er9x Success!

Hooray, er9x installed and seems to work!  Attached is a screen dump of the   eePe settings.  I used the SmartieParts board, but didn't hook up the backlight... maybe later.

My contribution to the user docs:  Here's the parms I used. Also note: the SmartieParts board is USB powered, but the 9x CPU is not.  So turn on your Tx power!

provisional APM setup like this:

CH01   +100%AIL 
CH02   +100%ELE 
CH03   +100%THR 
CH04   +100%RUD 
CH05   -96% HALF Switch(THR)
       +90% HALF Switch(ID0)
       +45% HALF Switch(ID1)
       +17% HALF Switch(ID2)

First test of APM auto mode: Drone Status Achieved!

Hooray!  Finally got the xbee assembled and tested... still seems somewhat miraculous to be logged into to a computer flying around overhead.  Went with Andreas and his friend Reto, (an old schoolmate visiting from Switzerland -- they did their robotics project together), to the park to try fully automatic flight controlled by waypoints.

Had some initial difficulties connecting the xbee.  It turned out that rebooting the vmware windows session on my macbook fixed that problem.  The pre-cached map tiles worked well.

Shiny laptop screen + Full Sun = invisible.... will figure out some boxy thing to provide some shade for the screen.

Video cap of part of the flight is attached below. The waypoints are wrong. Be sure and save the waypoints to a file after you fiddle with them if you intend to play back the log files later.

The main goal was to get the unit in the air, and exercise all the modes.  All of that worked and we finished up with everything intact, so we considered it a great success... Hooray!!

Still need to hook up the magnetometer, pitot tubes, and battery monitor.  But it seems things are so far going not too badly!  Also need to do:  hook up APM to the simulator, build APM from source and fly that.

Ardupilot Mega with Ardupirate-NG, software test

Hooray, we got the Ardupilot-NG load downloaded, built, installed, and configured.  Next step: hook it up to the Arcticopter.  Hint OTD:  the Arduplane and Arducopter loads need different inputs on the control inputs.  Channel 8 on both switch the APM into strict pass-through mode, definitely not what you want for multicopters!

Hooray, Ardupilot Mega 2.0-Beta works under VMware!

 It's alive!  Everything working under VMware!

Everything seems to work... moving the board around causes the right servos to move in  the right ways.

Video forthcoming!

Hooray, Ardupilot Mega hooked up via VMWare on Mac!

Windows Setup:

• fresh Windows 7
• VMware Fusion 3.1.2

When installing Windows, be sure and turn on automatic updates and automatic driver install.

Plug in the Ardupilot Mega to a USB port:

• specify that the device will attach to windows.
• the first time windows detects the APM, it will automatically download and install the proper driver.
• Typically, it will show up as COM3.

Ardupilot-specific Software:

• Mission Planner
• Ardupilot Mega 2.0 (source)
• Aruduino 0022 (windows)

The first time Mission Planner starts it will ask the location of the APM source.  We were able to update and install the APM 2.0 software this way.

We also built and installed the APM 2.0 source and used the Arduino serial monitor to run the debug monitor.  Set the Arduino serial monitor to Carriage Return / 115200 baud.  Was able to correctly read the GPS position!

We wasted a fair bit of time because I confused my old busted Turnigy 9X (on its way to be returned to Hobby King) with the new replacement.

Next steps:

• test out radio functionality
• test ardupirates quad source
• hook up to xpilot
• figure out and order xbee stuff

Arcticopter 1: Maiden Flight

Success...  The Arcticopter 1 flies!

youtubage: part 1, part 2.  Recorded this with the iPhone... Next time we'll bring a better video camera.  Between Josh, Andreas, and myself we've got 3 GoPros on order, so there will  really be very little excuse!

Josh and I did a pre-maiden (youtubage) the other day, trying to tune in the gyros.  We brought it down hard,and popped the bolts off the nylon connector holding on the landing skids.

But, Andreas to the rescue!  He brought both his helicopter flight skills and his helicopter training wheels (rescued from his old heli which had an unfortunate landing in a tree).  It was a great training session for me:  learning to fly a plane and a heli is quite a bit different.  With the heli training wheels, you give just enough power so that the unit can scoot around, giving you practice to keep it centered on one spot.  The secret is an agile right thumb... keep it wiggling and constantly responding to the bird.  It also doesn't pay to spend a lot of time trimming when you're first starting out, since you'll be practicing your thumb-twitch.  It does pay to trim the rudder, so you can keep the unit pointed away from you, making it easier to keep your directional orientation.

Here's a closeup of the training wheels.  There's a bracket in the middle, to which four 3mm carbon fiber hollow tubes are attached. Some ping-pong ball sized sphere are place on the end.  The bracket points all four tips down, so there's a bit of bounce when your bird hits the ground.  Andreas attached the training wheels using some wire wraps.  When it didn't look like this was going to be enough, he grabbed some thing bungee cord from his car and used that.  Note to self:  add duct tape to flight box!

Some flight notes:

• Andreas noted the thrust/weight ratio is a bit low.  We'll try some different props, and check the load on the ESCs.  I'll pull off the light wires and see if that helps as well.
• Sufficient for now, training and flight system testing.
• I'm curious to see what happens when the gyro is set too high.
• Overall, thrilled to see that thing in the air!

I found a box that just holds the Acticopter, but the blades have to be removed.  Here's the complete Arcticopter flight pack, including radio case.  The box in the middle is a recycled MacBook box.  I'm going to get something to cover that up.  It would be so sad for someone to break the window of my car thinking they had scored a MacBook only to discover they had an old box filled with random RC multicopter parts. The poor guy would probably walk around in a bad mood all day long!