Archive for October, 2008

Spyder Prototype #2 update

Saturday, October 25th, 2008

I’ve done a few more iterations on the software for the quad rotor thing I’m working on.  I also switched to very light 3-bladed props to allow the motors to respond a little faster.  It doesn’t fly itself yet, but it’s much more stable.

Flight video #2 here (WMV, 56mb) or on YouTube

Wolf Spyder Prototype, take 2

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

It’s been a really long time since I’ve done any work on my quad-rotor flying thing.  I got re-inspired after playing around with a new-ish PIC chip called a Propeller, made by Parallax.  It runs 8 hardware threads at 20 MIPS each, meaning you can do really sensitive timing code without interrupts, but do lots of other useful things at the same time.

This is a perfect chip for a project that needs to listen to a remote control, take gyro readings, and move servos all at the same time.  It does lots of other cool stuff too, like generate video, which is incredibly useful when debugging.  :)

So I got a 3-axis accelerometer, a dual-axis gyro, a 12-bit ADC, and stuck them together with a Kalman filter and some PIDs.  Mix gently and let simmer for a month or so, and voila!

I present flying object #2 (WMV, 48mb), or on YouTube

The software is currently keeping it (somewhat) stable, but within a few more iterations on the software I hope to have it self-levelling.