Project Andromeda - Perseus Autopilot and Airframe Developments - Blogs

It's been a bit overdue but I've posted a number of updates on the Project Andromeda blog detailing our recent progresses with the manufacturing of the airframe, autopilot development and some software tips. The articles are as follows:

The Perseus Autopilot:

http://www.projectandromeda.com.au/blog/?p=131

This article details the Perseus Autopilot and the recent developments. It also details the hardware and some of the software on board.

Interrupt Based Programming for Microcontrollers

http://www.projectandromeda.com.au/blog/?p=143

A small article which I hope will be useful to people looking to write programs for microcontrollers using interrupts.

Airframe Developments

http://www.projectandromeda.com.au/blog/?p=149

A picture-heavy update on how we are developing the airframe of the Andromeda vehicle.

All of these are available on the Project Andromeda blog:

http://www.projectandromeda.com.au/blog/

I hope you find them useful and I'd love to hear your feedback.

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Comments

Nima K July 1, 2010 at 4:18am

Thanks Scott. And to you as well!
Scott James July 1, 2010 at 4:09am

Hi Nima,
You guys are doing an fantastic job on this!
Best of luck with it all!
Cheers,
Nima K June 30, 2010 at 6:09pm

Arash: The ADIS16400 that we use is an amazing device. The only problem I have with it are the magnetometers which are a little bit quirky and need quite a bit of calibration.

Michael, Alex: Everything is done on bare-metal necessitating an inetrrupt-based approach. There are no off the shelf operating systems running on the ARM9.

James: The front white piece is not the fuel tank. It's a protective foam block which also includes the batteries and any counterweight required for establishing neutral stability. The fuel is contained within two bladders on the CG. In the illustration, they are the two rectangular objects at either side of the middle section.
Chris McNair June 30, 2010 at 9:02am

Good looking bird!
James F. June 30, 2010 at 8:34am

Nice looking airframe. I assume that tank looking thing at the nose is the fuel tank, and if it is you'll want to look into your CG travel as you burn fuel. With the tank somewhere away from your CG, as you burn fuel your CG will travel and require more "tail" (aileron in your case) authority which a flying wing doesn't have buckets of. This will ultimately ruin your performance…which is why it might be best to switch the location of your electronics and fuel. From the looks of your plane you might be able to put tanks in the wings as well, but you’ll want to check CG travel when doing that as well. If the wings are straight and at the CG then your whole problem goes away.
Michael Lingg June 30, 2010 at 7:53am

Their blog says it is itnerrupt based. From my experience I prefer RTOS but I presume that is harder to pull off with minimum resources in a microcontroler vs a full microprocessor environment...
Alex June 30, 2010 at 7:20am

Are you doing everything as interrupt-driven (autopilot-wise)? As opposed to using something like FreeRTOS?
Arash Joorabchi June 30, 2010 at 6:58am

Just wondering if the ADIS16365 make up for its price.

This reply was deleted.