With some simple sensors we could detect the pitch and altitude to make better decisions about altitude changes and what to do with them. I'm thinking 2 sensors from sparkfun would do the trick.
This type of modification to the basic ArduPilot system is exactly why I'm so interested in getting it in revision control. I'd love to see many folks working on their own variants and subsequent versions incorporating any great ideas that others have.
Sorry, I should have been more clear in my response. I would like to add an IMU and pressure sensors to the Ardupilot and modify the code to support it. From what I see there looks to be a few unused analog and digital pins. As for the "hooking it up" I've got that part covered. As for making it fit in the 14K available, I'll probably have to use a 328.
I was just looking over the Altitude algorithm in ArduPilot and I'd really like to control my throttle based altitude algorithm based on the current pitch, airspeed and possibly altitude from known launch site. Right now it looks like it will peg to 100% throttle in 10 cycles. I would prefer to detect pitch and if we are headed up and airspeed still looks good keep the throttle constant.
I've also been kicking around the idea of loading DTED data onto a Beagle board and using that to drive some of the decisions about altitude.
No, ArduPilot does not use an IMU. It's based on thermopiles (IR sensors). There are other Arduino projects that do use IMUs, however, so if you search around you'll see plenty to play with. Not as easy as "2 sensors from SparkFun", you'll discover.
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I was just looking over the Altitude algorithm in ArduPilot and I'd really like to control my throttle based altitude algorithm based on the current pitch, airspeed and possibly altitude from known launch site. Right now it looks like it will peg to 100% throttle in 10 cycles. I would prefer to detect pitch and if we are headed up and airspeed still looks good keep the throttle constant.
I've also been kicking around the idea of loading DTED data onto a Beagle board and using that to drive some of the decisions about altitude.