Netduino home hardware projects downloads community

Jump to content


The Netduino forums have been replaced by new forums at community.wildernesslabs.co. This site has been preserved for archival purposes only and the ability to make new accounts or posts has been turned off.
Photo

NiVek GO! QC1


  • Please log in to reply
8 replies to this topic

#1 ByteMaster

ByteMaster

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 76 posts

Posted 13 August 2012 - 07:34 PM

As many of you know- in my spare time (which seems to become a valuable commodity) I've been working on a Netduino GO! based Quad Copter.

I've done a full writeup on my blog The Wolf Bytes and my plan is to do a full series of all the "stuff" H/W and S/W that goes into this as blog posts. When I have some faily major progress I'll update this topic and if anyone has any questions on how this stuff works, please ask them here or send me an email at kevinw@software-logistics.com. My plan is eventually to release all the H/W and S/W as open source, but I'm also considering some alternatives to sell kits, at least for the electronics.

Thanks to Steve Bulgin (beter known as Gutworks) I was able to figure out how to post a quick and dirty video (read as: one take and no editing) to the forum.



In addition, I've attached a picture of the piggy-back board for the GO! main board that contains a few STM8S207's that power the sensors and the flight controls.

Enjoy!

-twb

Attached Files


Kevin D. Wolf
Windows Phone Development MVP
President Software Logistics, LLC
Tampa, FL

#2 Chris Walker

Chris Walker

    Secret Labs Staff

  • Moderators
  • 7767 posts
  • LocationNew York, NY

Posted 13 August 2012 - 07:37 PM

Hi Kevin, Oh, I see why you made your board that size :) That does stack nicely. The realtime data feed via the Windows app takes this over the top. Can you tweet about this and them PM me? We'd love to retweet and help people follow your progress. Chris

#3 ByteMaster

ByteMaster

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 76 posts

Posted 13 August 2012 - 07:48 PM

Oh, I see why you made your board that size :) That does stack nicely.


Yeah, turned out kinda cool! I'm working on a design that has female connectors on the bottom of the board so it can "snap on" (of course it would sill be mechanically attached). Any "challenges" you see w/ that?

Really need CW2's STM8 reflashing app to make that one happen though (hint, hint ;) )

-twb
Kevin D. Wolf
Windows Phone Development MVP
President Software Logistics, LLC
Tampa, FL

#4 Chris Walker

Chris Walker

    Secret Labs Staff

  • Moderators
  • 7767 posts
  • LocationNew York, NY

Posted 13 August 2012 - 08:10 PM

Yeah, turned out kinda cool! I'm working on a design that has female connectors on the bottom of the board so it can "snap on" (of course it would sill be mechanically attached). Any "challenges" you see w/ that?

That's a really good idea, actually. The one thing to keep in mind is that the IDC cable connectors are generally good for hundreds--not thousands--of insertion cycles.

For the female headers that you put on the bottom of your board...try to get the ones with the highest insertion cycle count that are still reasonably affordable. It's easy to replace a cable...but potentially expensive to replace that connector on your siamese-module board :)

Chris

#5 Tombo

Tombo

    New Member

  • Members
  • Pip
  • 5 posts
  • LocationWisconsin

Posted 14 August 2012 - 04:44 PM

That is really a cool project. It brings together alot of sensors on top of using wireless to move the data from a main tablet for feedback and supervisory control. I like the Windows 8 tie in also. Are the control loops in a fixed timed interrupt ? Does this thing really fly? Good job. Thanks Tombo

#6 ByteMaster

ByteMaster

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 76 posts

Posted 17 August 2012 - 07:54 PM

That is really a cool project. It brings together alot of sensors on top of using wireless to move the data from a main tablet for feedback and supervisory control. I like the Windows 8 tie in also.


Thanks Tombo, it was a lot of fun to put together, in the few spare hours between doing "real-work".

Are the control loops in a fixed timed interrupt ?


The control loop (or really reading the raw data) is initiated by an IRQ from the ITG3200, currently this is at 100Hz, but can probably crank it up a little if necessary. After doing all the math and using the accelerometer to compensate from the gyro's drift, the GO! board is called via an IRQ. Then the GO! board request the processed data and passes it to a different module that uses a PID controller to feed the ESC's that eventually power the motors via PWM. Stay tuned more much more details on this.

Does this thing really fly?


If everything comes together, it looks like I might have some significant time to work on it next week and hope to find out B) . I'm 100% certain it will fly, I'm just not certain how long it will do so before crashing :o either way it should be some good video and I've got lots of spare parts!

-twb
Kevin D. Wolf
Windows Phone Development MVP
President Software Logistics, LLC
Tampa, FL

#7 ByteMaster

ByteMaster

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 76 posts

Posted 25 August 2012 - 07:22 PM

Here's another quick and dirty video of NiVek GO! QC1. In this one, I'm spinning up the four motors on the quad copter although I'm a little timid to try to fly it in the cramped quarters :o . As noted in the video, I'm seeing a lot of noise in the accelerometer when I power up the motors, but the gyro is clean. Using a complementary filter I'm getting decent attitude readings (pitch/roll), but it's still bouncing around a couple of degrees, if anyone has any suggestions on how to isolate and cleanup the problem, I'd love to hear them :) Next up is hook in the pitch/roll or error information into the PID controller and see how it flys. Stay tuned! -twb
Kevin D. Wolf
Windows Phone Development MVP
President Software Logistics, LLC
Tampa, FL

#8 ByteMaster

ByteMaster

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 76 posts

Posted 06 September 2012 - 06:45 PM

Here's another update on putting my quad together. In this video, I'm showing the initial test fixture and the methodology I'm using to achieve stable flight. A special thanks to Fabien who "schooled" me on cranking up my SPI clock rate from 166KHz to 667KHz which allowed me to achieve a control loop rate of 5ms or 200 times a second. -twb
Kevin D. Wolf
Windows Phone Development MVP
President Software Logistics, LLC
Tampa, FL

#9 ByteMaster

ByteMaster

    Advanced Member

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 76 posts

Posted 18 September 2012 - 12:43 PM

The last couple of weeks have been busy with client and family commitments. Over the weekend I had time to assemble NiVek's new electronics and this morning I had a chance to bring the board to life :). I've got a little more info on this module on my blog http://www.TheWolfBytes.com but I've attached a few pix. The kewl thing about this module is it snap-ons to the GO! main board similar to the shields on the original Netduino. As you can see in the attached pix, this required the creation of a dev fixture. This allows me to set the jumper for the microcontroller to be programmed as well as connect up a logic analyzer. So far, alll the electronics seem to be working, but time to install it on the quad will probably be limited until this weekend :( -twb

Attached Files


Kevin D. Wolf
Windows Phone Development MVP
President Software Logistics, LLC
Tampa, FL




0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users

home    hardware    projects    downloads    community    where to buy    contact Copyright © 2016 Wilderness Labs Inc.  |  Legal   |   CC BY-SA
This webpage is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.