new autonav / GPS / IMU / OSD !!!

[r40734]

PM sent...

[corvette321]

thanks for all that replied and send PM's!!!

will be contacted shortly for beta testing..

all beta testers also receive a permanent discount in our online store of 15 %!!!!


tested out the HMC 6352 2 axis compass and its crap!!!

not happy with it at all.

so ditching it and going with PNI micromag 3 axis magnetometer.

yes thats right we are going with a tilt compensated solution!!!!!

as u know u also need a 3 axis mag for a full IMU.

so this is the natural step.

already got the equations for the tilt compensation....

do you know tilt compensated compasses cost over 400 dollars?

we are doing it for a $50 dollar addon!!!

pretty cool huh?

thinking about adding airspeed to with the SCP1000.

just a matter of some equations....

[Ruud Westerhout]

Hi corvette321,

You should be offering a discount for all those having a hard time reading your technical posts here (and hoping the result will be what they understand it to be) :D

As I am currently using the HeliCommand on my TRex450 and probably will go that way again when my TRex600 gets build, I might be not one of your target clients. Experience with the HC gives me the hope of something similar easy (after it has be installed and configured) and I am afraid that your device will be MUCH better but much more complicated too. I just want to use it :)
Nevertheless I will keep reading, keep the spirit !

Cheers,
Ruud

[corvette321]

hahahah :)

well the HC is a nice setup :) although a bit pricey!!!....

we are trying to do things on the cheap side, but offer precision not found in more expensive units...


its all in the coding :smokin::smokin:

[corvette321]

went flying a little today..


it was very windy with 15 mph-20 mph gusts.... and i crashed lots of times!!


just getting familiar with the setup.

okay 20 min familiarization and about 4 crashes thats good enough.

strapping the electronics on and tomorrow going out!!

im bringing my wife and my 8 month old son so they can laugh at me when i crash and burn.

hahahaha

ok maybe not burn.

tomorrow will be a small plane... then after that the predator UAV wannabee..

then comes the heli after those flights... still collecting parts and such for the heli.

wish me luck!! lets pray for low wind tomorrow as i want low and slow flights... (well the electronics should weight it down good for low and slow...)...

:banana:banana:banana

will try to get some video up if everything works out ok.

[Hogster]

Keep us posted! I'm keeping my eye on this thread - lots of interesting developments! Just need to make sure it's all working reliably before I'd consider strapping it to my £1k helicopter ;)

Keep it up :)


David

[corvette321]

well hits and misses today, my wife laughed at me good when i got home (she didnt come with me!!! nor did my son...), i crashed the plane so bad it blew up!!! ....(foamie at great speed impact!!!)

however did get a chance to test out the 5.8 ghz modules..

not happy with em!!

ordered a 900 mhz system from rangevideo.

well see how those do...

will still have some demo video up... (ground video albeit on the 5.8 ghz system... some noise in there....a little ghosting... gotta get better RCA cables for sure..)

want to show the precision of the gps and distance and bearing calculations , the layout and the scroll bars!!

this will be a demo of the OSD light version (no autonav functions as of yet...)

so keep checking back guys! i know this is a horribly long thread......

im pretty happy with everything so far... but i dont recommend the 5.8 ghz modules....

but tomorrow i have jury duty... so itll be a few :)

[Ruud Westerhout]

Did I miss something :) Where can the video be seen, or is this too early ?

Cheers,
Ruud

[corvette321]

i got some video done today, didnt come out too good since i dont have the new tx and rx yet... (rangevideo hasnt even shipped!!)

could do a car shot to appease everyone??

got 5 to 7 foot accuracy today when leaving the home startup point and coming back!!!

very happy with that.

that was with DGPS, 8-9 sats, and a nice PDOP, HDOP and VDOP.

:noteworthy:noteworthy

i really want to show off the layout, very happy with it.

[r40734]

5-7 feet is pretty good when you're talking about being 200+ feet up in the air. I'm more concerned about destination than origin, so if that accuracy has the ability to translate, then it's all good.

I was starting to wonder if you bailed on the project. We hadn't heard from you in 5 days. But then I realized that most people don't work 7 days a week, like I do.

Did you get the pitot tube working?

[corvette321]

hahahahaha we are working hard on it, although we had to take a little time off to update some other controllers (we have a reflow oven controller that just had a major software revision... )

and we also do consulting work from time to time.

the distance algorithm is a haversine and the target computation is the same as home.

so thats 5-7 for both.

one of these days will add waypoint functionality to the firmware...

thats the main selling point of our unit, accuracy and precision.

just keep holding on for a video.

its coming i promise!!

:clappp:clappp

got the pitot tubes in.. have to do a little surgery on them... (slicing and dicing...)

i want to fly over to range video and pickup my products... hahahaha...

waiting for equipment sucks.

well work on the heli platform soon... the park flyer platforms all sucked @$#@#...

do it right the 1st time on a heli :)

whens that trex 700 coming out?? :banana:banana

[r40734]

The 700 is supposed to hit the market in about a month, I think. Finless just started a build thread on the one he received for review.

[corvette321]

got some ground video up!!

this shows you the overall layout and shows the precision when we returned to the home coordinate!! (the target coordinate was on someone's lawn... picked a bad point from google....)

still have a few things to change and even noticed 2 bugs.

but its coming along nicely!!

:smokin::smokin::smokin:

anywhoo

heres the link.

http://www.thesiliconhorizon.com/motion.htm

theres a youtube video on it.

[DarkHeli]

Hey there!

I love what your doing with this project. I have been lurking in this thread for some time already. Any hope for a working artificial horizon?

[corvette321]

hello :)

not on this controller since it uses the max 7456 chip.

however in around a year or so well come out with a more graphical one ...

[DarkHeli]

hello :)

not on this controller since it uses the max 7456 chip.

however in around a year or so well come out with a more graphical one ...

Great! Thats around the time I will buy the 600, so ill be waiting eagerly. :banana:banana

[corvette321]

:):):)

heres the link to the youtube video!!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nyc7E4Umcs

[seanh]

Went to the site....I don't see any prices. Do you have a price list?

[corvette321]

well have the OSD light version up really soon!

when we do that well have a bean counter put together a sixy price :)

:Bang:Bang:Bang:Bang:Bang

we arent here to take all your money, just to make a living.....

but for the OSD light looking at 100-125 roughly...

...

well the settings util is coming along nicely,.....

here is an almost final screenshot..

http://www.thesiliconhorizon.com/images/OSDutil1.jpg

[corvette321]

oh yah will be expanding to waypoints in a separate tab... (think 4 to start will work out good...)

:Bang:Bang

[hommer75]

This looks interesting, allthough I developed a very deep hate for Microchip developing software in assembly on the PIC16 processors years ago.

How's your power consumption now? You said something about 300mA which is quite high, in my opinion.
I develop systems like this myself and our company specializes in very-low power consuption. We'll make your system run for 8 years on a 6Ah battery. We use the STM32 ARM processor quite often which is great power consuption wise while maintaing high processing power. Low power is quite hard while using GPS since those modules (specially the LNA) will draw quite some current.
Anyway, you might think about that as well since 300mA might be a bit to high. Beside that, great work. The OSD looks good as well. Your compass seems quite slow, I guess your using the GPS output for that. You might also think about a magnetic compass component. I beleive Honeywell and Nxp sell them, but there are probably more around.

Keep up the good work, and test your software a lot, aspecially for stability ;)

[corvette321]

thanks for your input :)

actually were doing a tilt compensated compass from a 3 axis mag. that will result in faster updates...

our power consumption was WITH an xbee pro connected which is about the same power consumption as the new Xbee XSC which provides commo upto 15 miles away!!! amazing little Xbee!!! its brand new!!! and fits on our board like a glove. just mate it to a good antenna.

we can always use power down modes yes, however most of the current consumption comes from accessories in this case the xbee module which can vary from 80 mA to 300 mA on xmit ....dependnig on your Xbee flavor...

we can always idle down the cpu and other chip pheripherals as needed.

this is a very modular system, so depending on your application and the many options you choose, your mileage may vary!!!

yah we play with cirrus logic's arms solution the 9315A...

now we have some pic 32's sitting around here... and playing with those... 120 DMIPS very nice little figure for a lil pic. well be using the USB OTG versions in the next revision autonav and OSD (for usb mem sticks.)

one of our main reasons for sticking with PIC's is that alot of people are used to programming on them, and that is one of our selling features... user development!! We feel that people are more used to developing on PIC's than arm's... for this target market..

:smokin::smokin::smokin:

[hommer75]

one of our main reasons for sticking with PIC's is that alot of people are used to programming on them, and that is one of our selling features... user development!! We feel that people are more used to developing on PIC's than arm's... for this target market.
Hmm, we disagree a bit there then. These days it's all C/C++, which is probably better since that saves some frustration with dealing with strage architecture problems (like pages and banks, GRR). As long as there is a GNU toolchain available for your platform then you've got a good starting point. Combine that with a good on-board debugging system and you've won me :)

[corvette321]

yah its called microchip C compiler hahahah

your probably thinking of pic basic huh?

there are GNU toolchains in development for the pic 32 and several for other variants...

however our source code is in C./

:banana:banana:Bang:Bang:Bang


and we use tons of ansi functions which are portable to anywhere.....

and libraries too.

so we agree to disagree. :cheers:cheers

but thats cool lets have a beer and its all good :)

have a good memorial day weekend, and everyone please take the time to remember our fallen soldiers!

please dont let our fallen heros be forgotten.

god bless :Bang:Bang

[corvette321]

the gps logger data parsing windows application is done!!!

with the 256k of eeprom on the techFX motion you can store about 450 waypoints.

sometime in the future we will switch to the 512K eeprom and it will be good for 900 waypoints.... that can be logged from 1 min intervals to 1 hour intervals.

anywhooo..

the gps logger software has virtual earth built in, and can convert data for google earth and google maps also.

heres the pics!!

http://www.thesiliconhorizon.com/images/logger3ddsidem.jpg

http://www.thesiliconhorizon.com/images/logger3drsidem.jpg

http://www.thesiliconhorizon.com/images/logger3dhsidem.jpg



should be getting our 1st shipment of OSD chips in a week!!!

after that, this board will be finally released!!

lots of great software and lots more great software to come!!

will work on the pan and tilt application with the Xbee interface next :)

so you can pan and tilt that camera and get live GPS feeds through Xbee updated through virtual earth upto 15 miles away!!!

:clappp:clappp:Bang:Bang:Bang:Bang:Bang