Friday, December 18, 2009

I have just got the arduino board.

The kit with the arduino board (Duemilanove) has just arrived. It includes a booklet "Getting Started with Arduino" by Massimo Banzi. Probably for the "quadcopter" I'll use the arduino MEGA or arduino with Bluetooth. But for me to start doing some experiments this card works fine. I also discovered a book for beginners "The Complete Beginners Guide to The Arduino" by Mike McRoberts which is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

A new direction.

The aim of this project is to make the "quadcopter" fly by itself and receive instructions coming from the onboard computer, a laptop, a smart phone via Bluetooth or a wireless network communications using the IEEE 802.11 protocol or even the ZigBee protocol (IEEE 802.15.4).
One problem of the current "quadcopter" is that I must always have the radio control on, otherwise the "quadcopter" starts beeping which is quite annoying. To remove the noise I would have to modify the code of the flight controller which by itself wouldn't be that simple but also could damage it. As it is expensive this could mean another investment. Finally, it is difficult to expand the current "quadcopter" with new features.
So, I decided to start build a different model of the "quadcopter" from the scratch, but using the Arduino platform as flight controller, since it allows greater flexibility. Meanwhile I will try to solve the problems of the current "quadcopter". After a quick search on google I have found several projects that use that Arduino platform. Here are some of them: 

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Some small progress.

After several hours of trials to adjust the radio control to the quadcopter, the quadcopter rises and responds to the commands from the radio control. But for some reason I did not know the quadcopter gets out of control after some time. Therefore, the problem is in the quadcopter or in the radio. So, I'll have to ask someone to borrow another radio control to test with this quadcopter.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

The problem is still not solved.

I did the upgrade to the latest version of the FlightCtrl Firmware, but the problem remains. An addicional problem is the lifetime of the battery. After 10 minutes the battery must be recharged which takes about 2 hours, so I need to buy another battery for making longer tests.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

A lot of problems.

After some tests in open space, I have seen that the movements of the "quadcopter" become very unstable as after sometime it tends to yaw to the left. I have tried several times to calibrate the "quadcopter", but without success. I have checked again all the components to see if could find any trouble. I have also checked that all the data provided by the MikroKopter-Tool were within the expected values but everything was fine. The next step is to upgrade the Firmware of FlightCtrl to the latest version.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Finally the new quadcopter is ready for a test drive.

Figure 1
Finally all the electronic components and brushless motors from the old "quadcopter" were re-mounted in a new frame (Figure 1).
Figure 2
To avoid always be re-weld the connections whenever a change is made the connections between the brushless motor controllers and the motors/Flight-Ctrl were connected with connectors with protective plastic material (Figure 2).
Figure 3
Figure 3 shows another detail of the "quadcopter". The Lipo battery is placed under the center box and fixed with "Velcro" strips.
Figure 4
Figure 4 shows a view from above.

Monday, October 5, 2009

The new frame is almost finished.

The new frame is almost finished. I have already removed the electronic components and brushless motors from the old frame and I'm assembling them in the new frame. The corners were connected and glued using the plastic ferrules (4 mm in diameter) used in the cables of bicycles. I have used the brand glue "Nural Pattex 92" to repair the plastic. This is bought in two tubes to be mixed each other and it takes four hours to get harden. The motor mounts were made from aluminum plates and rubber tube. The "landing gears" were made from the polyethylene foam tubes. The center box was made from PVC profiles and panels.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

The draft of the new frame.

I have started the construction of a new frame for the "quadcopter". In this frame the propellers, engines and components are within the frame, to prevent them becoming damaged if a crash happens. The new frame shown in the Figure in an initial state, it is made of carbon tubes (4mm in diameter) which are connected by connectors used in kites. As I could not find connectors for the corners, I did them by myself using aquarium tube. However this tube is flexible and therefore it not strong enough to be used in the new frame. So I will have to find out another way to connect the corners of the new frame.

Monday, June 22, 2009

After many accidents...

After many accidents at my home with the "quadcopter", several propellers have broken and several walls of the house scratched (my wife would like to kill me...), I have concluded that this device should not be used neither tested indoors. So I have decided to make another frame that solves this problem.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

My first quadcopter.

I built this quadcopter (quadrotor) from a kit that I modified to use in my academic master's thesis. In a short resume, the objective of the thesis is to provides an adequate solution to wide area sensing by the use a mobile autonomous rotorcraft platform capable of sensing and collecting information from sensing nodes thus permitting the deployment of sensor nodes with a smaller density.