Originally Posted by genie360

Just took off!! Just as a test I doubled up on the rudder channel... so rudder on my transmitter now does rudder and emergency... I reset the emergency with the rudder stick, flipped gear switch and up it went!

Obviously this is no good to fly the thing but it's good to know the drone is actually getting the signal. Now just have to figure out a better way to deal with emergency. I'm thinking maybe adding a push button on the arduino for now

The pushbutton will not be reachable if you get into an emergency situation... we have to find another way! I am also wondering how one could make this go with a 5 or even only 4 channel receiver.

Thank you for sharing that the nano does work! This is good news because you don't need to buy a programmer with it; even though the weight conscious people will not like it (USB plug) and the power misers will complain about the 'useless' FTDI chip and it's LEDs once you are done.

miru

Laurent and Genie360, what do you think about this....
When on ground (GEAR down)
RUDD left -> FTRIM/LED/COMWDG (would be like arming the ESC for a tail motor)
RUDD right -> EMERGENCY reset
When airborne these actions are disabled. If you need to pull the plug in the air you would have to switch GEAR to land and hit RUDD right to turn the motors off. This way a 5 channel receiver could do it. I would use the RUDD channel because the stick is spring loaded.

miru

Originally Posted by miru

Laurent and Genie360, what do you think about this....
When on ground (GEAR down)
RUDD left -> FTRIM/LED/COMWDG (would be like arming the ESC for a tail motor)
RUDD right -> EMERGENCY reset
When airborne these actions are disabled. If you need to pull the plug in the air you would have to switch GEAR to land and hit RUDD right to turn the motors off. This way a 5 channel receiver could do it. I would use the RUDD channel because the stick is spring loaded.

miru

What a great idea! That would be perfect. I had a quick look at your code miru but not quite sure the best way to implement this...
_
Oh and I did a few more tests with the nano... so far everything works great. It does seem to have that infamous pitch roll problem over grass though.

Originally Posted by genie360

What a great idea! That would be perfect. I had a quick look at your code miru but not quite sure the best way to implement this...
_
Oh and I did a few more tests with the nano... so far everything works great. It does seem to have that infamous pitch roll problem over grass though.

Guess I will implement it then unless someone has a good reason not to do it.

I have seen this behaviour once, unfortunately on an 'unlogged' flight. I think the altitude sensor is going bananas and draws a lot of processing resources to these events. This in turn will make the COMWATCHDOG fire, which explains why one can not pitch or roll the drone anymore. If you land and use FTRIM/LED/COMWDG it flies fine afterwards... There is nothing in this mod that will improve this behaviour. I saw in earlier network dumps that FreeFlight changed CONFIG=..,"control_level:,"4" or "5" depending if you going outdoor or not (could have been flight with/without shell as well). The new FreeFlight sets this to "0"... One would have to experiment to figure out if there are control levels that don't listen too much to the altitude sensor.

miru

Originally Posted by miru

Guess I will implement it then unless someone has a good reason not to do it.

I have seen this behaviour once, unfortunately on an 'unlogged' flight. I think the altitude sensor is going bananas and draws a lot of processing resources to these events. This in turn will make the COMWATCHDOG fire, which explains why one can not pitch or roll the drone anymore. If you land and use FTRIM/LED/COMWDG it flies fine afterwards... There is nothing in this mod that will improve this behaviour. I saw in earlier network dumps that FreeFlight changed CONFIG=..,"control_level:,"4" or "5" depending if you going outdoor or not (could have been flight with/without shell as well). The new FreeFlight sets this to "0"... One would have to experiment to figure out if there are control levels that don't listen too much to the altitude sensor.

miru

Perfect! thanks again miru

yeah I did the land, FTRIM/LED/COMWDG procedure and it seemed to sort it out. I took off again and flew around without a problem for a while then it got all confused again. It was funny though because the second time it happened I had it pitched all the way forward maxing out the speed.... so when it decided to jump into hover mode it pitched back so hard it did a complete back-flip! It was perfect... landed the right way up like it was all part of the plan. My buddy thought it was the best thing ever haha. couldn't do it again if I tried

Great work Miru!!!!!

I will now retire my WiFI YJ mod, and use the hardware to implement your mod.

BTW, your programming skill make me feel so very very small. :-)

Originally Posted by genie360

yeah I did the land, FTRIM/LED/COMWDG procedure and it seemed to sort it out. I took off again and flew around without a problem for a while then it got all confused again. It was funny though because the second time it happened I had it pitched all the way forward maxing out the speed.... so when it decided to jump into hover mode it pitched back so hard it did a complete back-flip! It was perfect... landed the right way up like it was all part of the plan. My buddy thought it was the best thing ever haha. couldn't do it again if I tried

I can do that maneuver really well, especially with the indoor shell on! I found yet another reproducable problem with the altitude sensor when I go slowly over a big terrain drop (6ft or so), it cuts off the motors!!!

I will finish up the software tonight (rev 0.03) and publish tomorrow if the test flight turns out ok.

miru

Originally Posted by Mheeli

Great work Miru!!!!!

I will now retire my WiFI YJ mod, and use the hardware to implement your mod.

BTW, your programming skill make me feel so very very small. :-)

Don't feel small, I think you put together a really great project. If the YJ were still available I would not have started this and used it instead. Programming is a skill that improves with the number of lines you write from scratch and disappears when you use cut&paste...

miru

I wait with bated breath

Originally Posted by miru

It opens the road to fully use the I2C interface for.... maybe a GPS?

Yes, I’m in the progress of attaching an Arduino Nano with:
- I2C barometer MS5607B to provide the altitude (an extension to the ultrasonic on AR.Drone)
- I2C magnetic compass HMC5883L to provide the direction for navigation
- TTL serial GPS to provide positions

There are open source for those sensors with Arduino on the Web.
The goal is to let AR.Drone Auto-Return in case of out of control by RC/WiFi-Phone, and fix the “Flyaway”.

My solution is to have two levels of PID control:
- Inner loop of PID by existing AR.Drone’s program.elf
- Outer loop of PID by an on-drone app developed

The problem I’m facing:
AR.Drone may not handle AT commands well when out of ultrasonic range (just as you said, AR.Drone is mad in this case -- Does not know where it is and how high). So it needs to inject PWM commands into /dev/ttyPA1 to control motors directly. What is the PWM protocol used by AR.Drone?
I have dumped some data from /dev/ttyPA1, but still no clue.

Originally Posted by miru

One would have to experiment to figure out if there are control levels that don't listen too much to the altitude sensor.

The AT*GAIN command descripted in the SDK1.5 Developer Guide may help it:
https://projects.ardrone.org/attachm...oper_Guide.pdf

Hello,

Originally Posted by miru

Laurent and Genie360, what do you think about this....
When on ground (GEAR down)
RUDD left -> FTRIM/LED/COMWDG (would be like arming the ESC for a tail motor)
RUDD right -> EMERGENCY reset
When airborne these actions are disabled. If you need to pull the plug in the air you would have to switch GEAR to land and hit RUDD right to turn the motors off. This way a 5 channel receiver could do it. I would use the RUDD channel because the stick is spring loaded.
miru

Nice arrangement...

And, as we say Around me, "cerise sur le gâteau" (cherry on the cake), could you add an option, to use or not the second switch AUX1 to enable or disable auto-hoovering... I'm a bit stubborn, I know
As you say, it's a bit like idle-up for Heli sounds smart to me, to have this feeling to put on the TURBO with my AR.Drone...
For your info, on my AR.Drone with MHeeli Mod (yellowJacket), I have no emergency switch, I know, it's not so good... So, your implementation with the Gear and rudder stick is quite nice.

By the way, it's quite fun to sleep while you all brainstorm on the subject... It's my turn now, the sun is on at home...

Bye.

Laurent D

Originally Posted by miru

I don't know what mods you have done to yours, but I think if you can get it back to the point where you can fly it with your iDev, you should be good to go. I am a little worried about the startup scripts that have been changed by some mods though...



Anything for my friends... Let me know what is missing in the README file.

miru

I did the wifiless mod from Nossari, just wondering what is required, if anything to reverse this?

Some pictures of the wiring would be a massive help for us noobs

Originally Posted by Lorenzo29

Hello,

Nice arrangement...

And, as we say Around me, "cerise sur le gâteau" (cherry on the cake), could you add an option, to use or not the second switch AUX1 to enable or disable auto-hoovering... I'm a bit stubborn, I know
As you say, it's a bit like idle-up for Heli sounds smart to me, to have this feeling to put on the TURBO with my AR.Drone...
For your info, on my AR.Drone with MHeeli Mod (yellowJacket), I have no emergency switch, I now, it's not so good... So, your implementation with the Gear and rudder stick is quite nice.

By the way, it's quite fun to sleep while you all brainstorm on the subject... It's my turn now, the sun is on at home...

Bye.

Laurent D

Laurent, I really like the 3 position switch and it's use for (land,fly with hover, fly without hover), it takes the GEAR switch out of the picture so one can still do with a 5 channel radio, provided it has a 3 position switch. However, I don't know if other TX/RX pairs have a 3 position switch... At least my older ones do not. I would like to avoid a software configuration nightmare and am searching for a solution that will work with a 2 position as well as a 3 position switch).

Genie360, what kind of switch is on your radio?

miru

Originally Posted by Mheeli

Great work Miru!!!!!

I will now retire my WiFI YJ mod, and use the hardware to implement your mod.

BTW, your programming skill make me feel so very very small. :-)

Dito

Brilliant work miru, keep it up! Question myself how long it will take until you get an job offer from parrot!