They are several solutions for the xyz sensors (IMU LOL!):
you can change four 0806 huge resistors in the fma xy sensor or change two 0603 resistors in the z paparazzi sensor. You can also compesate the diferece of gains by software. I can give instructions to hacks the sensor (I love hack). ;-)
I will understand if more than 50% people drop the towel in this project. People do believe autopilots are plug and play. They are quite wrong. I been playing with profesionnal autopilot like cloud cap and micropilot and both came with thousens of options that must be tune exatly like ardupilot. Including PID gains, servos ranges, mixing, etc. That's good for me because in the near future I will have a lot of job tuning ap for others. Also ardupilot is open source and is trying to be as flexible possible (that's is wrong too), this flexibility will cause a lot more problems (imagine it like mac and windows, we are windows of course with a little bit of Linux ;-) ). In one post made here time ago mentioned all the skills requiered in the uav bussiness, including:
pilot skills, electronics skills, programming skills, math and physics skills and even more. But if you have a weak point here is the place where you will improve it.
Get someone filming you while going around the street with your test setup. I am sure in a few years, it will be as funny a memory than it is a serious testing today! We ought to leave some testimony about our pioneering experiments to our grand-children!
I have most of it working....XY and throtle most deffinately works... Not sure about the Z....But the rudder on the out-door walk around test hardly moves with the shield in place .... I live on a street that almost runs north to south so I changed the bearing to 180 in the .h file and walk up and down the street and in circles....The rudder doesn't seem to follow or even move ( GPS indicates lock ) Nieghbours are starting to wonder about me ....Yet before I added the shield I had it following and taking a position in each direction using the NE scetch file ....I have it out of the model now and set up on a test block of foam ....Anything new on getting the setup utility working in XP....Wont't work for me ....Can we add WP's by hand in 2.2 ??? Are there any testimonies to full completion of this project using the setup utility and geting the EasyStar to repeatedly fly to and from Way-Points ....I would love to getting it working before the end of summer ...
Summer is short here ....
@Nick: I have many dreams, but catching up Chris and Jordi is not among them... I hate loosing ;-) What is sure is that those two guys got quite a bit out of many of us numb newbies spread all around the planet in as little as a year or less. I feel I've not had such learning curve in years since graduation, and I've also a nice feeling to be (a tiny) part of an interesting open project. Hey, once in a while, I even KNOW what the damn board is doing !!!
Haha Reto. I am in a very similar situation :D
Now that Ardupilot 2.2 and the Ardushield have been been released hopefully things will level out and the community can catch up with Jordi and begin to contribute.
yes agreed I understand all the aspects of diy and learning. I all for it. I just have to switch my mind from "this should work" to "how can I get it to work" I will get there... much learning to do... It sure seems like it is almost there.... and addiction yes.. I hear ya... mikrokopters are my other additction...
for those like you who didn't understand that it is based on an open source and so it is not a complete RTF (ready to fly) setup, i would say you should have bought a RTF setup as RangeVideo OSD that i s 335 dollars.
for those who would like to learn how to prorgam in C language and who like electronics, take the ardupilot whitch is i'm sure a really good platform to do your own projects...
@steve kloppenburg
wait a bit and i'm sure with a little more money you'll be able to fly your plane with ardupilot soon (and i will hopefully)
Hey Steve, I started playing with ArduPilot 168 and ver. 1.0 code early 2009 I think (not sure, time flies by fast) and still didn't fly any ArduPilot system. I have now 3 boards, a shield, 2 gps chips, and bits and dents and cables, and some more Arduino boards and ATmega chips, a bread board and wires, etc. Nothing flew, not even through an open window.... And I can't regret a minute trying to go forward to look for solutions. Addiction?
agreed on all acounts.. it's just getting old for me because First I have the wrong cable from spark fun, I order the correct one to find out it’s just the usb wires split into a connector, then fma discontinues the z sensor so I get it from pap to find out the connector is different, then the board does not load code properly because the solder jumper is not done (easy fix but when you are told to read the instructions time and again it does not help you find the real problem), then the board does not load code with gps plugged in (not only me having this trouble) now the xy sensor does not work with other z sensors all this adds up to a lot of time and money and it’s not even installed in the plane yet. I am all about diy but there is a point where it’s just playing constant catch up. I am not bitter by any means and don’t mean to sound like it, I am just disappointed that after a month I am actually farther behind then when I started.
Comments
you can change four 0806 huge resistors in the fma xy sensor or change two 0603 resistors in the z paparazzi sensor. You can also compesate the diferece of gains by software. I can give instructions to hacks the sensor (I love hack). ;-)
pilot skills, electronics skills, programming skills, math and physics skills and even more. But if you have a weak point here is the place where you will improve it.
Summer is short here ....
Now that Ardupilot 2.2 and the Ardushield have been been released hopefully things will level out and the community can catch up with Jordi and begin to contribute.
for those who would like to learn how to prorgam in C language and who like electronics, take the ardupilot whitch is i'm sure a really good platform to do your own projects...
@steve kloppenburg
wait a bit and i'm sure with a little more money you'll be able to fly your plane with ardupilot soon (and i will hopefully)
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