Project PropFIT

Propeller Flying Inertial TestbedGoal:To develop and refine software that will read sensor values and perform the necessary calculations to produce a stable and accurate IMU (inertial measurement unit).Performance:The quality of the code will be evaluated on how well a simulated horizon aligns with the actual horizon. Using the Propellers video drivers, an artificial horizon will be displayed over a real world view to see how well they align.Features:The Parallax Propeller’s architecture allows it to run multiple IMU routines simultaneously (true parallel processing) so software refinements can be compared to a baseline routine. For example a floating point kalman filter can be directly compared to an integer kalman filter to see which performs better. Or the same filter can be run at higher frequencies to see if performance improves.Hardware:Airframe – HobbyLobby Wingo Had one too many crashesAirftame - Easy StarMicroprocessor – Parallax PropellerIMU – Sparkfun 5DoFCamera – Inteligent Flight KX171Here is a partially assembled board used during testing. There were a few layout problems that have been fixed.

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The underside of the board with the 5DoF IMU. The camrea is only mounted to the board for testing.

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The project home is herehttp://code.google.com/p/propfit/

here is a picture of the boardPropFIT1.1.brd and the eagle file.
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Comments

  • Adam,
    Have you had sucess with that method. I thought timing was inportant to sync the video images because a tv expects an input signal at a specific frequency.
  • Here is a newer video

  • I down loaded the code and looked through it. Looks pretty straight forward, although the pins you're using on the prop were a bit hard to find. The eagle files would be nice just as a schematic for the rest of the circuit.
  • You basically have all the parts, you will need an overlay IC but those are pretty cheap. I can post the eagle files if you want to have a board made. The code can be found here
  • I wrote a spin object for reading servo PWM commands as output from a receiver. http://obex.parallax.com/objects/331/

    Might be helpful on this project. Also, are there more details on this project available? I have Prop Demo board, 5DOF board, and a camera. I'm thinking I might try to build this guy.
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