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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

#51

Post by rebootthesystem »

6stringmerc wrote: post #49

Excellent, I've been waiting for Moore's Law to catch up with what I need to engineer my groundbreaking, innovative personal flight device design. Ever since I learned about the F-16's use of thrust and computing power to enable Relaxed Stability, I've been certain my personal flight device will need the capability to operate in that mode. I'm still trying to secure proper IP protections (I'm an amateur inventor) bef…

What's Moore's Law have to do with this at all? Just trying to understand. This was do-able ten, if not twenty years ago.

The model helicopter guys have been using gyro-stabilized platforms for probably decades. These are cases where the darn thing would be almost impossible to fly without the gyro taking control of various aspects of the aircraft. One of my current helicopters (1.5 meter rotor) can be tuned to go from docile-and-almost-boring to what I would call "tasmanian-devll-mode".

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#52

Post by petemc_ »

delecti wrote: post #50
kybernetyk wrote: post #46

Wow, scrolling through that article was really disturbing. I guess I need to get used to this kind of presentation.

I felt the same way. I really wish we didn't have to get used to that though. It's like the worst combination of a video and a website, and ends up as something like an annoying guided tour.

I thought it was awesome, and it worked perfectly on my 2008 macbook.

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#53

Post by 6stringmerc »

rebootthesystem wrote: post #51
6stringmerc wrote: post #49

Excellent, I've been waiting for Moore's Law to catch up with what I need to engineer my groundbreaking, innovative personal flight device design. Ever since I learned about the F-16's use of thrust and computing power to enable Relaxed Stability, I've been certain my personal flight device will need the capability to operate in that mode. I'm still trying to secure proper IP protections (I'm an amateur inventor) bef…

What's Moore's Law have to do with this at all? Just trying to understand. This was do-able ten, if not twenty years ago. The model helicopter guys have been using gyro-stabilized platforms for probably decades. These are cases where the darn thing would be almost impossible to fly without the gyro taking control of various aspects of the aircraft. One of my current helicopters (1.5 meter rotor) can be tuned to go fr…

I'm thinking the processing power to do calculations that are corresponding to the passenger / payload (which will move somewhat while in flight and be unstable), flight control inputs, and perhaps communications ability within a very small package. My point is while some of the parts have existed, until the Arduino / Pi devices started getting traction, I did not see a viable method for combining the disparate elements into a usable format...at a minimum cost of weight / power.

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#54

Post by jacquesm »

6stringmerc wrote: post #53
rebootthesystem wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's Moore's Law have to do with this at all? Just trying to understand. This was do-able ten, if not twenty years ago. The model helicopter guys have been using gyro-stabilized platforms for probably decades. These are cases where the darn thing would be almost impossible to fly without the gyro taking control of various aspects of the aircraft. One of my current helicopters (1.5 meter rotor) can be tuned to go fr…

I'm thinking the processing power to do calculations that are corresponding to the passenger / payload (which will move somewhat while in flight and be unstable), flight control inputs, and perhaps communications ability within a very small package. My point is while some of the parts have existed, until the Arduino / Pi devices started getting traction, I did not see a viable method for combining the disparate eleme…

The electronics for something carrying passengers would hopefully be a bit more rugged than an arduino or a raspi. I suspect that you're optimizing for the wrong variables here. Aduino and raspi are not groundbreaking for capabilities or format and inventions are rarely stopped by the price point of the development platform, if anything they are stopped by a lack of market, timing or physics.

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#56

Post by aliakhtar »

This is really cool. I wish he'd have gone into more detail about how he built the rest of the plane - was it purchased off the shelf, or did he build each part himself?

Also, how does the microcontroller pass on the commands to the motors, and how do they carry it out?

I'd love to read this article with x100 details.

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#57

Post by aliakhtar »

jonny5532 wrote: post #11
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 fl…

please do! I subscribed with my email, hope to read more updates.

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#58

Post by aliakhtar »

jonny5532 wrote: post #29
lordnacho wrote: post #19

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 sta…

(Jonny the author here) I plan to write this up more completely, but here are some more technical details: Most of the bits (the foam plane, servos, speed controller, radio modules, IMU, barometer and GPS) came from eBay or HobbyKing. I started off with a little USB development board with an Atmel SAM7 on it, and then moved to the PCB and a newer Atmel SAM3 (partly after discovering how cheap prototype PCBs are from…

What's your background? Are you an engineer, or self taught?

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#59

Post by 6stringmerc »

jacquesm wrote: post #54
6stringmerc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking the processing power to do calculations that are corresponding to the passenger / payload (which will move somewhat while in flight and be unstable), flight control inputs, and perhaps communications ability within a very small package. My point is while some of the parts have existed, until the Arduino / Pi devices started getting traction, I did not see a viable method for combining the disparate eleme…

The electronics for something carrying passengers would hopefully be a bit more rugged than an arduino or a raspi. I suspect that you're optimizing for the wrong variables here. Aduino and raspi are not groundbreaking for capabilities or format and inventions are rarely stopped by the price point of the development platform, if anything they are stopped by a lack of market, timing or physics.

Single passenger, and initial versions will not be self-powered but rather towed. I already have a very close friend who pokes holes in my ideas and innovations, and I certainly don't expect most people on here to understand the short, medium, and long-term goals of my concept. The innovation is one of physics, I'm simply mentioning the tools with respect to this discussion / item being shared.

Frankly it's actually more of a proof-of-concept for a highly efficient wing design - one that only recently was discovered within the past five years. Hence, even if everybody nipping at my heels thinks it could have been done already / 10 years ago with "off the shelf" parts and such, well, you're wrong. Like I said, I'm very protective of my IP at this point and don't mind fielding this type of criticism, it's just somewhat laughable to me because there's so many disparate concepts being put together that the only person who could be this crazy and innovative is me, because it's one of those inventions that only comes from a unique mind.

There's a lot of criticism on here for the OP because they aren't going into enough detail. I'm guilty of that too. I really don't care if you feel the same, because I like making connections with other big thinkers and dreamers. Critics are a dime a dozen. Liberal arts majors with a lifetime of aviation industry experience? Much more rare.

Re: Making a brain for my model plane

#60

Post by aliakhtar »

lovelearning wrote: post #14
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 concep…

Can you share which components you bought to start with, i.e which starter kit, which sensors / motors, etc? Thanks!
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