A few months ago, I started a project for an integrated groundstation. The idea was to combine Arduino, MAVLink, FrSky and a good TX system (Sky9x board) into an integrated system to control any kind of UxV. After making good progress, the project stalled because I'm waiting for documentation and samples from FrSky and after the FrSky Taranis and the Turnigy 9XR came out, both the Sky9X and the gruvin9x boards were discontinued.
Then came school for me and lots of stuff...
Recently I started hacking the external mode switch panel which I just posted about. After reading the comments and feedback on that, I started thinking again and decided to go back to the groundstation project. As I am now a little bit more clever - I know how to generate a PPM stream, which always was the biggest obstacle for me - I decided to start making everything - a real integrated system, based on an Arduino Mega.
Why Arduino? Well, I want the system to be easily hackable. The whole system will be easy to DIY. I will refrain from using special PCBs as much as possible. And of course, everything will be open source.
For the special "cool touch", I am also designing avionics-style panels. I even found a company in Spain which is interested in that project and will make those panels for a good price.
But of course, the most important part is functionality. Here are a few initial points.
- Modular - as much as possible stuff will be put into modules to easily select what we want
- Basic control goes via RC TX (JR style modules), simply because there's lots of robust solutions on the market - solutions which also have communication authority approvals!
- No bells and whistles in the RC part. No expos, wild mixes, etc. The sticks are to tell the APM what to do and the APM does the stuff. There will be a very small number of RC functions, like a switch to put the elevator a few degrees up for hand-launch and similar
- No touchscreens, no colorful LCDs, etc.! Why? Because those stuff is either not sunlight-readable or idiotically expensive. We will have some modules with 1 or 2 line STN displays, but that's it.
- Panel will be designed close to avionics standards. The main goal is to keep it intuitive and to help people keep the overview. I might even adapt some mechanical (simulator) gauges or create some myself.
This being said, I kick the ball in the community's corner. What do YOU think would be a useful function / a useful module for the perfect UAS-TX? Please comment, but keep it realistic!
Comments
I don't actually know. That part is "blackbox" to me. It's the only thing that is left from Ian's original code and I don't have any idea how it works.
Terrible answer but... sorry. :) It works, JAB said it was OK, I just went with it. I'm not a computer programmer so I didn't look at it in depth.
Robert, I was just going through your code and I noticed that your PPM ISR does not do any digitalWrite like my mode switch PPM ISR does. How does that work?
Yes, I did, but didn't have much to comment on.
Robert, did you see my RFC on the dev list?
Jeps, Mike makes panels for simulators. So does Hispapanels :). But the original panels are made pretty much the same way. They just don't use painted acrylic but some multilayer high-impact polymer plates.
Those panels sound pretty cool, I was just going to do stickers at some point but... What are those viper panels for? Surely not actual military supply? Is it for guys building crazy DIY flight simulators?
I have a CNC laser and can do prototypes if anyone is interested. Could be a fun project.
Jimmy
Indeed very cool, Robert! However, I have some different panels in mind. I'm talking to a small company which is specialized on making aviation simulation panels. In easy terms, they coat a milky acryl sheet with black or grey paint and laser/engrave the design. Behind that goes a clear acryl plate with LEDs, so as a result, you have an illuminated panel, much as in an F16 or B747.
There's a guy in the US who makes those kinds of panels too (http://www.viperpanels.com/) but he does it as a side job and has no time for custom jobs at the moment.
I have been writing all day on an initial concept document for my idea and I think, I'm about ready and will send it to the dev list tonight.
Not that I know of. It's a standard hobby-robotics LCD board, and the bezel is something I found at Digikey which looks really nice.
-
1
-
2
-
3
of 3 Next