AP2000i altitude hold?

[dreslism]

Hyde,

A buddy and I had this conversation the other day. I want the new sensors, and the altitude sensor also.

My point to my buddy was from a business point of view (think sales), how many heli's use a gyro?

How many heli's use an ap2000i?

If it was your company, think about ROI (return on investment) investment being time/money/parts, whatever.

My personal feeling is this is the reason we are not seeing the new stuff WE want yet.

It is not easy stuff to develop, and will require lots of time and testing, and then the number of sales may be paltry compared to the number of sales a gyro could generate.

Anyhow, I feel this is what is holding it up, but again, this is just my opinion.

[Hyde]

the world doesn't need another cheeseburger.

alot of his products have catered to a niche market. original, clever, and filled a void. as awesome as it is, the ap2k has so much more potential with these extra sensors. it sounds as though it could compete with the Carvec or WePilot units (no GPS lock though) at a fraction of the price.

now, who's going to trade out their existing perfectly working gyros for a unit that does the SAME THING? are the masses going to purchase a gyro made by a specialist instead of the established and readily available gyros from mass-market companies like JR, Futaba, and Airtronics? is that the gamble that's been taken?

what i WONT DO is trade out my functioning gear for the emperor's new clothes. what i WILL DO is upgrade my ap2k with an inertia sensor and altitude hold because I DONT HAVE THOSE and could really use them.

i just want to hear something from angelos. alot of people do. and this is my fourth time asking him to respond over the last several months and it would be nice not to be ignored this time...

[MarkWebber]

Scott

Very perceptive of you. :D

Sometimes development of the cart requires a new horse. Would the cart work without the new horse? Probably, but not as well. One thing I've noticed in my dealings with Spartan RC is their strict quality standards. They don't seem to release anything unless it meets these standards.

Regarding the "cheeseburger". There are going to be alot of guys switching. Everyone that's flown it in the US wants one. Will many of us want to switch. Maybe not. It doesn't take much of a gyro to do what we need.

I don't believe Angelos is ignoring your question at all. I've not seen him on the forums for a while now. With the release of the gyro fast approaching, I'm sure he'll have time to get back to these projects.

[rerazor]

If this guy can design this fly bar less 2 axis gyro I don't see what the big fuss over a "new" tail gyro is when they are readily available and proven.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=698121

I understand the whole market share concept but I want Alt. hold.

I want a Carvec system but cheaper in price. :arggg: :arggg: :mrgreen:

[bladebreaker]

I want a Carvec system but cheaper in price.


Don't we all! If the Carvec was cheap, we'd all have one! Not that Spartan isn't a great product for the money! I'd love to see altitude hold/assist/GPS in the Spartan...some day...

Tip

[phil007]

I think we're all waiting for this Position Hold (http://64.233.179.104/translate_c?hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&langpair=de|en&u=http://mikrocontroller.cco-ev.de/de_mk/video.php?id=14&back=Videos.php$14&prev=/language_tools) that will work on our helicopters.

There was the "autopilot: Do it yourself UAV" a few years ago:
We're building a system for autonomous aerial vehicles for the hobbiest. The entire design and all software is available as Free Software, licensed under the GPL. The goal is to produce a do-it-yourself autopilot kit that anyone can build and fly.

Our initial target is 60 sized model helicopters and less than $500 in parts. So far we've been very successful -- one of our 2.2 boards has hovered a Concept 60 for several minutes at a time under attitude command from the safety pilot. It isn't totally autonomous yet, but the demonstration has proven that the inertial measurement unit (IMU) and Kalman filter approach work well.

Once they got it working the DIY kit for $500 disappeared and now you have to buy a $10K system. :roll:

Phil

[hedgebird]

Yeah, I want alt hold too. Correcting the pitch seems to be the way to go

and 200USD seems fair for this sort of device. As you can think of this as a sort of "gyro" (lol) that just keeps the alt steady, just like a gyro keeps the tail steady.

Kind regards,
Christian

[Hyde]

and as usual - Angelos ignores his customers yet again.

[phil007]

and as usual - Angelos ignores his customers yet again.

You can always go buy one of these.

http://www.micropilot.com/Images/heli_welcome.gif (http://www.micropilot.com/prod_mp2128heli.htm)

[lakespinner2]

I too can't wait for Angelos to come out with the altitude hold function. I'll be first in line. :wink: I love the ap2000i's that I have.

I (briefly) considered attempting to cobble up an altitude hold function for a microprocessor controlled prototype mount I've been working on for some time now. It's an ugly, heavy thing I threw together mostly to see if I could get the processor talking to the servos. It has a zlog altimeter running on it and it reports altitude info (in morse code) over the audio channel of the downlink. it seems to work fairly well.

Anyway, I first thought how hard could it be to control the pitch channel based on the altitude (when using a governor on the throttle). After studying up on PID algorithms and having nightmares about the heli rebuilds from all the necessary testing; I decided I'd wait on Angelos. :noteworthy Please hurry up. :OMG :wink:

But all this pondering got me thinking of how the alt-hold function would best be set up. Would it be best as an on/off function, like a switch; or better on a slider similar to the gain adjustment we're all used to for the ap2000i ? Or it could possibly even share the current gain channel to save a radio channel.

When the current 'hover-helping' is engaged, the right stick is basically centered, perhaps displaced a small amount for wind, drift, etc. but close to the center. When the 'hover-helping' is turned off with a slider, full control is gradually returned to the tx stick as the gain is reduced to zero.

In the case of altitude-hold 'helping' would you want it to ignore the pitch tx stick after it has been engaged, or perhaps the pitch stick will become an increase/decrease altitude adjuster after the alt-hold function is engaged. Up and down could be relative to the stick position wherever it was when the alt-hold was engaged. That might work pretty well except for when the alt-hold is turned off; then the pitch stick could be anywhere. Great care would have to be taken to make sure the heli didn't jerk up or down violently when the alt-hold was switched off. Maybe some gradual return of control to the stick over 2 or 3 seconds to have time to react. Maybe the alt-hold function is alway on and the pitch tx stick is simply an up and down control. probably not. who knows.

In any event, there seems to be lots of ways to set up an alt-hold function and lots of details to attend to. Angelos will probably have menus, user interfaces and several programmable options; it makes my head go numb just thinking about the software and the time to code it. Flight testing sounds potentially painful too.

Anyway, just thinking out loud. I've never had any experince with automated flight systems, there's probably some 'best method' already proven but I have no idea what it might be. I'll be tickled with anything I can get to help keep it at one altitude with no work on my part. :mrgreen:

[ssozonoff]

Hi,

I have the same thoughts and same questions. I have already done most of the code but have not tested anything. I think Angelos is at a similar stage.

In any case, yes there is a LOT more to it than meets the eye.

Serge

[Hyde]

http://i11.tinypic.com/6comqvs.jpg

:shock: :shock: :shock:

(i know on Mark's site they are like $210. angelos - you have a CRAZY placeholder amount lol)

[MarkWebber]

I just wanted to make sure everyone buys from me so I'm undercutting Spartan just a bit :wink:

Seriously, Angelos just provided me with the release pricing info and I've obviously got more time to update my site than he has.