Here are some instructions and suggestions to assemble the ArduPilot Shield. But remember: You can always do it your way. You can buy a complete kit here.
First i recommend to solder the headers (either female of males) in the Ardupilot board, do not matters if you put the females header on the shield or in the ArduPilot board. I personally recommend to put the female headers on the active board, in this case ArduPilot. If you have male pins and you make contact with something you may cause a short circuit and toast it, otherwise with the female headers the board is "protected".
After soldering the headers on the Ardupilot board, place the opposite headers on top of it as indicated in the picture. In this way the pins will be right aligned and you will be able to remove it easily.
Then place the ArduPilot Shield on top and solder it. Be careful of not add too much soldering or the liquid solder may go to the button and you will be unable to remove the shield (happened to me once!)
Ready? Come on hurry! The result is a nice and well aligned shield. ;-)
Now you can solder the pins for the FTDI connector. Remember you can buy the official FTDI cable in our store, here. Has a long cable and is very practical on field when you are testing.
Now get some servo extensions like in the picture. You can buy them in our store too here
Now cut them slowly and painful, no mercy please! You will use both ends later.
Now solder the female side of the servo extension to the board. This connector will go to the receiver. I recommend to cut them as short is possible to void the big ball of wires inside the airplane. I personally like to remove the Power and Ground cables to the other connectors, leaving just the signal to eliminate the "big ball of wires", or at least leave two with Power and Ground to add some redundancy.
Now turn the Ardupilot and solder a jumper wire from "digital 8" to the "mux3", in order to enable the throttle control!The color of the wire is your choice, white looks nice with SparkFun logo. ;-)
Did you remember the redundancy thing? Well i extremely recommend to add hot glue or something to holds the wire in the bottom of the board. The everyday use will fatigue the wire and eventually will broke. I have learned this the hard way. One day the receiver rudder cable failed and i was unable to manually control it (i was flying!!!!), i was expecting to finally lost my EasyStar forever and definitely jump to Funjet and never came back, but the Autopilot was working fine, because the failure was from the receiver to the multiplexor. Anyway, i just switch to RTL mode and EasyStar was flying around me and luckily at that time i was controlling the throttle manually so i cut the throttle and ArduPilot land the EasyStar nicely. Chris once mentioned: that the human variable is the problem.
Now is time to solder the Infrared sensors. This is up to you and you can use anyway you want. In my case i developed a custom and redundant cable (locked!).A little bit of help with the FMA sensors:
The "Only For Girls" pin is not used.
You have a picture of the complete cable here with the FMA connectors. ;-)
Now take the other end of the servo extension and cut one cm of the power line (red wire).
Solder it in digital pin 6, this will be used as the "Remove Before Flight Plug" used to set home position. You can use any bind plug like this one or make you own (Also available soon).And you can also add any external reset button as indicated in the green arrow. Also available soon in our store.
Now an extra precaution: Please zoom the picture and look the silver hairs at end of the connector. This is a potential threat! You must cut that little metal hairs, if not you may burn your boards! I also learned it the hard way. ;-)
You can add now the Power Divider Cable, in order to know the voltage of your battery, this cable must be connected in the positive pole of your LIPO.And finally you can use a servo connector to plug your radio modem. That's what i did! This way is to noisy, modems require a lot of current, it will work but can cause some problems. I suggest to feed the radio modem with a direct 5V lines not coming from the GPS ports.Here you can get 5V for the radio modem:
Schematic:
[UPDATE]: The IR port labels are wrong, they suppose to be A0,A1,A2,5V,GND.[UPDATE2]: Assembly pictures of ArduShield V2 can are here.Good Luck!
Yes i can, but is no matter for weight is also the size. They weight may be 3 oz, but is to bulky that do not fit the box sometimes, like the FTDI cable so i had to play with variables. Also envelope is cheaper, but i can select between envelope or box and maybe lightweight stuff can not be fitted in the envelope or because can be damaged. But when i adjust the USPS i get something wrong with FEDEX or viseversa.
Is very complicated, and also first class mail international i don't have the option to create labels automatically i need to do it manually and i have to pay extra 2.50 dlls for the box because is not free (priority boxes are free). So i will have to wait until i can afford high quantity's boxes and invest in official USPS equipment rather than paying shipping rates out of my wallet. Numbers indicate that is better to loose a a costumer that will only pay 1.5 dlls for something that investing 500 dlls in that equipment. :S
I found the connectors from a China company, but in high quantity's. And the $3.98 was actually like 11 dlls and i had to pay the difference right out of my pocket :/. My bad.
My problem is that i don't how to identify when you order small stuff and big stuff and make the right charge.
Hi guys,
Can anyone tell me the name/type of the IR lead socket (for the pcb) and the FMA plugs?
If I can find the plugs and sockets I can make my own.
I have been to the 'store' but the postage is more than the lead ($7.50 for the lead...$12.95 postage),
I have just bought the Ardupilot Shield and the postage was only $3.96 but I can't find that option.
Thanks
John
Hi Jordi,
Want to know. How the shield airspeed and altitude sensor will perform..? I mean will it hold the current airspeed and altitude at the time we switch to waypoint/rtl ? or the one we enter in the setup utility ?
Is throttle and elevator is in loop or independent.. i.e. if the altitude and airspeed is low then the set , to gain desired set altitude will it also increase the airspeed (throttle ) with up elevator ?
Regards
SID
Yes, Jordi. I think I understand it. With all the "floats" I had in my code, the progam execution came to a slow crawl. So I assume you will use the raw sensor data in ArduPilot as one of the variables carefully matched with the functions it's controlling in the air, and let the ground station software/computer do the hard math.
That's pretty smart, because it will very considerably reduce work on the ArduPilot by only using raw data internally to keep the plane stabilized/navigate while the actual speed values, etc will be only "read" on the ground where it's needed to be monitored on the first place.
Airspeed is only to know the airspeed. The altitude error will change the airspeed set point (increasing or decreasing throttle) and also the elevator. You can define the range and gains of each one.
yes Tom , it's a good idea for later development, i think it'll be easy to do.
Jordi, i wanted to know if the altitude hold control (with air sensor) is acting only on throttle or on elevator also?
it may be a stupide question, but my plane is set up to stay flat even with full throttle, so it maybe annoying if the ardupilot is not moving the elevator as well.
Tom, i guess you are using the same formulas than me. But i will remove them. Makes no sense. Is better if we use the raw data coming from the sensor. Then in ground we can compute the airspeed. And to calculate "set point" we do the conversion the opposite way (manually).
Comments
Yes i can, but is no matter for weight is also the size. They weight may be 3 oz, but is to bulky that do not fit the box sometimes, like the FTDI cable so i had to play with variables. Also envelope is cheaper, but i can select between envelope or box and maybe lightweight stuff can not be fitted in the envelope or because can be damaged. But when i adjust the USPS i get something wrong with FEDEX or viseversa.
Is very complicated, and also first class mail international i don't have the option to create labels automatically i need to do it manually and i have to pay extra 2.50 dlls for the box because is not free (priority boxes are free). So i will have to wait until i can afford high quantity's boxes and invest in official USPS equipment rather than paying shipping rates out of my wallet. Numbers indicate that is better to loose a a costumer that will only pay 1.5 dlls for something that investing 500 dlls in that equipment. :S
I found the connectors from a China company, but in high quantity's. And the $3.98 was actually like 11 dlls and i had to pay the difference right out of my pocket :/. My bad.
My problem is that i don't how to identify when you order small stuff and big stuff and make the right charge.
Can anyone tell me the name/type of the IR lead socket (for the pcb) and the FMA plugs?
If I can find the plugs and sockets I can make my own.
I have been to the 'store' but the postage is more than the lead ($7.50 for the lead...$12.95 postage),
I have just bought the Ardupilot Shield and the postage was only $3.96 but I can't find that option.
Thanks
John
Want to know. How the shield airspeed and altitude sensor will perform..? I mean will it hold the current airspeed and altitude at the time we switch to waypoint/rtl ? or the one we enter in the setup utility ?
Is throttle and elevator is in loop or independent.. i.e. if the altitude and airspeed is low then the set , to gain desired set altitude will it also increase the airspeed (throttle ) with up elevator ?
Regards
SID
That's pretty smart, because it will very considerably reduce work on the ArduPilot by only using raw data internally to keep the plane stabilized/navigate while the actual speed values, etc will be only "read" on the ground where it's needed to be monitored on the first place.
Jordi, i wanted to know if the altitude hold control (with air sensor) is acting only on throttle or on elevator also?
it may be a stupide question, but my plane is set up to stay flat even with full throttle, so it maybe annoying if the ardupilot is not moving the elevator as well.
correct me if i'm wrong:
GPS + FMA roll => ailerons
nothing => rudder
FMA pitch + (GPS + airspeed)?? => elevator
GPS altitude + airspeed => throttle
i guess i'll try the whole thing tomorrow with the locosys...
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
-
5
of 12 Next