Comments

• Randy Brazeau September 26, 2012 at 6:51pm

  @ Niall
  You should start a discussion on this topic. I'm interested in this topic as I need to take the output of the APM to drive my rover. My motor controller uses serial communication which I have working with an Arduino mega.
  Randy
• 

  Niall Dempsey September 26, 2012 at 5:21am

  @ Thomas

  Found the problem, needed a common ground between APM and Arduino

  I've also got a slight problem with the Mission Planner. A lot ot the time it seems to think its an ArduPlane instead of a APMrover. I regularly need to exit MP and restart it to get the APMrover to appear. Anyone else have this problem?

  Regards,

  Niall
• 

  Niall Dempsey September 26, 2012 at 1:18am

  Thomas - Thanks for your help

  I had considered Sabertooth motor speed controllers but I ended up buying from 4QD in the UK and I've been using them for a couple of years with no problems.

  In my current setup I'm using an Arduino and it reads the signals from the RC Receiver using CH1val = pulseIn(CH1, HIGH, 20000); and CH2val = pulseIn(CH2, HIGH, 20000); and I can then convert them to the format I need for the 4QD controllers. The problem is that when I try to use the same method with the APM 2.5 the values being read in are not correct. BTW the RC Receiver signals are not PWM there are PPL are far as I remember.

  I'll have another go at trying to read the signals from the APM into the Arduino as it seems logical that they should be similar to what the RC Receiver produces.

  Thanks again,

  Niall
• Admin

  Thomas J Coyle III September 25, 2012 at 3:59pm

  Niall,

  I have a Dimension Engineering Sabertooth motor speed controller and in the RC mode the steering (aileron) signal determines direction (right/left) and the throttle signal determines the speed forward or backwards. This works with the APM 1 aileron and throttle signals for skid steering. I do not think that your speed controllers will work because you have no way to use the aileron signal for direction control in your setup. An Arduino Uno could be used to interpret the aileron signal to provide speed signals to the individual controllers to provide direction control. I have used an Arduino Uno to read PWM signals from an RC receiver so I know that it can be done. Try the Arduino Forum.

  Regards,

  TCIII
• 

  Niall Dempsey September 25, 2012 at 12:52pm

  Hello All,

  I purchased the APM 2.5, uBlox GPS and 3DR Radio Kit and got it up and running with the Mission Planner. I now want to use this with an AGV that has tank steering. The 2 motor speed controllers I'm using have inputs for a PWM signal with a range 0 to 255 for motor speed and High/Low digital signal for Forward/Reverse.

  It has been suggested that using Ailerons Mixing should provide what I need but the only parameter I could find was Elevon_Mixing and setting this to 1 does not seem to do what I want and even if it did the values would be in the wrong range.

  I've had a look through the code but I'm finding it difficult to understand so as a temporary measure I tried using a second Arduino to read the outputs from Ch1 and Ch3 using PulseIn() but this doesn't read the values correctly. 

  If anybody has got tank steering to work with APMrover2 or anybody can help, it would be greatly appreciated.

  Thanks,

  Niall
• Vincent van Schijndel September 23, 2012 at 11:18pm

  Hello All,

  i bought a second hand apm 1, to use with ardurover. looking forward to it, it should arrive in 1-2 weeks. 1 have 1 question. the owner told me i could never use the esc with bec, according to him i always have to take out the red wire from the esc and use a seperate ubec. this because if you plug in the usb without first powering the esc with a battery, there was a chance the esc pulled some power through the usb, causing the bord to blow.

  is this correct? are you all using seperate ubecs? i cant find something about it on the forums, thats why i ask:)

  thanks in advance!

  greets vincent
• Admin

  Thomas J Coyle III September 21, 2012 at 3:01pm

  Hi All,

  Well, I have got the ball rolling on building an ArduRover. How about some more build logs to give us ideas concerning building our own rovers! Help with hardware and software builds will be greatly appreciated by all.

  Regards,

  TCIII
• Rich Maynard September 18, 2012 at 6:48pm

  Well if you looking to interface a WII Nunchuck check out

  http://arduino.cc/playground/Main/WiiChuckClass

  -Rich
• 

  Bradley J Carr September 17, 2012 at 7:20pm

  i really need to learn the programing better.  i am going to go look at the arduino site and see what i can learn.  but i dont understand how to get the pulse width to react to the wii nunchuck
• Rich Maynard September 17, 2012 at 6:04pm

  @Bradley

  If you have a couple of questions go ahead an post them. Not to put you off though but there are many examples of using PWM on the Arduino site as well the samples and Library examples that come with the Arduino IDE.

  -Rich