Comments

• 

  John Moore April 28, 2013 at 1:09pm

  @TC

  Waypoint Radius of 1 set.  Dealing with Flight Modes now.  I have some questions/issues regarding it in my build thread.

   

  Sun just came out, going to test now.  Will have more to follow.

   

  John
• Admin

  Thomas J Coyle III April 28, 2013 at 1:01pm

  @John,

  Yes, you can use the Flight Planner tab to create and upload waypoints to your crawler. I suggest using a waypoint radius of 1.

  Regards,

  TCIII
• 

  John Moore April 27, 2013 at 8:36pm

  TC,

  Thanks for the heads up.  I didn't stop my crawler when I did my test.  I will test again tomorrow an see how that works.

   

  If I am not mistaken, I am suppose to be able to set waypoints in Mission Planner an load them.  Correct?

   

  John
• Admin

  Thomas J Coyle III April 27, 2013 at 8:29pm

  @John,

  I was out creating waypoints with the momentary switch today too and had good success with the process. I stopped the rover at each point that I wanted to create a waypoint and moved the switch from low to high and back to low again in about a second. Worked great.

  Regards,

  TCIII
• 

  John Moore April 27, 2013 at 8:23pm

  I got the APM 2.5 hardware installed today an was able to test it out.  When setting WayPoints via the momentary switch, how long do I have to hold the switch?

   

  I will be posting pictures an better explanations of my progress on my thread later tonight or tomorrow.

  http://www.diydrones.com/group/ardurover-user-group/forum/topics/jo...

   

  John
• 

  circuitburner April 27, 2013 at 11:23am

  Salutations!

  Im new to the Rover group, as I fly choppers and fixed wing stuff until now...

  Im retrofitting a Bot with stuff to use as a test bed for the flying drones and subsystems therein...since its all relative, and if the Bot bumps a wall or falls into a hole, its gonna be  a lot cheaper than searching for a scattering of expensive helicopter pieces, lol.

  My Bot was a fancy robot toy thingy from the late 80's my buddy had as a kid, and consequently was about to discard a few months back....saved from the trash heap...or Jawas...either way, it makes a hell of a rover platform with its tank treads and 18 inch stature. (good for sensors and antennas, cameras, etc)

  As a toy, it was probably fun, but its electronics suite was primitive AM 49mhz garbage that was about as useless and reliable as a cheap TV IR remote control.

  But it has grasping arms, articulated waist/torso, tank tread locomotion, and shot darts from a 3-round gatling gun in its chest.. among other things.

  I added head/neck articulation, stepper motor actuation for the arms and waist, and some peripheral doodads for camera panning/tilting, along with more serious Bot hardware like Arduino motivation controller in base tray (housekeeping unit) and another Arduino for comms and navigation in its head area (the higher end stuff) for working with the GPS module, Sim900 cellular unit (backup comms and control ---"why wont you come home, robot???"--), laser rangefinder, sonar ping unit for close range sensing, PIR sensor for detecting those pesky carbon units nearby (animals or humans), gyroscopes and accelerometers ( I said this was a UAV testbed afterall ;0) )

  and pretty much anything R2-D2 could have needed (except its hologram projector)

  It should be a fun and rewarding side activity developing her (yes, a she) and, as stated earlier, saving some $$ in my UAV systems development.

  Heck afterall, when shes done (are they ever really done?) or at least done enough to be usefull, she will be employed as watchdog, household errand girl, beverage and snack tender, and maybe even used for periodic cat discipline or remote feeding/watering maid while out of town.

  
• 

  KM6VV April 27, 2013 at 10:25am

  @Thomas,

  The Skid steering is great, but I will need to be able to turn on the spot.  Actually, In testing with just R/C and a RoboClaw dual motor driver, my son was able to spin on spot on his hardwood floor. 

  My 6WD didn't make it into the Robomagellan, other stuff came up like getting a new job. 

  Still working on the ratcheting problem in my timing belt drive, new belts arrived today.

  Alan KM6VV
• Developer

  Linus April 24, 2013 at 11:22pm

  @Pooja

  the throttle and roll assignment you are describing should be okay.

  Yaw is not used for Steering control on the rover.
  

  Regards,

  Linus
• Admin

  Thomas J Coyle III April 24, 2013 at 6:37am

  Hi All,

  For those of you who would like to integrate a BeagleBone mcu into your rover project, here is a look at the new BeagleBone Black: http://blog.makezine.com/2013/04/22/beaglebone-black-has-arrived/

  It is only $45 which is about half the price of the original BeagleBone mcu.

  Regards,

  TCIII

  

  BeagleBone Black Has Arrived

  At half the price and with more power, this is more than a mere revision.
• Admin

  Thomas J Coyle III April 23, 2013 at 7:14pm

  @Gary,

  I believe that the correct skid steering outputs are 1 and 3. Here is a quote from Tridge's 2.40 release discussion: "

  Skid Steering

  You can now control a tank-track style vehicle (skid steering) by setting two parameters, SKID_STEER_IN and SKID_STEER_OUT. The SKID_STEER_IN parameter tells the APM that RC input channels 1 and 3 (which are normally steering and throttle) should be assumed to be motor speed control from a RC transmitter setup for skid steering, such as the sort of transmitter that may come with a RC tank. The APM will map those channel inputs onto steering and throttle.

  The SKID_STEER_OUT parameter tells the APM that you have a skid steering vehicle, and that output channels 1 and 3 control the left and right motor respectively.

  Notice that you can set these two options separately. This is to allow you to use a traditional RC controller with a tank if you want to.

  The code doesn't yet know about turning on the spot with skid steering - that will have to come later."

  Regards,

  TCIII