Brandon G

Day 2 of hardware testing with new code (in total 2 weeks old) on NETMF, IT HOVERS! Video tomorrow!

Chris, as always your optimism is fantastic. Part of the reason for this project is that i want to understand the concepts, so for me, this is a bit of exploration on the way in which these work (not just the quad but boards and simple EE work). At the end of the day if it doesnt work, i can convert that code to native, but as it stands this is the easiest way for me to define the domain. I honestly appreciate your input and experience with three quads, if it fails, it fails, if it works, you owe me a beer and one of your tricopters for me to pull the guts out of and put my .net microcontroller in and experiment with a tri. I was really hoping to use your experience in this project but i can see it will just be naysaying, so I will continue without.

As posted on another forum page http://forums.netdui...o-quadrocopter/ I've started a new quadrocopter project. Its just a start and I'm sure will not be easy but I look forward to working with this community to get it moving. As well I am trying to make this hardware and implementation of framework agnostic. So potentially it could run on Netduino or other .netmf boards, but of course we'll be working towards the netduino application first and foremost, it will also be run with a plug and play config so we can add in support for different types of hardware / gyros / escs / acceleometer, magnetometer, altimeter etc. PM if interested and look at the source which as it stands right now is just structure of the project that i have set up in my head.

I didnt mean to start any kind of war here either but i must object to the radical inefficiencies that you are both speaking of, there's a difference between 20 million operations and processing 20 million operational messages a second on one thread updating a domain with 100 millions objects in memory. Granted GC is an issue, i am not claiming i am going to have 400 passengers on my quad but conversely i will guarantee any code i write will not fly to 90' until it runs out of batteries. Perhaps this is the disconnect between hardware programmers that are hardware first software second. I am going to admit i am a noob when it comes to the hardware side but i cant imagine it this inefficient. no program i have ever made is content with a 20 second lag because of gc, thats drag and drop college kids. These are teeny objects and GC should have no impact if you are cognizant day one (which i always am). I have worked in .NET since the beta, I have run billions of dollars through .NET at millisecond efficiency(i agree on the sleep statement btw, .NET timer classes are awful), i have beat other programs to the punch($) by being more efficient and agile, these include ones written in c and c++, by programmers that are not as aware of speed given their bias of their language. Back to quad, for me this is a fun project to do something neat and cool to get my mind off the constant shite of work, hopefully i can find a community that wants to embark on it as i do with my limited hardware skill or i will try and do so on my own, the former favourable, i would hope this community would want to do more with its framework than what i have seen in the showcases, .NET is a great language and has huge potential in this space if WE can make it better, managed code has a bad rap because of bad programmers the easy barrier to entry, those at the forefront can make it a feasible and quick alternative for practical applications if we work around/with the inherent disadvantages / advantages. In closing i will say that for me this netduino project is an opportunity to step out of just programming and see material physical results of my effort, which is a huge, I have always wanted to bridge the gap between the real world and the virtual and thats what i love most about this project. anyway brandon