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.
Archive for October, 2008
Spyder Prototype #2 update
Saturday, October 25th, 2008Posted in Flying, Making stuff | No Comments »
Wolf Spyder Prototype, take 2
Sunday, October 12th, 2008It’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.
Posted in Flying, Making stuff | No Comments »