Vulture 2 spaceplane Raspberry Pi

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We've got the Raspberry Pi board for our Vulture 2 up and running, and the nose-mounted Picam is functioning well enough to grab a spaceplane selfie:

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There's more on the Picam here. Now we can get back to finally wrapping the Pixhawk installation.

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  • @Andrew. I reckon there would indeed be demand for this, and I'm talking to our Pi guy Dave Akerman about the interconnect.

  • @Gary. We've got wingtip rudders as well: http://reg.cx/28zB. Yup, the planned flight profile will address speed at lower altitudes, for canard strain relief.

    Yes, we'll release the CAD plans after the launch.

    While it'd be nice for Playmobil to have a limited edition Playmonaut, we've done some other stuff in the past with their figurines which makes it highly unlikely: http://www.theregister.co.uk/Wrap/playmobil/

  • +1 for wiki

  • Developer

    Hi Lester,

    Do you plan on connecting the RPi to the Pixhawk for the flight? If you do want to connect the two then I'd suggest running mavproxy under GNU screen on the RPi, connected to the 2nd telemetry port on the Pixhawk.

    We use a setup like that for our S&R aircraft. It allows you to script the Pixhawk via python modules on the RPi, as well as having as doing comms relaying.

    If you do want to set that up then maybe I should create a wiki page on how to setup mavproxy on embedded Linux boxes to talk to APM. Several people have asked about it, I just haven't got around to creating the wiki page yet.

    Cheers, Tridge

  • Moderator

    Those are going to be huge surfaces to move whilst whizzing along are there moving surfaces on the wings as well?? What is the projected all up weight? Getting speed contained slowly in last few thousand feet might be key to save the canard servos strain. Do you plan on releasing the CAD files on completion of the mission? Perhaps Playmobil should release a special editon El Reg Playmobilenaut. I'd have one.

  • @Sgt Ric. Yes, you've got to be careful with what kit you use. Our Picam rig is tried and tested, for both stills and video. Also, we use a GoPro HERO2, which hasn't given us too many problems. Here's an earlier HAB mission with images and video: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/18/playmonaut_rescue/

  • Moderator

    Sorry but I haven't been following your project so I may have missed some of the points, but have you made allowances for the pressure differential?

    A local HA Balloon-Cam project several years ago ran into trouble when their handycam which used a "bubble-pad", membrane style video control panel, lost pressure containment at high altitude and then upon return, experienced issues with the control buttons all being pressed due to the normalized pressure, resulting in loss of some video capture from an otherwise expensive Sony video system. 

    High Def Video From the Edge of Space

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    BEAR-4
  • Gary - The canards will be in "neutral" during the balloon ascent, and indeed during the launch phase. I hope they can then be persuaded to move, otherwise the Vulture won't be coming back to base as planned. One headline I hope never to deploy: Crocked canards cause craft crash catastrophe

  • Moderator

    Trying to write a Reg headline they are masters of that sort of thing. It always raises a smile. @Lester are the canards going to move in flight?

  • Gary - trying to make the longest sentence with words on "B"? ;-)

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