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Making a brain for my model plane

story.glass

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Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#11

Post by jonny5532 »

matthewcanty wrote: post #3

This is excellent in every way. Not only building a homemade UAV, but the presentation was spot on. I expected the page to run badly with all that big content but had no problems. The images and video add so much and not even a single click required!

(Jonny the author here)

Thanks for the kind words! This is primarily a taster article to introduce the UAV project, I intend to write a more technical report and publish the designs/code in due time (and some more videos!).

The presentation uses Story Glass, also a project of mine, which we hope to offer soon as a service. It is an experience, lying in a damp field shooting a video to think about how the text will flow over it!

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#12

Post by JabavuAdams »

Raphmedia wrote: post #2

Building a drone, or robots is one of my dreams. I mean, as I programmer, I build things all the time. How awesome it would be to code something that ends up moving in the physical realm? Even better if it had some limited form of AI. But I know nothing about hardware, and very very little about programming a UAV.

http://diydrones.com

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#14

Post by lovelearning »

Raphmedia wrote: post #2

Building a drone, or robots is one of my dreams. I mean, as I programmer, I build things all the time. How awesome it would be to code something that ends up moving in the physical realm? Even better if it had some limited form of AI. But I know nothing about hardware, and very very little about programming a UAV.

I'm a programmer who'd never tried electronics till an year ago but have now managed to build a few things - that even involve homemade PCBs and SMD soldering.

1) I started by buying an arduino, a starter kit and some simple sensors and actuators - ultrasonic, gyro, servos, motor driver - on ebay.

2) read Pratt's "Make Electronics" and Wiley's "Electronics for Dummies"

3) started making. Understood theoretical concepts by doing.

4) I regularly watch DIY youtube channels and follow RSS feeds of sites like Instructables and Hackaday.io

5) I'm not yet capable of building a UAV, but I've already built a couple of robots.

It's not really tough, and it's a fantastic side hobby. It's also turned me into a more careful software programmer, constantly double and triple checking everything, because electronic circuits are not as forgiving of mistakes as software.

So I'd say get started right away. It's gonna be fun!

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#15

Post by soci »

matthewcanty wrote: post #3

This is excellent in every way. Not only building a homemade UAV, but the presentation was spot on. I expected the page to run badly with all that big content but had no problems. The images and video add so much and not even a single click required!

In an an iPhone the videos of the site are broken. So much better expirience from the desktop browser!

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#16

Post by muraiki »

Raphmedia wrote: post #2

Building a drone, or robots is one of my dreams. I mean, as I programmer, I build things all the time. How awesome it would be to code something that ends up moving in the physical realm? Even better if it had some limited form of AI. But I know nothing about hardware, and very very little about programming a UAV.

I started to work on last year's offering of this embedded systems MOOC, but couldn't commit the time required to finish it: https://www.edx.org/course/utaustinx/utaustinx-ut-6-02x-embe...

It seems like a great introduction to embedded systems for programmers without any hardware/electronics experience. The course is being run again in January.

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#17

Post by Symmetry »

Rhapso wrote: post #6
Raphmedia wrote: post #2

Building a drone, or robots is one of my dreams. I mean, as I programmer, I build things all the time. How awesome it would be to code something that ends up moving in the physical realm? Even better if it had some limited form of AI. But I know nothing about hardware, and very very little about programming a UAV.

Sensors/Awareness of environment is where the dream dies. Not just in that sensors give very limited input, but that limited input is far more than you can practically use effectively without a team of PhDs and a few years. You end up making very greedy decisions about behavior based on sensor readings, which work great in a narrow context of places and behaviors, but generalize poorly to human spaces. UAVs are a lit…

Robots in human spaces can be done and, more to the point, the company I'm working for is doing it[1]. And there's the Google car too. It does require spending more on sensors than a hobbyist will want to spend and in our case it requires the occasional remote intervention when, for instance, someone leaves a box in the robot's parking spot.

[1]http://www.vecna.com/on-demand-delivery

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#18

Post by Symmetry »

Raphmedia wrote: post #2

Building a drone, or robots is one of my dreams. I mean, as I programmer, I build things all the time. How awesome it would be to code something that ends up moving in the physical realm? Even better if it had some limited form of AI. But I know nothing about hardware, and very very little about programming a UAV.

If you're looking for something with AI then ros.org is a great resource. You can do a lot with a Kinect and an old laptop.

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#19

Post by lordnacho »

This is awesome. I want to do this myself. I have a degree in EE, but I've somehow never built anything like this. One issue is how to get the bits. What I mean is where is there a summary of all the bits one might need (like a box of lego), and how to get the pcb made? Also, do you sit with an oscilloscope and debug? Or is it all simulation? What do you use to simulate?

Also, do you employ control theory for the stabilization? Predictive filtering and all that?

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