Gender
Male
About
Location
Lexington, VA
About Me:
Simon D. Levy Professor Computer Science Department 407 Parmly Hall Washington & Lee University Lexington, VA 24450
Please tell us a bit about your UAV interest
My students and I write programs in Python, Java, and C++ for controlling and simulating UAVs and other robots: https://github.com/simondlevy
Hometown:
Lexington, Virginia
Activity Feed
My hacked Altair Aerial Blackhawk continues to serve as a great test platform for experiments in DIY flight controllers. So, when I heard the buzz surrounding the ESP32 line of Arduino-compatible microcontrollers (Dual 240 MHz cores, WiFi/Bluetooth…
"Excellent points, Thomas! I am indeed aware of the obsolescence of the MPU9250/AK8963 through my conversations with Kris, but I was unaware of his new motion coprocessor (he's so productive that I find it difficult to keep up!) For the first issue…"
"A match made in machine-vision heaven ;^D"
"I've added mounts for an OpenMV camera and a BlueSMiRF unit (for telemetry and eventually mobile-app control). Looking forward to getting my pre-ordered OpenMV H7!"
"The USFS IMU is about the same price as the Adafruit BN0-055, but the USFS fits right on a Teensy (or similar board like the Butterfly dev board) and comes with a barometer too ;^)"
What could be more fun than hacking an RTF quadcopter to fly with your own custom firmware? How about hacking with your own DIY Arduino-compatible 32-bit flight controller? This tutorial shows how I did it. Advantages of using this controller…
"Thanks, Fouad! The current firmware runs on Arduino-based boards. Instead of Teensy, I'd recommend using an STM32L4-based board, like the Butterfly from Tlera Corp., so you can get both Arduino compatibility and floating-point co-processing. Check…"
"Thanks! There's certainly a lot of exciting DIY activity going on with building-from-components, esp. in the FPV racing community, where the increasing sophistication of ESCs continues to blow my mind. It's because of my background (computer…"
Looking around for an inexpensive, almost-ready-to-fly brushless-motor quadcopter to use a basis for indoor flight-control research, I was delighted to come across the Altair Aerial Blackhawk. With its extra-long extension legs and GoPro mount…
""Unfortunately our classroom was not equipped for video capture, but the lecture notes and assignments are all posted online. For hands-on self-teaching, I can also recommend this new book about Deep Learning.""
Originally developed as an MAV flight simulator, Microsoft's AirSim program recently added the ability to drive a simulated car. Although my own interests lie on the MAV side, students in my recent AI / Deep Learning course chose to work with the…
"Charles, you should definitely look into Microsoft AirSim. It already has support for those kinds of machine-vision projects."
In earlier posts I described HackflightSim, an open-source quadcopter flight simulator built on the V-REP robotics simulation platform, using actual C++ flight-control firmware. After seeing the kinds of beautiful, real-time simulations that…
"@Thomas: I've had great results using the EM7180 SENtral Sensor Fusion Solution from Pesky products, on both this Ladybug board and the earlier Teensy-based design. It features a MPU9250 IMU and a barometer (BMP280 on the breakout board; MS5637 on…"
"Thanks, Patrick! It'll be your choice: you can order the bare board from OSH Park now and assemble it yourself, or you can purchase one from me on Tindie, once they're available (I'm hoping by the end of July). So, no EasyBake required ;^)"
This video shows the Maiden flight of the Arduino-compatible STM32L4 "Ladybug" brushed-motor flight controller from Pesky Products (enabled by the Arduino STM32L4 package from Grumpy Old Pizza), running my Hackflight firmware (which already runs on…
