Blogs

Entries for Sparkfun's 2011 Autonomous Vehicle Competition are now open. The event is on April 23rd in Boulder, Colorado at Sparkfun HQ. This is the third year of the AVC. In the first year a DIY Drones team came in first, in the second year we (Doug Weibel!) came in second. Let's not make this an arithmetic pattern!

Here are the new rules for aircraft. Looks like precision landings, low altitude, and autonomous (no hands) take-offs will be winning tactics. Hello, quadcopters!

Air Vehicle Rules:

• Must also go around all four exterior walls of the building.
• The lap time will be calculated from when the Judge says 'Go' to when the plane comes to a halt in the back parking lot. A landing (autonomous or manned) outside the rear parking lot will disqualify the lap time.
• Weather permitting, balloons on long freaking strings will be launched from the four corners of the building. The balloons will serve as guides for the judges/competitors as to the location of the corners/walls of which the non-ground vehicles must circumnavigate.
• Regardless of weather/wind, the vehicles must clear the four exterior walls/corners of the building (not the balloons), verification of clearing the vertical plane will be up to the four line judges.
• Autonomous take off is worth a 10 second reduction from raw time.
• Wheel carriages are allowed for aircraft that don't have their own wheels. Human assisted take-off (throwing a plane) is not considered autonomous.
• Autonomous landing (coming to a halt) within the indicated box is worth a 30 second reduction in time
• Within SFE back lot parking area (not in the box, but must be on our blacktop) gets a 10 second reduction in raw time.
• Time reductions will also be awarded for the three planes that have the lowest peak altitude. To calculate this altitude, SFE will have devices available (likely made up of DEV-09530, SEN-09694 and PRT-00731, came in at 6.71g), weighing no more that 15 grams, to be placed on the UAV by the Judge via double-sided tape on the day of the race. A 60 second reduction goes to the lowest peak, 30 seconds for the second lowest, and 15 seconds for the third lowest. Competitors may also opt not to carry these devices and forego the possibility of a reduced time.

Original Post : Chris A.

 Building and testing platform for transport and recovery sensors in sensitive area, remember, this is only a game!

This project was born from the need to provide my aircraft with a RF system
transmission autonomous to identify their location in emergency condition,
this condition must be remote and connected only failure all the systems on board.
The area where I work does not allow to rely on the GPS system,the signal of this
is not sufficient in a large area when the aircraft is grounded.
For this reason I decided to develop a low cost Beacon that allows me to
identify the exact point of transmission to more than 2km from the starting position
in the worst condition, for example the source transmission located in dense forest.
The natural history of this project required me to build a system
economical to transport this system in a point of 2km away and not accurate position.
so I decided to build a replica of the V2 missile with release system parachute
assisted with barometric system.
The platform used for transportation is a Aeroplane, the model is FunCub Multiplex.

Design and construction of the beacon system :

 The important objectives of this system is:
 1) Reliable
 2) Light
 3) Resistant to mechanical stress
 4) Significant autonomy
 5) Powerful
 6) Must not interfere with the avionics of the model

 I tested many different MCU and RF modules to minimize consumption.

 Some photos of the construction phase ...

Power system used was composed of 3 cell Li-Po with a capacity of 150 mA / h for a verified autonomy of 12 h
from the beginning of the RF transmission.

The total weight of battery unit is 12g.

Assembled battery pack.

The MCU is a PIC16F88, a microcontroller that I had in my lab.
You can use a wide variety of MCU depending on what resources
are required and available in your laboratory. The main problem is to reduce
consumption, which is essential use a proper method of programming.
In my case, the MCU is used to analyze the condition of aircraft avionic
and in case there is an emergency condition after a certain time enables the transmission of the RF module.
On board of the V2 the MCU ( Atmega ) communicates with the MCU beacon system
and generates the control signals. The unusual construction technique ensures a low weight Hardware

and a high resistance to mechanical stress. The box is constructed of a Depron multilayer material.

In the other side is located the modulated AM Aurel RF module also decided about this for low power

and wide range of supply voltage. The complete system weighs only 22g with battery and has

transmission capacity for 12h at 50mW RF power.

The complete system on the balance.

The directional antenna is derived from this project : http://www.missilistica.it/laserteam/yagi1.htm This antenna is homemade and designed originally for use with radio localization systems therefore suitable.
Is compact, robust and with proper RF band. I use a scanner ICOM as a receiver but also in this case

depends what comes in the laboratory. Certainly there are reception systems with greater sensitivity.

I consider it very convenient to use the internal system of RF attenuation and the frequency shift

when close to the source. This allows me to find the source, starting from several kilometers and approach until a few meters with correct direction.

Construction of the V2 :

The following pictures of the various phases of construction, the materials used are

balsa wood and paper to the tube of the parachute containment.

V2 completed ready for testing on the air.

The realization of the parachute requested further study and testing to verify the falling speed calculated and the components used.

Following the graphs recorded by the logger in the first launch without using system of expulsion.

- Time Vs. Altitude

- Time Vs. Speed

The video of the first test and second test with ejection system with barometric control :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbsQHrNRASs&list=UUrnWHoLed2O112VUSQ8XhxA&index=1&feature=plcp

The barometric ejection system is very important to reach the ground in the shortest time possible

without drift due to wind, the falling speed is calculated 1.5mt/sec.

The section rx assembled and ready.

The full retail platform ready for mission.

The final video in the laboratory :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jp04Df8z4s

Day of the mission :
For the mission I identified suitable area and made several expeditions.

The target area was guarded by my two friends to prevent access by unauthorized parties. Was prepared a list of tasks and controls to be performed to leave nothing to chance!
Any problems would abort the mission!

My friends were ordered to keep clear of the area and tell me order of release

when the aircraft was flying so as to avoid any mistake on my part evaluation in an instrumental. After release and landing these were to go to a meeting area where I met after the rescue mission,
this is the only support at my mission.

Video of the Day :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgAZF4FNwuk

Luckily I prepared a list of checks to execute before the flight!!!

Some photo of damage after the rescue mission :

I like the results of the mission, the V2 is now repaired and working perfectly!

Some photos are seen previously after repair of V2.

Thanks for your attention and sorry for my bad English!

Hi all, I have a new drone in the family...

This tiny drone is able to do completely automatic flights, it can perform altitude hold (based on sonar sensor) and obstacle avoiding based on IR distance sensors (you could see the "black stange eyes" on the photo). It´s your personal droid...

Look at the video (the "tennis game" part it´s funny. Thanks to Ramon for the idea!!)

There are some new features in this thrid part... This is the list:

For outdoor configuration:

- GPS library support (actually UBLOX or NMEA)

- Position hold based on GPS

For indoor configuration:

- 4x IR distance sensors to detect obstacles (1.5m range)

- Obstacle avoiding (using distance sensors)

Common:

- Altitude hold based on Sonar (LV-EZ0)

- Automatic flight pattern (experimental).

--- Automatic takeoff

--- Position hold [outdoor] or obstacle avoiding [indoor] during a predefined time

--- Automatic descend

--- Automatic landing

- Added XBee for telemetry (and debug)

And some improvements in the code:

- New "radio test mode" to test radio equipment

- Revised control routines

Development

For the GPS position hold I had to implement the navigation algorithms for the quadcopter because it´s really different that the one used for planes...For this navigation it´s necesary to have the magnetometer to cancel the yaw drift in hover conditions. One thing I have observed is that you can only fly this tiny drone on very calm days because it´s too light for the wind... so it´s better suitted as an indoor drone. Then I started to think how to make a cheap way to navigate on indoor enviroments... I have one sharp IR disntace sensor so I start making some tests mounting the sensor in a servo to make a 180º scan. The idea was to mount 2 (or 4) of this sensors in the moving head.
On the tests I found that in this little machine the moving head caused some inestability, so I decided to mount 4 sensors in a fixed way. OK, this the cheap DIY version of an EXPENSIVE laser range finder, but it works...
there are many thing to improve and test, but it´s a promising start...

Details

Sonar module is an LV-EZ0. Because we don´t have any analog input available I use the PWM interface in a Port Change pin (PCINT20) to use an interrupt to read the sensor. (It´s recommended some solder skills to make this modification).

For the IR range finder (Sharp GP2Y0A02) I needed to use a separate Arduino Pro mini (again we don´t have any analog input free). This module connects to the ArduIMU via Serial port so we need to choose between GPS of range finder (outdoor-indoor decision).

On this III part, the hardware (ArduIMU) really show it´s limits... it´s not a problem of CPU power, it´s a problem of the limited I/O as I said before, so it´s time to move to the big brother, the new ArduPilot Mega Hardware... this new platform will be fantastic for this projects...

Behind the scenes

During the test of position hold I have some crashes (nothing important, only some broken propellers...) and there was a moment in that the quad performs not so good, so I start searching the reason. Again I suspect that it could be a vibrations problem so I decided to make a modified code to test the vibration on each motor.

As you can see I have problems on left motor, so I change this prop, also add a new layer of doubled sided foam tape to the ArduIMU and problem gone.

The code is here: Quad1_mini_test_motor_vibrations.zip (If you want to use it read the instrucctions)

Respect to the IR distance sensor, the first version was a moving head with a servo but this had some problems with vibrations that affect stability and also has a poor scanning rate, here is a photo of this prototype. Finally I decided to use 4 fixed sensors.

Codes

Some parts of this codes are still experimental but you can get it here:

Outdoor code (GPS): Quad_mini_1_27.zip . GPS libraries : GPS_libraries.zip

Indoor code (IR sensors): Quad_mini_1_29_rangefinder.zip External Arduino pro mini code: IR_distance1.zip

Old posts of this project: http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/arduimu-quadcopter-part-ii

Jose.

Original post : http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blog/show?id=705844%3ABlogPost%3A161346&commentId=705844%3AComment%3A170455

Multi-Pilot Base Board

• 3 Gyro ADXL 610
• ACC LYS 344
  
• 2 Serial
  
• Port 1
  
• SPI 1
  
• I2c
  
• 7 ESC OUT
  
• 1 Serial PPM in
  

Multi - Sensor / Navi

You need this board configuration for automatic navigation.

4 Ir-Sensor

1 Ultrasound range finder

1 Magnetometer

1 GPS 54 CHN 10 HZ

Image: 1st Run

AVC was great fun and even though I went for broke on the last run and lost my copter, it was well worth it. I learned a lot about copter navigation. The latest code includes all of the updates, which is being tested now by Jack Dunkle.

Run 1 went really well. In turn 1 you can see the copter overshot the waypoint. Crosstrack error pulled the copter back to the desired path and kept it from being blown into the building from the high winds. The sonar altitude hold was working really well. Later the wind would pick up and make the copter go higher than sonar, which made it susceptible to an altitude hold bug. More on that later...

Each waypoint was hit perfectly, even though the copter tended to go too fast (17mph) and overshoot. At Turn 4 the copter buzzed the crowd at about 6 feet. Thankfully everyone ducked. Then the copter went to position hold for 4 seconds to settle down before going to land. Unfortunately this area was really windy and the copter was blown towards a tree. I had to abort by popping the copter up by 50 feet.

At that point I thought I would try and finish the mission by landing in Auto. Unfortunately, I had set the mission to reset on entering Auto. It began to re-fly the mission at about 100ft now. It hit turn 1, then a gust of wind grabbed it on the way to turn 2. That wind was 50MPH.

I was able to recover the copter this time. But the next two runs were not so lucky.

Run 2 went bad quickly. The wind shifted and lifted the copter above sonar range almost immediately. The baro alt hold bug kept it from coming back down properly. The wind above the building was gusty and blew the copter to the front of the building. Then a loose battery fell out of the copter... Because the motors were now free spinning, it auto_rotated to an upright landing from > 100 ft. The landing gear - plastic heli skids were partially broken, but it was otherwise in perfect shape. I should've taken the hint and called it a day, but run three was my last chance to finish.

Run 3:

It looked identical to run 2, except the copter kept climbing and the high winds just swept it away.

Anyway, much learned and code updated. I am trying a rate limited version of waypoint navigation. The idea is that the copter will want to travel at a certain speed towards the waypoint. This enables it to fight high winds by flying steep angles. It will also make overruns more predictable.

Once these new updates are tested, I'll open up the code to a public beta.

Jason

Some photos posted by Mark Grennen:

Love this one:

Original post : http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/acm-at-the-avc

Today we start our first Indiegogo campaign .After 1 hour we have our first bakers ... :)

That's very good :) Help us to share our campaign .

Our goals are:

• growing users of our network.
• improved version ready to fly VR Brain
• Improve our electronic design and firmware.
• Support the work of volounter developer. 

If you want help us to reach the target share this addres with your friends in your network :

http://www.indiegogo.com/vrbrain?a=206201

Modifica della lente fisheye fornita con la GoPro HD.

GoPro Sunex 1

GoPro Sunex 2

Hi everybody,

The project "ArdUFO : un drone au service de tous" was selected during the December holidays for being presented at the "Palais de la découverte" at Paris, on February 9th 2013, as part of the "Olympiades de Physique France" contest.

The UAV was created thanks to Roberto Navoni and his magnificent card : VR BRain !

The day ended with the awards ceremony. After some speeches of the selection board, the awards were finally released, and we finished with a second price !

We now decided to continue with the C.Génial contest, to perform our project.

You can follow us on our website : http://ardufo.funpic.org

Best

The ArdUFO project

Hello everyone,
a year and a half ago came Multipilot 1.0 an inertial platform for applications and semi-professional hobby. After the excellent results obtained from the marketing of these cards, and participation in development projects as open source and Aeroquad Arducopter and 'born www.virtualrobotix.com community.
Today our community is proud to present the evolution of our project: Multipilot 2.0 ST.

Stay tuned :

The characteristics of Multipilot 2.0 are:

• Hardware:
  • ARM7 Cortex-M3 processor STM32F103VET6. 72 Mhz
  • Flash 512 Kbytes RAM 64 Kbytes
  • 16-bit Timer 4
  • SPI 2 (ADC Interface, MicroSD connection)
  • I ² C 2 (First I2C (sensor), Second I2C control until ESC 12)
  • USART 5 (GPS, DEBUG Console, XBee Pro Telemetry)
  • USB 1 (Upload Firmware, Debug Console, Power Board for Debug)
  • CAN 1 (Interconnection with Professional ESC 1 Mbit update rate)
  • 6 PWM Output Bit 16 (ESC / Servo Control)
  • 8 PWM Input 16 Bit (RC Input Channel, accept PPM SUM)
  • 8 Analog Input 12 Bit.
  • Professional 4 layers PCB.
  • DC: DC 30 V (6s Lipo): 5 volts and 3.3 volts
• Sensor Board:
  • Diydrones OilPan . (High quality entry level board)
  • LN Professional Sensor Board: 3 Axis Accelerometer, 3 Axis Gyroscope, 3 Axis Magnetometer , 10 HZ Gps , High Quality Sensor for certify professional application.
• IDE and Development tools:
  • Arduino IDE.
  • Arm GCC Toolchain.
  • Fully compatible with arduino wiring language.
• Firmware:
  • On this platform will be available a lot of RC library developed by Virtualrobotix and Diydrones community.
  • Standard software will be an improved revision of Arducopter , Ardupilot , Multiwii , Aeroquad . The first revision of code will be Arducopter NG .
  • MultiFox Rev 4 special Arm Edition.
• Special Feature :
  • Multipilot 2.0 is fully compatible with ArduPilotMega DiyDrones Board.
  • OEM revision of Multipilot 2.0 available.

Dear Friends,

today i recived 100 Multipilot32 CPU , in the next day will start to ship the Multipilot32 to DevCoreTeam and customers that are wayting it.

I'm very happy to start to work with your help at this greatfull project.

Tomorrow will present and discuss with you official roadmap of project. If you want to join us will be online with a Online Seminar from 22.00 (CET) Rome TIME.

Thanks for your collaboration :)

Best

Roberto

In last two months we are working to new special console for control our drone , gimbal , rc models ... we develop a special application on android and some hardware interface for interconnect different kind of tx radio module. Our idea is to virtualize the hardware interface and have a flexible enviroment for control different kind of application.

This is only a preview of our work in the picture above is possible to see the direct interface with Jeti radio tx module.

In this kind of configuration the VR Droid PAD connect directly by a custom hardware the Jeti Tx module.

So is possible to use same reciver on your drone without change it. 

Description

News on revision 1.4 27/03/2013

1) New name , we change the name to application the old was VR DROID RC Trasmitter , we change it in VR Radio RC , more simple , we change also the link in google play:) 

2) We deactivate the limit inside the application and add some special function for customize the widget available on main screen , we prefer mantain priority on control of drone . So on the scrreen you choose to have only virtual stick.

3) Add the configuration of radius of virtual stick it's customizable directly inside the option pannel.

4) Improve Option pannel its more simple and better organized.

5) Add the Expo control for the stick.

5) Add feeback on 3 channel : gas ( on 1 speaker channel) and pitch  (on vibro) is fixed and you can add 1 other feedback and decide if is on yaw or roll on vibro . 

This is the link at : Vr Radio RC rev 1.4 in  google play :

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.laser.VrRadioRC&feature=nav_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDMsImNvbS5sYXNlci5WclJhZGlvUkMiXQ..

Try it and send us some suggestions for improve the application and the interface.

Best

Roberto Navoni

Dear Friends,

two years ago i developed a closed source Brushless Controller. It's based on ATmega 8 and support i2c,PWM,Serial Port. The ESC support until 20 Amp and the electronic is present a shunt resistor to evaluate the quantity of energy that the motor need in realtime.

So now I would to port a Arduino bootloader to this board and develop an  opensoure code for it.

But i need help  for this project ... There're some people that would join me in this project ? That's is good choice for Multipilot 2.0 / Ardupilot 32 platform.

Regards

Roberto

During this holidays i finish the port of HIL functionality on Multipilot32 .

On the picture you can see my hil configuration :

MP32 + VRIMU FULL

FOX 5 Frame.

Serial interconnection with my PC

On the Pc there is Mission planner rev 1.1.18 and AerosimRC or Xplane.

This is the first video tutorial of first flight this revision is in Italian , but is simple to understand what i'm doing .. i hope to have some times for recording an Eng. revision , or if a member of our community would doing his video is welcome :)

I use Camtasia to video screen capture . It work fine and not change performance of simulator.

The code is available on repo this is the direct link :

http://code.google.com/p/multipilot32/downloads/detail?name=Firmware_AC32_Hil_rev_ok.rar&can=2&q=#makechanges

This revision of code is the ACopter 2.1.1r7 derived from 8 bit revision Arducopter 2.1.1r7

Enjoy with your MP32 and Happy New Year :)

Best

Roberto

Dear Friends,

after my last fly in stable mode i update the i2c libs for compass and barometer , now is better of older versions so i can upgrade main core loop to 800 hz instead of standard 200 hz .

Above the resutls of my first automatic flight , i'm very happy of this first result .. i start to use the performances of our Multipilo32 Arm Cortex M4 processors.

More Performances = More stability.

Best

Roberto

European FoxTeam are doing the first test of Quadfox in Acro mode. We're doing some looping. The Quad Pilot is Giuseppe D'Angelo FoxTeam member the Father of HG3 .

In the video He explain how is possible to do looping with QuadFox v3 . At the end of looping for stabilize Quad he use switch to put quad in stable mode.

Happy vision

Regards

Roberto Navoni (Redfox74)

http://www.gibonok.altervista.org

is good link   many andress about flight

regards

claudio