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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on December 30, 2008 at 6:41pm

The way ArduPilot works in practice is that it powers on with the rest of the plane on the ground. You should get GPS lock within 30 seconds and that's when the Return To Launch coordinates are recorded (way_lat[0] and way_lon[0]). It stays locked throughout the flight, even while the autopilot is off. When you toggle the autopilot on, it just checks to ensure the lock is still on, and goes through the waypoints or RTL as requested.

But if you have the GPS module inside the plane, I can see why you'd want an external indicator of lock to make sure everything is working before you take off.

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Permalink Reply by Venom57 on December 30, 2008 at 7:51pm

My thought is to put a switch on it, or use jumpers to place it in a mode to orbit at 400m from launch point rather than return to Launch. When the jumper/switch was removed it would resume normal operations (as currently coded). I'd want an LED to tell me which mode it was in before I launch. I'd probably use a digital pin off the header for a small momentary switch to toggle between modes.

Ideally I would want to be able to control this behavior through another servo output from the receiver, something like the flaps setting. This is why I was poking around and reading threads and commenting on Ardupilot servo input.

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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on December 30, 2008 at 7:55pm

Note that if your transmitter has a three-position toggle, the MUX can sense the intermediate position and will toggle that Atmega168 pin 5 high when it see that. That could serve the function you describe.

See comments in the first tab, setup, for more.

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Permalink Reply by Venom57 on January 1, 2009 at 2:23pm

Good point. I haven't really had time yet this week to go through the code as I wanted to. I'd like to put together some CAD drawings at some point with the wiring diagrams. Has this been done yet? We also need to think about how we include build (hookup) instructions to the google code page.

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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on January 1, 2009 at 2:28pm

All the schematics, hookup instructions, and wiring diagrams are on the project's home page, which is linked to on the Google code page. I'd rather not mirror the entire site on Google Code ;-)

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Permalink Reply by Venom57 on January 1, 2009 at 2:39pm

Chris, I did find it. I've even looked at it before.

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/ardupilot-assembly

I'd like to get a digital version of the "wiring" diagram for the servo hookup, receiver hookup, etc. I'd also like a CAD drawing of the physical board to design a case with. I would need the clearances and pin locations to do this properly. I suppose I could make this off the PCB files, I'll have to see if that's possible.

I agree there is a balance of what you put up on google vs. this page. I certainly wouldn't have it in both places, but a link here to the google resource should suffice. If their service goes down, we've got bigger problems.... How will I get my searches done!

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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on January 1, 2009 at 2:48pm

Not sure what you mean by digital version of the wiring diagram. Vector drawing? (That doesn't exist--I did it in paint.net)

As for the CAD drawing of the physical board, that's what the Eagle files are for (all in this post). All the physical dimensions are there.

I really don't want to transfer all of this project's resources to Google Code, which would requiring mirroring the entire site architecture there. Why shouldn't we just go the other way, and do what I've done: link to these pages from Google Code?

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Permalink Reply by Venom57 on January 1, 2009 at 4:26pm

I'll redo the wiring diagram in Vector. Something like,

http://www.mikroquad.com/pub/Main/BuildInfo/MikroQuadInterconnectDi...
As for the Eagle files, they are used to make the PCB. All I've got at home is TurboCAD which won't read them. I was looking for something more like this,

http://todbot.com/blog/2008/06/23/blinkm-arduino-3d-models/

I'll see if I can do that as well.

As for the linking, that's great and should work well. I should have been clearer. The main thing is having assets in only one of the two places. Having diagrams here and build instructions here is fine, you wouldn't want to have them in both that gets confusing. Having the primary place for the download should be google code site with links here to it is fine as well. I wouldn't host the code locally here now that it is up on google for example.

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ModeratorPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on January 1, 2009 at 4:29pm

Sounds good! Many thanks for the help...let me know if there's anything else you need from me.

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