I am interested in building a variometer for a 3.3 meter glider I am currently building. I am not interested in any other telemetry. I think I want to build this one pretty much like kapteinkuk designed it and I have found most of the components. But the transmitter that is used in design at the top of this thread is 433 MHz. If I read correctly a 433 MHz transmitter would be for European operations. The appropriate on plane transmitter for the US would be 900 MHz.
The rest of this post was deleted (none of that stuff would work).

Well, I guess I'm going to make my own variation of this one. Don't plan on stuffing it in a dlg so I think the Arduino pro mini and the sensor board should be small enough together. I do plan on modifying the software to my taste though and will post what I end up with. Just ordered sensor board from China today, already have an Arduino board good enough for development (too large to reasonably go on the plane however so I need to order a pro mini for that).

I look forward to your posts!

Originally Posted by rpstar

Well, I guess I'm going to make my own variation of this one. Don't plan on stuffing it in a dlg so I think the Arduino pro mini and the sensor board should be small enough together. I do plan on modifying the software to my taste though and will post what I end up with. Just ordered sensor board from China today, already have an Arduino board good enough for development (too large to reasonably go on the plane however so I need to order a pro mini for that).

Is there any way what you have done could be tweeked to work on spektrum?

Originally Posted by danstrider

Got it! Had an errant wire connection; five days for that...

All packaged up, this is a pretty tidy installation. And best yet, it'll fit into my DLG without issue. I still have to install the plastic cover with a pressure port and then add a TEK nozzle. Exciting! Imagine that, a total energy compensated vario for hand-launch. Shh ;-)

A big thanks to Rolf for starting this thread and being so generous with code & schematics!
Dan

Hi guys,
I'm from Europe (Bosnia) and about to build one of these.
Can someone recommend a radio portion of this setup, from dx.com site?

Hi,
I finally managed to build mine.
I added a voltage divider to have a 1V signal to feed the video transmitter.
Here is a test with my FPV Funcub.

Mandarin (5 min 8 sec)

In the middle right datas you can follow the first on top, which is accelerometer estimated vertical velocity.

Seems KK vario works down to about 500cm/sec dive and then it switches to a default tone. On the climbing side, seems to work up to about 500cm/sec.
Very sensitive and usable. I will put it in an FPV glider now and maybe build another one or two for visual piloting.

Thanks Kapteinkuk for a great device !

Best regards,

Ric

I have to build one!


I keep telling myself to get into audrio but im scared!

Originally Posted by BenLimeClouds

I have to build one!


I keep telling myself to get into audrio but im scared!

Arduino is very easy. Of course, I'm an electrical engineer but still, it's easy enough that you can at least take what was written, program the arduino, and have success.
Go for it.

I finally gave up on getting my PIC to do 64 bit math...

I got my hands on an OSEPP Arduino Nano. Now we're rocking.

Cut/Paste Kap's original files. It works once I changed the I2C address from 0x77 to 0x76. My module has the MS5607 and it's wired with the different address.

I'd post a video, but it works exactly as Kap's video shows, except that I still have to put together the down-link RF section.

Thanks Kap!!

....and thats what im scare of, i have no idea what that means!

If you mean the 0x77 changed to 0x76...

0x... means Hexadecimal value of the address.

0x77 in Hex is "111 0111" in bianary and 0x76 in hex is "111 0110'. The least significant bit is an optional hardware change that affects the address. So, Kap's sensor was hardware wired for 0x77, while my somewhat different hardware (board) was wired for 0x76. The datasheet on the MS5611 and MS5607 explains this. All I knew was that it was failing to read any data from the sensor, so I checked the address options and tried the only other logical address. Thanks to Kap's 'trusted' code, I knew it couldn't be anything else... after I double checked my wiring .

Part of Kap's code and places I found the 0x77 address that I changed to 0x76:

...
long getData(byte command, byte del)
{
long result = 0;
twiSendCommand(0x77, command);
delay(del);
twiSendCommand(0x77, 0x00);
Wire.requestFrom(0x77, 3);
if(Wire.available()!=3) Serial.println("Error: raw data not available");
for (int i = 0; i <= 2; i++)
{
result = (result<<8) | Wire.read();
}
return result;
}


void setupSensor()
{
twiSendCommand(0x77, 0x1e);
delay(100);

for (byte i = 1; i <=6; i++)
{
unsigned int low, high;

twiSendCommand(0x77, 0xa0 + i * 2);
Wire.requestFrom(0x77, 2);
if(Wire.available()!=2) Serial.println("Error: calibration data not available");
high = Wire.read();
low = Wire.read();
...

Hey Guys,

I just bought a APM 2.5 (http://diydrones.com/) which is an adruino based board that already has that sensor on it. I will use the APM as my flight controller to fly FPV (with minimOSD that reads the board) and I was wondering how hard it is to port this to the APM.

It would be great to fly FPV in a thermal with a APM + OSD (maybe vario display) + the vario sound. If you add a beeper to the board on the plane, it should be possible to capture this sound through a mic and send it back together with the video that you are already transmitting anyways.

Regards,
Bas

@BasTijs: The MininOSD-Extra firmware for the Minim osd already has Vario support built in. So I don't think you need anything added to the APM code to support it.

Link to MinimOSD-Extra project: https://code.google.com/p/minimosd-extra/

Regards,
Thomas

Originally Posted by thnilsen

@BasTijs: The MininOSD-Extra firmware for the Minim osd already has Vario support built in. So I don't think you need anything added to the APM code to support it.

Link to MinimOSD-Extra project: https://code.google.com/p/minimosd-extra/

Regards,
Thomas

Thanks, yes I've seen a video of the MinimOSD-Extra. But I dont know if its possible to add a beeper to it. You can switch on/off the OSD and it would be great to fly around with only the beeper and once in a while switch on the osd to check stats.

Hi,
I've just build my #2 vario.
This time it is equipped with 433MHz tx - rx and dedicated audio circuit, with speaker or headphones selectable.

Here are some more pictures.
Best regards,
Ric