As a huge follower of Fabio and his excellent FreeIMU I thought it time to post an update. I am looking forward to playing with the final release. For those who don't already know Fabio, he is a pioneer and well worth following.
Extract from the blog...
The testing of FreeIMU v0.4 is proceeding nicely.. finally my friends Tilman and Warthox received their boards and as soon as they could they mounted them on their quadcopters for some flying tests. They used the brand new MultiWii software which me, timecop and Alexinparis have produced... the result?
Judge it by yourself..
p.s.: huge thanks to Warthox and Tilman for their time in testing the boards and making the videos!
Comments
So the apm and the multiWii have basically the same hardware except that apm also has gps. When I construct any copter I first want to fly it myself before any gps mode to measure stability. It's also more fun! It might also true to say that this stability is important for gps hold/guide but that's another conversation.
In the video we can see the multiWii is not twitching and is moving in a very smooth manner. For me this is always the first thing I look for, it brings a lot of confidence but let uis not forget that manual control is our failsafe on all copters so it is also very important.
I think we have seen examples of very accurate position hold without need for gps so I believe the physics and not features are the key to stability.
I am still very impressed with the multiWii project and with Fabio who discovered the new pressure sensor that apm2 is using. I wait with keen interest to see a video of apm2 demonstrating the same stability as outlined in the "2nd" flight video at the top of this blog.
@Max not sure if I have misunderstood but the article refers to new code for the free IMU which has giro+accel+mag.
Whilst the pilot is using rc he is not able to control each motor. It can only fly that stable with help from the free IMU electronics?
Would anyone on diyd fly new hardware, 2nd flight, inside, over their cars?
I am still impressed :)
@Max - Nice landscape in your video. What impressed me about the freeIMU video was that it was inside, in a confined space on the 2nd flight. That's just one previous flight to setup the new IMU on the multiWii! I know it's a simpler system to the diyd project but it seems quite cool to do that on a 2nd test flight.
Yes, code almost-compatible, not IDE. Not sure about ultimate direction of AQ, but what might happen is that they will compile separately for AQ32 and Atmel. You know that AQ, configurator now actually compiles the code at the time you load the hexes to the boards. What I would do is to just use the leaf compiler for the AQ32, and Arduino compiler for Atmel. It's all command line, so just a matter of adding the right targets in the makefiles.
@Ellison: Ah, got it. Those aren't Arduino-compatible (can't use the Arduino IDE), however. Is AeroQuad leaving Arduino?
ArduCopter has had a 32-bit ARM-based board for a year now, the MultiCopter32 (which runs the ArduCopter code), which is a great design created by Foxteam. But it seems that most people prefer full Arduino compatibility.
Chris, Baloo is the working name for the new AeroQuad 32-bit board, based on STM32 F4 and Maple is the Arudino compatible equivalent from LeafLabs: http://leaflabs.com/docs/arduino-compatibility.html
Eillison: What's "Baloo" and "Maple"?? Never heard of them...
Ha ha, while we're talking, Max is flying. I never did get a chance to go out flying today.
@Ellison "Maker Faire"
Martin, in fact any autopilot can be upgraded to have nav, like the navi board for KK. I was actually thinking of modifying the AC code so that it provide yaw/roll/pitch/throttle to the Naza. The AC can do all the navi functions, and since we retain yaw/roll/ptich/throttle all the way down the chain, until we actually set the motors, the code would just set the controls, using four of the motor channels, instead of actually setting the motor pwm. However, because of the "vario" throttle on the Naza, as I've discovered, elevation/throttle output from the APM may have to be modified.
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