Sunday

Quad-Copter: Free at last

The quad has come a long way in a short time since the previous post. After a fair bit of reading, adjusting and testing, I was finally able to get my custom flight control board working with the MultiWii software, and the initial results are better than expected.

I was able to get it working initially with the flight software by converting the data to PPM Sum at the receiver, and it worked fairly well in testing. This required the use of an additional microcontroller to receive the signal and convert it, so was not ideal.
Below is a short video showing the Quad-Copter while I attempt to learn the controls and work out some of the details on my custom controller. There are many things that still have to be tweaked, tuned, adjusted, and implemented but at this point, it is looking pretty promising for a custom rig:




After some more looking at the RCSerial protocol built into MultiWii, I was able to build it into my sketch and communicate directly with the flight control board using serial data via APC220 radio module, and my customized XBox controller. I had some troubles finding examples of direct control using the RCSerial protocol, so here is the working but incomplete sketch I have been using. In the next video, the flight control board is closer to completion, with the rf module, gyro/accel and magnetometer all soldered into place, and is using the 'Angle' and 'Mag' modes in MultiWii:




This mode is a lot easier to fly in, and after a few more flights like this, I'm comfortable that this setup is going to work pretty well, especially after some tuning and adjustments. As can be seen, the motor mountings are bent a bit, and the propellers also have some big cracks in them due to previous crashes, but it flies fairly well regardless. The throttle is being hard limited to 3/4 just for safety indoors, and I'm not getting close, so it will be interesting once this thing is outside. Additional features like low battery detection needs to be added, and some extras like GPS, a barometer, or an LCD screen may be added too, but a few bugs need to be worked out first. And yes, that is in fact a breadboard plugged into the Arduino Mega like a shield in the first video.


Details of flight controller on Summary Page:


Tuesday

Building a Quad-Copter

Why a quad-copter? Time spent working on various projects involving robotics and automation have led me to a single conclusion: Flying Robots!

My first searches on the subject turned up various projects that offer pre-built units you can simply buy, connect, and fly, but the point here is to build a unit with interchangeable and customizeable Arduino-based flight and radio controls, and hopefully learn a few things along the way. This will also allow me to build, tweak, add or modify any component as required.

After receiving the main components: frame, motors, ESCs, battery, etc., the first thing I did was test out a single motor and ESC using DIY speed control (An Arduino). I have some 20A Turnigy MultiStar ESCs, so connected the orange wire to pin 9, brown to ground, and left red unconnected. Then, with the power connected to the battery, and using the servo library, I was able to get the motor going by using servo.writeMicroseconds(700); and ramping it up to about 800 to hear the beep indicating it is ready to go, and then up to 900 to get the motor turning. Ramping it up higher increases the RPM, so it seems pretty simple to control. Later experimentation showed that starting at 1000 and ramping up from there seems to work the best.

Setup for spinning motors up and first liftoff:

The initial testing was done using commands sent over the serial port, and the next step was to use wireless remote control so, of course, I used the newly customized XBox controller from the previous post to acheive that. The controller sends a variable and/or a value, (such as "S 1000" for a speed of 1000) and reception is as simple as Serial.read(); etc. Since there are multiple rotors, two must spin the opposite direction of the other two, along with having reversed propellers. The ESCs come with a simple programmer, so direction is easily controllable electronically. Along with the servo library, I was able to spin up all four motors and get the quad-copter airbourne for the first time, if just for a few seconds.

Next is final assembly of the unit and to try for some DIY flight stabilization. My first attempts at flight control will use the Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) library which takes an input (pitch,roll, etc) and adjusts an output (motor speed) to maintain a constant reading. This is the same type of thing the line-following-junkbot code attempted to do. Currently, I have an MPU-6050 gyro/accellerometer module connected, which I hope is enough for some simple stabilization. Prior testing required the device to be strapped to the floor with a few inchess of slack, just enough for it to get airbourne, and the same setup will be used here. As luck would have it, my frame kit is lacking in nuts and bolts, so I had to scrounge some up from various broken electronics, and the "feet" are not connected.

First stabilization attempt

Above is the video showing the initial flight using untested and untweaked settings for the PID library and stabilization. Without PID enabled, the quadcopter lurches and jumps when the ropes pull tight, so this flight demonstrates that the stabilization is at least somewhat effective. Next will be to tweak and tune the PID, timing, and associated code for more stable flight, then probably on to controlling its movement.

This next video shows the quad once the PID settings are tuned a little bit better, as it demonstrates some actual stability. It is connected to the board via a large elastic, so whenever it pulls taught suddenly, there is a tendancy to jerk to the side, which the copter succesfully counteracts to a large degree. It took a fair bit of work to acheive this much stability, so a pre-bought flight control board is starting to look appealing.

More progress towards stabilization

Judging by its stability when under load and encountering some additional outside forces (from the tether), it may be time to start working on movement controls. They would simply adjust the balance point for the yaw and pitch, allowing me to direct its movements, and do some more fine tuning on the PID adjustements.

The MPU-6050 will be used in conjunction with an HMC5883L, which pretty much gives me the equivalent of the FreeIMU v0.4 board, minus the barometer. I've run the FreeImu GUI software, and succesfully calibrated my device, but the MPU-6050 library below seems to provide much more accurate readings, so I've been sticking with that. Since it works fine with the FreeIMU library, I attempted to use the MultiWii libraries, but have not had any luck. The sketch below is pretty basic, and only uses yaw, pitch, and roll readings for stabilization.


Libraries and Sketch:

Rough sketch
MPU-6050 library
Modified PID library


Hardware info on Summary Page



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