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QuadRotor Project

Posted by Felipe Jaramillo on September 4, 2010 at 9:30pm

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I have started my quadrotor project.

Im using the mikrokopter frame with some additional center plates and a few modifications.
E-flite motors, with E-flite ESC. An arduino MEGA board. A Vectornav VN-100 which includes magnetometers, accelerometers, gyros, and an onboard kalman filter. Xbee PRO modules. Laptop with Labview.

Right now Im testing and tunning my own PID controller. Here are some pics of my quad and a small clip showing the actual behaviour of the controller, which I have to improve.




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Comments

  • Ah Bao September 10, 2010 at 1:42am
    Hi Felipe Jaramillo
    You have done a lot of projects with labview right. May I know what kind of labview base projects cos I am final year EIE student and I need to do one labview base project. Right now my mind is totally blank that's why I need help from you. Please give me some advice about labview base project. Thanks in advance
  • AVS September 8, 2010 at 9:47am
    Richard, at startup the arducopter code sends the same pwm value to each esc so the balance is down to calibration.

    Did you calibrate each esc?
  • Developer
    Jani Hirvinen September 8, 2010 at 9:29am
    They are all made by our request. I did contact also RCTimer and others but they could not offer what we wanted to have. Prop molds are made especially for us. And currently we are finetuning those with a factory. Having small balance issue with CCW prop that will be solved soon.

    Just like all motors have 35cm long silicon wires and bullets soldered. Also props come in pack 2 two CCW + CW
  • Developer
    Jani Hirvinen September 8, 2010 at 5:31am
    Naturally it applies to everything that flies close to ground but this is not it. Ground effect is basically just huge turbulent air mass under your props so it makes really difficult to fly close to ground.. Well difficult and difficult, it always depends. At least a lot more unstable than 1-2 meters above.

    Most dangerous area for smaller vehicles like helis/quads etc is usually first 80 cm depending on main prop sizes and general masses. It's like driving a boat. Close to shore you have a lot of crossing waves and further out at sea it's almost dead calm.
  • Developer
    Jani Hirvinen September 8, 2010 at 4:20am
    Roy yes we have. We will start using 850kv 2830 style motors as our primary motors and for big quads we will have 2836 style 880Kv motors. I will post more information about those soon to DIY.
  • Developer
    Jani Hirvinen September 8, 2010 at 1:47am
    Richard, we are working to release ArduCopter propellers rather soon. they are not so wide as APC and just today I have been testing a lot those props with our upcoming AC motors too... as quick example from our test today: 850Kv motor with 10x45, 50% power 3.4Amp, 38W, 433g thrust, 75% power 9A, 100W 885g thrust
  • Developer
    Jani Hirvinen September 7, 2010 at 8:47am
    First of all, forget that I2C for now. That is not your solution for fix. Also if you already update your ESCs with 50Hz speed, that should not give feedback what you are facing now. There are some major calculating problems on your main code or on your command methods.

    Having 50Hz update should still give to you instant movement. After your control moves are more or less instant, then you can start worrying how to get faster updates to your ESCs.

    Like I sad, check out our ArduCopter code and you might find something useful. Currently our main loop runs with 100Hz and we have really stable quad.
  • Felipe Jaramillo September 7, 2010 at 8:33am
    My loop runs about every 10ms....but my ESC update every 50Hz.....I have read that I can increase the update rate of my ESC by I2C or by compressing the PWM signal to the ESC, but I dont know how to do this
  • Developer
    Jani Hirvinen September 7, 2010 at 5:52am
    Felipe, how fast your are updating it now?? Have you been timing your loops? You can also look out ArduCopter code, it is rather stable and running only at 100Hz main loop. Control movements are really fast and same is IMU response.
  • Felipe Jaramillo September 7, 2010 at 5:13am
    Hi Kruk, thanks for your comments. What is MRAC?

    I study at EIA (Escuela de Ing de Antioquia).


    Anyone:

    I would like to have a faster update of my ESC, how can I do that. I know there are 2 options, I2C and having a faster PWM signal, but I have no idea how to do this. Can anyone help me with some information or links.

    Thanks
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