) and sell them the next week (controller board with sensors) for around 100 bucks, sorry... For around $99 dlls. =) But being honest i will have to increase tiny bit the price to keep the DIYdrones store alive! Moving the business was kinda expensive.About the boards color, i will kindly ask Nate to change the color to blue because I'm unable to match his red (mine is more like orange). All the incoming boards from us will be blue anyway. =)The code will be released next week with the hardware. Please be patient. Thank you!Here is a demo video:
To be fair, although he is an expert hand-solderer, we do have a reflow oven, too. So these boards should look as good as any "pro" board, since they use the same solder paste and oven process. Just no pick-and-place robot!
I like how Jordi says " the board is not assembled "professionally" I have seen his soldering work in person and it is incredible! better than any hand assembly I have ever seen. once again he is being way to modest...
Keep up the good work and looking forward to the IMU boards release.
I think that Jordi is going to produce a high performance autopilot by adding an IMU on top of the great software foundation that he has already built. I think everyone is going to like it a lot. It looks to me that Jordi is going to take it to the next level.
Regarding your question about testing in actual flight conditions, I have some data that indicates that Jordi's board and firware will do a great job.
I am using the same LISY gyros on the UAV DevBoard that Jordi is using, and the same DCM algorithm for computing attitude in my firmware. The gyros and the algorithm have been working great for me in airplanes, several pilots have reported back their observations. I have now made over 100 flights using the same basic attitude computation that Jordi is using. I am presently working with JohnMac on helicopter control. Here are our observations:
As far as vibration is concerned, there is no problem with the wind. The IMU stabilizes the aircraft quite well against the wind. High sustained g forces are not a problem. They do not impact the gyros. Jordi has compensated the IMU computations by computing centrifugal acceleration, and he and I have tested it together in a sustained turn in a car around a traffic circle at 0.8 g, with peak accelerations of 1.0 g.
Vibration is a consideration, but not a problem. JohnMac has found that the amplitude and frequency of the vibrations in a helicopter disrupt the LISY gyros, so I would not recommend using them for heli applications.
However, the LISY gyros function just fine in airplanes. I have positive reports back from several pilots who have used them in a variety of airframes. In some cases if you mount the board too close to a source of vibration, there can be borderline interference, but it can be completely cured with minimal steps to isolate vibration, such as placing a pad of foam rubber between the board and the aircraft.
I am looking forward to acquire ArduIMU with its DCM code in Arduino.
Are the code and hardware going to be compatible with the ArduinoMega board?
The demonstration video looks good. However, IMU will be subject to high amplitude vibrations (due to electric motor, and wind) and may be high "g" motiotions. How these purturbations are going to effect the attitude determination? Have you tested the ArduIMU on real flight conditions?
Comments
Keep up the good work and looking forward to the IMU boards release.
I think that Jordi is going to produce a high performance autopilot by adding an IMU on top of the great software foundation that he has already built. I think everyone is going to like it a lot. It looks to me that Jordi is going to take it to the next level.
Regarding your question about testing in actual flight conditions, I have some data that indicates that Jordi's board and firware will do a great job.
I am using the same LISY gyros on the UAV DevBoard that Jordi is using, and the same DCM algorithm for computing attitude in my firmware. The gyros and the algorithm have been working great for me in airplanes, several pilots have reported back their observations. I have now made over 100 flights using the same basic attitude computation that Jordi is using. I am presently working with JohnMac on helicopter control. Here are our observations:
As far as vibration is concerned, there is no problem with the wind. The IMU stabilizes the aircraft quite well against the wind. High sustained g forces are not a problem. They do not impact the gyros. Jordi has compensated the IMU computations by computing centrifugal acceleration, and he and I have tested it together in a sustained turn in a car around a traffic circle at 0.8 g, with peak accelerations of 1.0 g.
Vibration is a consideration, but not a problem. JohnMac has found that the amplitude and frequency of the vibrations in a helicopter disrupt the LISY gyros, so I would not recommend using them for heli applications.
However, the LISY gyros function just fine in airplanes. I have positive reports back from several pilots who have used them in a variety of airframes. In some cases if you mount the board too close to a source of vibration, there can be borderline interference, but it can be completely cured with minimal steps to isolate vibration, such as placing a pad of foam rubber between the board and the aircraft.
Best regards,
Bill
We don't support RangeVideo products.
DCM was strictly developed for electric aircraft. But can be easily used for other robotic stuff.
Are the code and hardware going to be compatible with the ArduinoMega board?
The demonstration video looks good. However, IMU will be subject to high amplitude vibrations (due to electric motor, and wind) and may be high "g" motiotions. How these purturbations are going to effect the attitude determination? Have you tested the ArduIMU on real flight conditions?
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