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3D Robotics

Help wanted!

Posted by Chris Anderson on September 28, 2009 at 9:03pm
Many of you have asked how you can help with the ArduPilot project. Now we have an answer! We're looking for people with various skills: software, hardware, documentation or project management. Here are some things on our to-do list that we could use some help on (Jordi's focusing on core ArduPilot Mega development himself). Please look through and see if something sounds like fun. The reward is that you get to work closely with us and you're helping create a little bit of the future! (Plus if you design a project that we can sell, we'll figure out a way to get you paid)
  1. Design a "thermopile replacement" version of ArduIMU: this is a version of the current ArduIMU board with a two-channel DAC and a FMA connector, so it can output voltage to emulate the FMA thermopiles.
  2. Design the turn-rate limiter shield hardware and software modification to the ArduPilot code: this is shield that has a one-axis gyro, a differential pressure sensor and a connector for the uBlox GPS. It will duplicate the functions of the UNAV PicoPilot but be better and a lot cheaper.
  3. Create and maintain a library of airframe.h configuration files
  4. Design the hardware for the ArduPilot Mega ground station (with dynamic PID adjustments). Similar to this.
  5. ArduIMU documentation
  6. Create an autopilot PID tuning guide
  7. Create a Lego Mindstorms compatible version of our MUX/Failsafe. This is just our current board with the addition of a Mindstorms connector and any necessary components for an I2C link. .
  8. Create a "Using ArduPilot with the Remzibi OSD" guide
  9. Create a ArduStation assembly and usage manual
  10. Create a system that can inject telemetry data on the invisible closed caption lines of a video stream and be able to decode it in the other side for the OSD system.
Please volunteer for one or more projects in the comments, and we'll follow up by PM
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3D Robotics

DIY Drones live chat/podcast tonight at 9:00pm PST

Posted by Chris Anderson on September 27, 2009 at 10:17am
Free video streaming by Ustream Tonight (Sunday) we'll do our fourth podcast, which everyone here is welcome to participate in by listening to the chat live above and commenting and asking questions via the DIY Drones chat function. We'll be starting at 9:00 PM PST and will probably go about 40 minutes. This week we'll by joined by Geoff Bower of the Stanford altitude record and will discuss: --The Stanford team's work --Other contests (the Outback Challenge is underway) and records --ArduPilot Mega roadmap --Favorite blogs posts of the week --And whatever other cool stuff comes up!
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Moderator

Our new airframe, Voyager

Posted by Gary Mortimer on September 27, 2009 at 6:16am

Some of you might remember the bigger version of this, the Voyager is 1.2m in wingspan, autopilot, RC receiver esc and motor all stay in the centre section attached to the wing and battery and whatever you want in the nose.There is 2lt of space in there.Its early days, only 6 ot so flights but it flew and we took it home in one piece!!I have some video but I'm out the door real flying now.Oh for ballast purpose we added 200g of weight, it could have lifted much more, the target is 500g.
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3D Robotics

Reminder: just two more weekends to qualify for this month's T3 contest!

Posted by Chris Anderson on September 25, 2009 at 2:30pm
[Update: My mistake--I forgot that I made the deadline four days later to allow for a slightly late start in announcing this contest earlier this month. So you have two weekends to go, not just one. Still, get cracking!] For those of you who have day jobs, just a reminder that this is the last weekend you've only got two more weekends to enter this month's T3 Contest. If the weather isn't cooperating, you better hope it will clear and you can take a morning off work before Thursday. The deadline is 12:00 midnight PST on Sunday, Oct 4th. The current best time is 236 seconds from Vassilis, who won last month with the same Paparazzi-driven EasyStar. Are you guys going to let him win two times in a row?!
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3D Robotics

Best entry-level UAV platform?

Posted by Chris Anderson on September 24, 2009 at 10:01pm

I just got what might the best entry-level UAV platform yet. It's the Busy-Bee RTF from HobbyKing and at first glance it looks practically perfect for our needs. It comes totally ready to fly (just ten minutes of attaching things), with a brushless motor, ESC and all servos and pushrods installed, all for $70! Just add RC gear and a battery. It's got all the elements we need for a UAV platform: --Four channels, with ailerons --Pusher prop --High-wing trainer style, so should be easy to fly and relatively slow --Steerable nose wheel (gear is removable for grass landings) --Loads of room in that cockpit! The tinted window is a bit unfortunate for camera use, but otherwise it's perfect: easy to get to and easy access to the rest of the equipment area in the body --Easy to repair foam A few notes: The picture on the product page shows that it comes with a JST battery connector, but it actually comes with a standard Deans connector. The box says that it comes with cheap FM RC gear, but thankfully that's not the case (it comes with no RC gear at all). The included propeller is actually black and pretty good looking, not the yellow toy in the picture. If you want to upgrade the motor to a more powerful outrunner, it's easy to do; it uses the standard mounting holes. The motor is rated at 8.4v, so a 7.4 20c LiPo battery is probably safest. But if it seems really underpowered with that, I may try pushing it with a 11v battery. Overall, it's hard to beat this one for the price, features and ease of assembly. I'll fly it this weekend and see how it performs.
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Developer

Ateryx is airborne and looking great! (homebuilt imu autopilot)

Posted by Ryan Beall on September 24, 2009 at 9:00pm

Ateryx 2.3 has been in different levels of development over the past year or so but I finally got some motivation to clean up some code and pull it all together.Cloud layer has been at 800ft for the past three days so I have been weather canceled with my Navy schedule. Considering the UAV development is all low altitude stuff this was the perfect time to get some flights out on the autopilot. I got all of the gains tuned and let the navigation code go to work. The only bad part about the time off is that it has been really windy (25 knots gusting at times) that and I'm missing the T-34. Navigation code could be tuned tighter on the gains but even with the windspeed being 75% - 85% of the trim airspeed commanded, it still maintained its flight path in my small local park!I will have video up soon as well as data (if I can get my new sd card drive to work).Here is the platform I am using as a test bed:http://www.horizonhobby.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=EFL2825

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Finally, my autopilot is "finished"....

Posted by Tj Bordelon on September 24, 2009 at 6:05pm
But is is ever? I define finished as in it works every time I go fly now. I go to the field, turn on my plane and it takes off, flies to waypoints, and lands with no user intervention. It's done this now for the last 4 times I've been to the field! So it feels more "finished" than ever.I didn't use any kits or open source stuff, and built everything from scratch. Except the EZ-Star of course! I also use my own sensor fusion algorithm, which is to be featured in Circuit Cellar early next year. It's inertial based, and all the boards are from the chips up, no modules.

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PLUS: I don't use a PC, so now I don't have to worry about overheating or Java updates crashing my plane!

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Check out my setup here: http://bordelon.net/ezstar.html
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Developer

Remzibi OSD Now Available!

Posted by Jordi Muñoz on September 24, 2009 at 5:00pm
I'm proud to offer one of the best OSD's on the market. Specially the configuration tool and the fact that is fully customizable!I also offered because we are working together (Remzibi, HappyKill and me) to make it 100% compatible with Ardupilot, in order to display all the telemetry data on it. In the near future you will be able to have a full autopilot with IMU and OSD telemetry. Nice.. What else you need? (beside directional antenna, we are working on that too).If you see them on stock you better hurry, because they will going to be mainly out stock due to the high demand!To buy or reserve one (in case they are out of stock), go to our store. Also you will be able to see a demo video i did. I've lost the Spektrum 2.4Ghz connection and i started to dive! What i did is rise the Remote Control in order to regain control, i was lucky and i was able to bring it back to home safely and all thanks to the Remzibi compass navigation!http://store.diydrones.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=remzibi_v11
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3D Robotics

Predator build and fly thread (tip stall warning!)

Posted by Chris Anderson on September 24, 2009 at 6:56am
For those of you interested in the Nitroplanes/Hobbyking Predator (they're essentially the same plane), here's a great build thread on how to make it, along with a very sobering set of warnings and lessons learned the hard way about how it flies. Basically, tip stalling is a huge problem and you have to land it with long, straight and fast glide paths or it will crash (I've already lost one that way). Basically, it's a poor airframe for UAV/FPV/AP use; we just use ours to show off at conferences.
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3D Robotics

ArduIMU now available!

Posted by Chris Anderson on September 22, 2009 at 12:36pm

At last, the long-awaited ArduIMU is available! You can buy the hardware here (the first batch sold out within minutes, but he's making more quickly). The software is in beta, and you can find it here. It is, as promised, $99, making it the first sub-$100 AHRS in the world! Proper documentation is coming soon, but here are the highlights: Features -3 Axis Accelerometer -3 Axis Gyroscopes -Arduino Compatible (Atmega328 onboard) -Source Code included and Open Source! -Power LED (Green) -Status LEDs (Red, Blue, Yellow) -SPI port available for more sensors. -GPS port (uBlox ready!) -Code based on Bill Premerlani's Direction Cosine Matrix This is actually considered a full Attitude Heading Reference System, because it is IMU hardware plus the software to interpret the sensor readings and convert them into absolute attitude and heading information. The output is a serial ASCII string with raw sensor values and the DCM matrix values. You would use this with an autopilot board to convert those matrix values into commands for the your control surfaces. The board works without the GPS module, but in that case the yaw readings are unreliable. If you add the GPS, the yaw is corrected. We will be releasing a magnetometer module to do the same thing indoors.
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Developer

An OSD alternative

Posted by Jason Short on September 21, 2009 at 10:30pm
OK this is half joke, half serious. This is a quick idea I had for the autopilot/FPV unit I'm building. I don't have an OSD and I'm afraid of investing an extra 300+ on a plane that will be going through flight tests in a week. I also don't have Xbee radios nor am I interested in staring at my laptop while my plane flies around. Especially when I've spent so much time on the FPV gear. Here's my lame/fun idea: I picked up a Speech Jet chip that I will wire into the microphone input of my Range Video 900Mhz transmitter. I'm sending out SW Serial through a free pin on the ArduPilot to call out waypoints, heading, altitude, speed, etc.Here's an un-amplified recording. The audio into the transmitter should be pristine when it's done.Play AAC fileBreadboard:3689325507?profile=original
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100KM

NW AUVSI con

Posted by crystal garris on September 20, 2009 at 10:31am
held Friday sept 18th , about 24 people showed up .representing places like Insitu ,near space corp ,cloud cap,nwuav propulsion ,hood tech corp ,nw tech,evergreen helicopters , arcturus,Peak-Aviation and In Vitro aviation. It was held at the beautiful Hoffstadt Bluff Visitor Center near Mt St Helens in Washington .Things kicked off at 11:00 am ,Joe from NWAUV acted as mc . Joe started off talking about how the chapter is being formed etc with some informative Q&A he then talked about NWUAV and showed off their engine and models he also talked about the heavy fuel injection system they are working on for their engine line up. It uses MEMS technology originally designed by HP for printing to atomize the very hard to burn heavy fuels .After that we all stood up one by one and introduce ourselves then it was time for some mingling and lunch . After lunch the guys from Near Space did a slide show with videos on some of the high altitude uav drops they have done , we are talking 150,000 ft altitude , very cool stuff .Aram from Hood tech then spoke about hood tech and his efforts to get kids involved in robotics using lego mindstorms and of course he was very excited to hear about Chris's lego auto pilot . After that we talked more about forming the chapter ,people volunteered for the various posts and we decided on a name we picked "the Cascade chapter" although "the Sasquatch chapter" was in the running. Thing wrapped up about 4:00 then it was time for the drive home. here are some pics I took ,I really liked the variable pitch prop.

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3D Robotics

Blimpduino now available in an "all you need" kit

Posted by Chris Anderson on September 19, 2009 at 9:30pm

We've now released Bilmpduino with the option to get the RC kit, LiPo battery and charger all in one. The only thing you need beyond that to have a fully autonomous or RC-controlled blimp is helium from a party balloon kit (available at Target or any party store). The RC gear is a 4 Channel 2.4Mhz transmitter and receiver from Hobbyking and the LiPo is a very small and light Rhino 460mah unit. The included charger is a Turnigy 2-3 cell balancing charger with 12v leads for car use. The total package, with the Blimpduino kit, RC unit, battery and charger is $155.99 or just $109.90 for Blimpduino with the battery and charger (you supply your own RC gear). You can buy it here!
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3D Robotics

DIY Drones live chat/podcast Sunday night at 9:00pm PST

Posted by Chris Anderson on September 19, 2009 at 6:00pm
Free video streaming by Ustream On Sunday night we'll do our third podcast, which everyone here is welcome to participate in by listening to the chat live above and commenting and asking questions via the DIY Drones chat function. We'll be starting at 9:00 PM PST and will probably go about 40 minutes. This week we'll by joined by Jordi Munoz and will discuss: --The new Ardu IMU --Bill Premerlani's progress with the UAVDevBoard --Some other products we have planne --Coolest posts of the week --And whatever other cool stuff comes up!
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UAV Altitude Record

Posted by Geoff on September 19, 2009 at 4:39pm
Hi all,Just wanted to fill you in on a small UAV altitude record that was just set (still unofficial at the moment) using an autopilot similar to the ones discussed here. Here's a story about it: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/september14/airplane-self-pilot-091809.htmlThe record attempt was made by a group of graduate students who took a course this spring in the Aero/Astro Department at Stanford University. I was the teaching assistant for the course. This year the goal for the course was to design a small UAV to beat the remote control altitude record (~11, 000 ft). There were four teams of 4-5 students that had 10 weeks to go from a blank sheet of paper to a successful vehicle. The autopilot and propulsion system were provided, but the teams had to write their own control software and design/build the vehicles. The only sensor allowed was GPS (+ an barometric pressure sensor for the record attempt).At the end of the class in June we had a flyoff where the teams had to demonstrate their vehicles by repeatedly climbing between 50 ft and 400 ft (to stay within FAA regulations). All four team succeed in demonstrating greater than 10,000 ft of cumulative altitude gain. A few students continued working on the project over the summer, culminating in a world record altitude attempt a couple weeks ago at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center.The altitude record attempt was for an autonomously controlled electrically powered UAV weighing less than 5kg, FAI Category U.2a Group 2. The news article gives a good account of the record attempt flights. The record altitude was 2177 m (7142 ft), which ended up being limited by winds aloft, not battery energy. Only about 40% of the charge was used getting to the record altitude.Here are some pictures of the airplanes and the autopilot/GPS boards.

I designed and prototyped the autopilot for the course early this year. It uses the dsPIC30F4011 microcontroller and the uBlox LEA-5H + sarantel helical GPS antenna (basically the same as is being sold now, but in a slightly larger footprint). The xBeePro or xBeeProXSC is used for commands/telemetry. RC controller commands are read by the custom ground station software using a transmitter-to-USB cable and sent over the xBee to the airplane. This software based failsafe was not ideal, but it was the lightest option. The autopilot has inputs available for other sensors (thermopile, IMU), they just weren't integrated for the class and there isn't any software written to handle them.If anyone is interested I should be able to post a BOM, the board files and the autopilot/ground station software, but it likely won't be supported at all since we are working on a smaller/lighter design to replace this one.-Geoff
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DIY Drones order arrived today, now time to get to work!

Posted by isobot on September 19, 2009 at 1:33pm
Like many DIYers, I have way to many projects going on at once. Not sure how or why this is so but it always happens. This being Saturday I figure that I can dedicate most of the day to finishing my airframe.List of things to do:1. trim wing foam, use lightweight spackle to fill the defects.2. go thru my collection of heat shrink covering to see if I have enough yellow to cover the wings, with red for a wing tip.3. Cover the said wings in yellow on top and red on bottom, two colors really help with the visuals at a distance. (is the plane banking towards you or away from you?) The right wingtip will be red also for the same reason.4. Rough out a new Pod fuse, just got a Sony Webbie HD cam which will go in the nose. Need to figure out where to put the ardupilot and gear. With the twin boom set up the servos are in the wing so plenty of room in fuse with no constraints on how far forward or rearward equip. can go. The pods are carved EPP and can be built to suit each payload.5. weigh everything! I really need a better all up weight estimate, I am afraid my outrunner motor will not be up to the task. I would like to fly next week end so have to order a larger one if it is not.6. Document todays build, I always forget to photograph the builds so will try and be better with this project!My airframe is based on the Polly Pusher, which is based in part on the E-Cat. I think these designs have a lot to offer for UAV use. The Polly Pusher is constructed out of a $5 Walmart Glider and coroplast. Inexpensive, simple and anyone can build it. I use EPP for the Pods, more crash protection than EPS but I have a flying wing made out of the walmart glider (EPS) and it has withstood much abuse, five years and it is still flying! Check out acesims.com for more info and directions on how to build.
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Tune and Trim a Magpie

Posted by Pete Burnight on September 19, 2009 at 11:16am
I just finished setting up my Magpie AP airplane to use the ArduPilot UAV controller, and used a fast and easy way to setup the PID and trim values.I made a ground station that can send new trim values up to the plane while it's in flight. That made trimming easy - only took two flights to get it straight, level, and stable.

The ground station consists of an ATMega168 running the code, an XBee pro for the radio transceiver, a box full of buttons, a rotary pot to adjust values, a serial LCD for the display and a 1700 mah NiMh battery.The ArduPilot code was changed to put many of the adjust and trim constants into EEPROM settings and code variables so they could be changed, and stored on the fly as tuning progressed.The ground station allows me to send up new PID values (Kp, Ki, Kd, Min/Max) and trim settings (roll_trim, pitch_trim) as well as any other variables I'm adjusting (Fly_by_Wire_Roll_Gain, Fly_by_Wire_Throttle_Set_Point, etc)

The ArduPilot code only required a small change to add the code required to receive the messages from the ground. (The GPS was removed, and the XBee on the plane was connected to both Rx & Tx for send/receive to/from the ground station during the trimming process)

The commands from the ground are very simple. I only send one value at a time. ( Roll_Kp = 0.3 ) The ground station controller uses a Menu system to scroll thru the various commands available. Each screen shows the variable being adjusted, it's current value (sent from the plane via the std ArduPilot Print_Data sequence) The rotary pot is used to dial in a new value. Once the value is set via the pot, one of the red buttons is pressed to actually transmit the command to the airplane. The code in the plane sends back an "ack" and the ground station beeps 3 times to signal a successful transmission of the data to the plane. That way I KNOW the new value is in place. I can also confirm the new value via the display - the aircraft is always transmitting the current values - and these show up in the ground station display in real time.Using this ground station to up-link data to the aircraft made setup and trimming a breeze.In general, here is the sequence I followed:1. Do ground testing of the UAV control stuff - test the sensors to confirm control surfaces move in the proper direction when tilting the aircraft.2. Get the aircraft flying under manual control. Adjust and trim for straight, level flight.3. Switch to "Fly by Wire" mode and watch what happens.(Be ready to quickly switch back to manual control)Does the aircraft dive?, climb?, Roll?, wobble?, Stall?, all of the above?4. My aircraft oscillated about the roll axis, and wanted to dive.I knew this meant the roll PID was set too high, and the pitch trim was off.5. I decided to work on the roll values first.- I turned off the pitch PID (by setting pKp and pKi to zero.)- I turned off the roll Ki (set it to very low: .04), so I could first tune Kp.Oscillations mean Kp is set too high. The PID is overshooting it's mark.There are some good articles on tuning PIDs.The current EasyStar Kp value was 0.7. I started dropping by 0.1 to 0.6, 0.5, and at 0.4 the oscillations stopped. I took manual control of the airplane, placed it in a steep roll, and turned on the AutoPilot. The plane immediately righted itself, and returned to almost straight flight. Increasing the roll Ki to 0.1 brought the aircraft to a more stable level position. (adjust Kp for quick, gross response without oscillations. Adjust Ki to fine tune the setting)6. I needed to adjust the pitch trim. The aircraft wanted to dive.I turned the pitch PID values back on (Kp = 1.3, Ki = 0.7)The current trim setting was zero. I sent up the value pitch_trim = 10. From manual straight and level flight, I switched into Fly by Wire mode, aircraft immediately dove. Back to manual control. Sent up the value pitch_trim = -10. Entered Fly by Wire, and the aircraft was flying straight and level.I had been hoping I could read the pitch & roll data real time during flight via the ground station, but I kept getting radio interference during flight, and unreliable radio connection while the aircraft was overhead. We had to glide the aircraft low and slow (no motor) near the ground station to send up commands.

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