Blogs

Overview

Ground Control Station is a GUI based on GTK+, the platform is a quadrotor developed several GTK+ widgets capable of display telemetry data. These widgets are made to look like to real flight instruments in order to allow easy feedbacks for the user/pilot.

Features:

-Input Device 3D connexion 6Dof Mouse form manual navigation
-Automatic mode GoTo (coordinate selected on map click)
-Comunication Socket streaming UDP
-GUI Compatible for any Linux machine with GTK+ (Debian Ubuntu ...)
-HUD with Artificial Horizon
-Incorporate GPS map show
-Suppoert mjpeg streaming for augmented reality HUD
-Telemetry control
-Hhow inertial data
-Compatible UAV client FoxG20

groundstation

The is the first version of the ground control station. In this version, the GUI is devided into 5 tabs. The first one showing the telemtry widgets needed. The second tab is quite the same as gpsd_viewer. The third tab provide an easy show UAV data, the fourth tab show the motor and battery status, and the final tab provide a set the comunication.

http://www.federicololli.com/GCS.htm

     You might remember this blog post by Marko Klein Berkenbusch on using a hacked mouse sensor for position control of a quad.  With some help from Marko himself, I've mostly repeated his results on a branch of ArduCopterNG and thought I should share how I did it as it's slightly different.  Please note that this is not official ArduCopterNG code, there's no support or anything for it.

     The Hardware:

            ADNS2620 Mouse Evaluation board from sparkfun.

            4.3mm lens and lens mount from peau productions

            STK500 compatible programmer to change the firmware on the Eval board

            ftdi cable from diydrones

     The software:

• modified firmware for the Evaluation board to add some extra features like:

1. downloading the 18x18 image from the mouse sensor
2. sending simple binary packets of the x and y change
3. menu to show some simple info like surface quality (good for focusing lens)

• modified ArduCopterNG code with Mouse.h and Mouse.pde code to parse the output from the eval board
• modified boards.txt which describes the sparkfun eval board to arduino
• excel sheet which can be used to view the image from the evalboard and check you've got the focus ok

     How to put it together:

• solder on the 6 pin headers on the eval board so you can connect the stk500 programmer and ftdi cable
• glue the lens mount to the bottom of the eval board.  make sure it's perfectly centered over the pinhole of the mouse sensor
• screw the lens into the lens mount (don't screw it in all the way)
• upload the modified firmware to the sparkfun evaluation board using the stk500 programmer

     Focussing the lens:

• connect connect your arduino ide to the eval board using the ftdi programmer and it should immediately start outputting x,y coordinates and surface quality number.
• If it just appears garbled it's probably outputting in binary press <space> to view the menu and press 'm' to switch it to ascii mode.. 
• the third number displayed is the surface quality, try screwing in/out the lens to get a better (i.e. higher) surface quality.  note: if it's dark you might need to point the lens at a light.
• download an image by pressing 'p' and copy/paste the values into the excel sheet.  adjust the lens, taking shots until it seems like a reasonable image

     Playing with ArduCopter - all of the interesting code is in the Mouse.pde and Mouse.h.

• I attached the mouse's ftdi pins to the arducopter Oilpan's telemetry port (on the front of the oilpan).  The mouse sends serial commands (in binary) and a parser in the arduCopterNG code picks these up at 20hz.
• In particular the mouse_calculate function does the compensation for pitch and roll.  20x per second it compares it's roll/pitch to the previous iteration and estimates what x/y it should receive from the mouse:

           The expected x/y = the change in roll * pixel resolution of the camera / field of view of lens * magic number

           (this magic number seems to be 5 for my set-up) 

• it then subtracts this estimate from the real x/y it received leaving only the horizontal movement.
• the mouse_position_control shows the PID contorller to correct for the x/y movements from the mouse (this is a pretty normal PID controller).

     Some good reference material on other people using mouse sensors for altitude hold, obstacle avoidance.

            http://www.araa.asn.au/acra/acra2007/papers/paper181final.pdf

            http://www.mecatronica.eesc.usp.br/wiki/upload/0/0a/2006_Thesis_Remote_Terrain_Navigation_for_Unmanned_Air_Vehicles.pdf

Some pictures of the camera attached to the eval board and an image captured from the camera:

We're going to be redesigning this site next week, bringing better layout and content categories, and one of the improvements is finally updating the photo on the front page. Rather than Funjet that we're so tired of, the photo box will rotate through a set of photos that illustrate the range of UAVs covered here, from planes to quads to helis, to maybe screenshots of Ground Stations.

One of those photos or images can be yours! Please post cool pictures of your UAV or anything else you'd like considered for permanent  front page rotation in the comments below. It's best if you upload them to the site first; if they're selected for the slot, I'll just "feature" them and they'll automatically appear. This site gets a million page views a month. Your UAV can become famous!

Last note: the role of that top box is to give newcomers a sense of what amateur UAVs are and what this site is about. So pictures should be clear, well taken (in focus, well lit) and ideally look like a UAV and not just another RC plane.

Here's a long post about my first attempt at building a quadcopter.

One interesting and rather different feature is that I tried to use a .NET micro framework board (FEZ DOMINO) to do the balancing... it did not work so I moved to a basic Arduino, thinking it's the garbage collector and especially the switching from one thread to another that caused the instability... Right now it still doesn't work :) and it looks it's because I was using the Euler angles rather than the raw gyros outputs. 

So I'm really wondering if I shouldn't go back the the .NET board?

There si VERY little on the net about this, except a few people saying that it can't be done because of managed code not being real time, etc. ... Most  people "complain" about the garbage collector kicking in unexpectedly, but with my code it would run every 5-10 seconds and take 3-5ms, which to be honest is negligeable... there was definitely something else stopping my quad from proper stabilisation !

Right now, it still doesn't fly as I've been having several issues with the IMU and Wii motion gyros lately, but even just the experience of building it was a really pleasant and interesting one !

Anyhow, I would love to hear any feedback or experience with this kind of board, or eventually a Java based one !

thanks,

dan

I have been designing my drone from scratch on CAD for around 3 months now, and shes ready to be flown around the world! =D

The Predecessor (pusher-twin boom design)

Wingspan: 80" (3 peice, semi-solid wing)

Length : 40" (nose to tail)

For any more info please ask!

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1378338

Spotted over on Hack-a-day, would be great on a quadcopter.

http://www.kerrywong.com/2011/01/22/a-sensitive-diy-ultrasonic-range-sensor/

I needed some ultrasonic range finders for my project. But most of the commercial sensors like Parallax’s PING sensor and other similar products are quite expensive, especially if multiple units are needed. So I thought why not building it myself?

In this week , I'm working to port APM_ADC , APM_RC , APM_EEPROM , WIRE and other library to Arm Platform . We' add the support of Radio reciver, gyro and acc sensor that using SPI bus. EEPROM .

We're ready to fly. We need some debug on i2c bus and start to do preflight check.

In the picture you can see my first proto of Quadfox that using Arm Cortex3 Microcontroller instead of AVR 8 bit. So at the end of this week i recived the first Multipilo32 , then I have yet ready a lot of code to test on it.

Regards

Roberto

Original Post : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/profiles/blogs/multipilot32-ardupilot32

Forum Thread : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/forum/topics/multipilot-20-ap32-building

The flight controller had  crashed at 15th flight testing in Jan. 24. The plane hit the ground at 90 degrees.

After crash, the flight controller have been still ok. XD nice plane.

"Aerial drones are now used by the Texas Department of Public Safety; the Mesa County Sheriff's Office, Colorado; the Miami-Dade County, Florida, Police Department; and the Department of Homeland Security. But what about privacy concerns? 'Drones raise the prospect of much more pervasive surveillance,' said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. 'We are not against them, absolutely. They can be a valuable tool in certain kinds of operations. But what we don't want to see is their pervasive use to watch over the American people.'"

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/01/24/0410221/Domestic-Use-of-Aerial-Drones-By-Law-Enforcement

I just got finished my octocopter with Arducopter electronics. It is built to carry DSLR and should fly 7-8 minutes with 1000g payload. Copter is actually just a quad which has two ESCs and motors on each end. It proved to be really stable platform on first tests last weekend.

I fly with 5000 mAh 14.8V Lipos and have eight 750kv/100W motors. Still the flight time with such a heavy camera will be short. But actually from previous experience I know 5 minutes is long enough for photographing a target. After that you can land, change battery and make a plan for next 5 minute flight.

Images of my build can be found:

http://www.markusjahn.net/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=45850

and first flights:

http://www.markusjahn.net/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=45735

Youtube -video shot from another Oktokopter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viEoOtErBnU

"But open robots also present the potential for inestimable legal liability, which may lead entrepreneurs and investors to abandon open robots in favor of products with more limited functionality . . . therefore recommends a selective immunity for manufacturers of open robotic platforms for what end users do with these platforms, akin to the immunity enjoyed under federal law by firearms manufacturers."

Source: Open Robotics by Ryan Calo, a senior research fellow at Stanford Law School and expert in robots and the law. Also see, “When Good Robots Do Bad Things: Responsibility and Liability in an Era of Personal and Service Robotics”

Following the death of the Ugly Pink Quad's 4th thruster, Entirely accidentally, I am going for a tri-rotor design, on 

a 1/4" plexiglas base, with 3 Futaba S3003 servos for vectoring thrust.

The Nano that was originally being used for the Ugly Pink Quad, and now the Tri, well...it died, so in comes the DFRobot RoMeo.

My initial idea is going to be to use the thrusts of the three ducted fan units to stabilize horizontally and control altitude, while using vectoring to produce the X-Y translations and yaw motions as needed.

Given the wide, flat body and the ability to vector thrust, I might be able to use the plexiglas as a lift-generating device to aid battery life when not merely hovering.

Given that lift, and position can be somewhat decoupled, it may end up a very stable platform for cameras and such, even in breezy conditions.

I hope to have the IMU stream stabilizing the platform by mid-week.

First test with the AFSoftwareSerial for COMMs with the ArduIMU seem promising.

I see the trend for quadcopters is now to use more and more Arm 32 bit processors, which are obviously more than enough for balancing :) and have the advantage of offering enough remainin power for extra jobs.

Here's my attempt at interfacing a LM3S8962 (from LuminaryMicro / TI) with the Wii Motion Plus gyroscopes.

After spending some time trying to figure out how to install / work with IAR and FreeRTOS, I discovered (on this site) the CooCox environment and its real time OS, and I must say I'm much pleased with its usability and easy of use..

You can find HEREmore details and the C code...

Hope somebody finds this useful !

dan

Article: Wooden DIY quadrocopter gets no respect from Minnesota State Fair

Wood and CNC - any DIY ideas yet?

Using an Phillips NXP LPC20148 ARM7 processor, a Nintendo Wii motion+, and some xbees I've made a really stable platform for quads. (mode details here) It is running FreeRTOS which makes it very expandable in the future. My old frame flew great with it, but I wanted something smaller. Enter my new carbon fiber mini-quad: 

Here's the plug-and-play LPC flight controller. The motion+ is inside and wrapped in foam. The XBee plugs in to its' socket on the top. The ESCs plug in back.

Here's the remote. I can easily adjust the PID gains, and it sends them to the flight computer before taking off (there's no eeprom on the LPC). You should see the difference 0.05 on the pitch and roll I term makes in stability. 

Not bad for an computer engineering undergrad in their spare time, with no class credit, and on the budget I get as a photojournalist for our paper, eh? This is remote v1.5, and remote v3.0 is in the works. Here's a sketch I drew a couple of weeks ago. 

Everything's open source! I hate seeing people's cool project, wondering how it works, then getting the promise of OSS sometime in the future. I want to see how asap. Well here's how I did it: The remote code. The copter code. 

So, having spent the last couple of years experimenting with UAV systems I felt the need to try something that would stay on the ground. I have been fascinated by rock crawlers, the latest RC off-road trend. They seem the be the ideal platform for a land based all terrain rover system. Traction and maneuverability is very impressive.

Last week I got a HBX 1/8 scale crawler kit, and started modifying it for my needs. So far the system is FPV capable (out to about 2km), but autonomous GPS navigation is planned for a later stage.

- HBX 1/8 Crawler

- 1W 1.2ghz video link

- ServoCity Pan-Tilt system

- GoPro Hero HD camera

- 500mW 433mhz two-way radio modem

- Teensy 2.0 onboard computer / serial to servo converter

And best of all, I don't have to go out in the cold to operate it!

http://vimeo.com/19329198

The Quad Rotor Observer (QRO) v6 with a GoPro HD Wide

Here a video of the new Quad Rotor Observer (QRO) v6 with a GoProHD Wide on board.

Flight controller hardware:
KKmulticontroller "BlueBoard" from Minsoo Kim's
( http://kkmulticopter.kr ) and based on the board of Rolf R Bakke

Flight controller firmware:
XXcontroller_KR_v1_4a based on assembly code by Rolf R Bakke converted by Mike Barton modified by Minsoo Kim and Jean-Louis Naudin

- 4 brushless motors 750 Kv RCtimer 2830-14
- 4 ESC 30A
- Lipo battery 3S (11.1V) 2550 mAh
- receiver Corona CR6D 2.4 Ghz

Video Camera:
GoPro HD Wide

More infos at:
http://diydrones.com/?profile/?JeanLouisNaudin

Inspired by the news about some HAB projects last year ("150$", iPhone4), I decided to start my own high altitude balloon project in November 2010. The goal was to take some HD video and 12MP images reaching around 30’000m resp. 100’000 feet. Finally it reached 21'300m. A real challenge was that Switzerland is a hard place for a capsule with parachute to land: Mountains, woods, streets, lakes and rivers everywhere! On the other hand: No rules for payload under 2.5Kg. No cut-off device. No radar reflector and no need to report the launch.

See the Blog here:http://swisshab.blogspot.com/ 

The capsule contained:

-          Samsung HD Video camera with 32GB SD

-          Pentax Optio 12MP Camera with 8GB SD

-          No-name CAR 720p Video recorder with 16GB SD

-          low-budget 720p Vid recorder with 4gb micro SD

-          Sparkfun HAB-PCB with open log with 2GB micro SD and Venus GPS

-          TK102 GPS/GSM tracker.  Standalone Battery.

-          No-name GPS-GSM Tracker

-          xBee pro 2.4 GHz for local search al landing

-          Arduino Pro for interval Timer and Beeper control

The balloon was an us army surplus, about 1500g.

Now. It was my first HAB and therefore I made some mistakes. But I find it, and this is a success. One problem I had were the strong movement of the capsule, that was off balance. The panorama program of the 12MP camera had a slow shutter and the most images were not ok. One video camera didn't worked at all, and due to the rescue only the day after another camera recorded th ground of the lading site.

VS

Dear Friends ,

Today I'm working on IDE for Multipilot 2.0 . I found different kind of approach available For developing application on Arm Cortex A3 microcontroller.

Actually I'm studing this kind of platform :

Xduino , Maple IDE and CooCox IDE.

The first two ide are Clone of official Arduino project . This kind of ide use same Arduino Java ide and add support for gcc arm compiler instead of gcc . Normaly support usb uploading of firmware don' support jtag debugging. The Maple is better of xduino at the moment. The standard arm library is wrapped for using same arduino language sintax. Is not yet fully compatible with original arduino sintax.

The second one instead is a Eclipse ide , that include support for makefile automatic production , gcc compiler , linker, debugger and support Jtag interface for debug and upgrade firmware.

Support a lot of functionality of ARM micro , is available a micro operating systems that support task and preemptive multitasking.

Personally I prefer second kind of approach , more professional approach not for entry level programmer . The first kind of approach is very good for people that normaly use arduino for development of his application .

My idea at the moment is to support all kind of systems .. actualy the second kind of ide don't support the arduino .pde application ,but i think that is possible to develop a wrapper class and a mod for eclipse that support this kind of improvment.

What kind of approach do you prefer ?

http://www.coocox.com/CooCox_CoIDE.htm

http://leaflabs.com/docs/ide.html 

Official Thread : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/forum/topics/what-ide-do-you-prefer-for

Regards

Roberto

First PCB etch from mak on Vimeo.

I just finished etching an Arduino S3v3

http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardSerialSingleSided3

it was an interesting experience

i used ferric chloride as my etchant

but unfortunately after i was done i ended up etching a bit too much and had to repair some of the disconnected traces.