Progress Report on UAV DevBoard application to CCPM Helicopters


As promised, this post describes where we are in the development of the UAV DevBoard for stabilization of a CCPM Helicopter. It is still a work in progress and should not be regarded as an out-of-the-box ready-to-go system at this point.

First I want to acknowledge all the help Bill Premerlani gave in this development. Without his UAV DevBoard, his innovative DCM control formalism, and keen programming skills, this development would not have been possible.

I will take you through our development process and point out some of the pitfalls and key issues we encountered. Our hope is that others will pick up on the development and bring it to a quicker conclusion.

The progress report can be found here.

Views: 364

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Marcus Fahlén on November 27, 2009 at 3:05pm
I just realized the existence of uavdevboard on googlegroups... It is almost scary to see how close to my vision this project is going... Daugterboard, communication channel, scripting language for ground station, camera pointing... Everything is there except the modularity perhaps.


// Marc
Permalink Reply by John_Mac on November 27, 2009 at 6:22pm
Marc

Justin is using the Green Board and I am using the Red/Green Board....both of which have gyros less sensitive to vibration than the Red Board. Even these show evidence of gyro saturation at certain throtte settings. We are working to isolate them better from the heli.

I fear that the Red Board will exhibit saturation much more readily then the other two versions. I observed this in earlier test. That is not to say one can't come up with an isolation system that could work, but I haven't yet found one.

Bottom line is that I don't think the Red Board is well suited to heli applications.

Best
John
Permalink Reply by Marcus Fahlén on November 27, 2009 at 7:14pm
Hi John.

I am aware of this. I should have a custom redboard with other gyros just because of this, but a slight mishap led to that the board disappeared. I am now desepratley searching for a greenboard, or a redboard without gyros, perhaps from Sparkfun. Problem is that time is running out for me. Sparkfun is out of stock on the red, so there isn't even the possibility to buy one of those and swap gyros to something better. Now my only hope is that the person who ended up with "my" board, agree to sell it to me...
Otherwise I'm afraid I have to bail out of the whole project since time is now critical.

Kind regards

Marc
Permalink Reply by Justin on November 27, 2009 at 10:26pm
Hey Marc,

That's cool we share a similar vision. My first goal was to reproduce John's results and then do some incremental development.

At this point, the goal I want to shoot for is to have the heli send telemetry data back to a PC and have the PC send manual and pre-loaded waypoint commands to the heli, which the operator could choose and switch between. One of the reasons that I want to use this architecture is that the waypoint functionality can be built in a higher level language on a PC, which will decrease my development time as I don't have much embedded or C experience.

To that end, the first step is to manually control the heli through without the Tx/Rx. Once that's done, the PC can use that interface to send pre-loaded waypoint instructions. For waypoints, the heli will have to be sending back telemetry data.

I agree that at a minimum we'll need GPS, magnetometer, and altitude (probably via an optical rangefinder) data to reliably send the heli to waypoints.

Before I start worrying too much about the telemetry, my next step is to be able to have full control over the heli via the PWM interfaces on the devboard and control them via the spare UART interface. After that I should be able to easily add wireless control through the serial port with a pair of Zigbee 802.15.4 tranceivers.

By the way, why is your project window closing? Will you have a chance to pick it up next year?

Justin

RSS

Contests

Season Two of the Trust Time Trial (T3) Contest has now begun. The third round was a reliablilty/aerial photography round for both planes and copters, which is now closed. Stay tuned for the next round, beginning soon.

A list of all T3 contests is here. 

 

Top Content 

1 What do you think the APM should do on fail safe

What do you think the APM should do on fail safe
2 Hexa-copter found after failed attempt of delivering cell phones to inmates of a Brazilian penitentiary

Hexa-copter found after failed attempt of delivering cell phones to inmates of a Brazilian penitentiary
3 Gauging Interest in the CNC Machine

Gauging Interest in the CNC Machine
4 Housekeeping note: Kevin Finisterre

Housekeeping note: Kevin Finisterre
5 hexa copter calibration problem

hexa copter calibration problem

Groups

© 2012   Created by Chris Anderson.

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service