AlohaCopter

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Pixy2 (CMUcam5 version 2)

Pixy2 just came out. It is a computer vision system. It can track colors, lines, and bar codes. I watched the videos and got excited. I ordered one, then another. They just came yesterday along with 3 small solar panels and 2 TTGO ESP32 LORA V2 boards.

I built a pan/tilt servo base for around $4.

So far I am pretty disappointed. The pan/tilt servos and Pixy2 program are programmed to follow an object of a set color. I trained it to track a white object and once it got a look at my ceiling it wouldn't look away. I understand that. So I trained it on a yellow object. It tracked that, and beige cover on my couch, then my skin, then something brown. I tried a dark red object and it locked onto my pink shirt. Blue worked the best. I thought I would be able to track objects with nice solid core colors because everything else is off color but it doesn't work.

I tried adjusting the color matching configuration but it didn't get any better. I have the newest firmware installed. Maybe with better lighting it works better. I hope to find a solution soon.

I ordered from Amazon. Some of the other distributors said they wouldn't have it in stock for a few more days and they were only receiving 25 at a time. So I seem to have gotten the first batch. At $60 it is cheaper than the older Pixy version $70. This one has a smaller lens and smaller board and is faster. Maybe it needs a larger lens to pick up more light and differentiate between colors.

Pixy2 on Amazon

I will keep trying. I've only played with it for around 2 hours so far. Let me know what you think in the comments

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

BetaFlight 3.2 remappable resources and soft serial inversion!

It is awesome. From an F4 flight controller I was able to output smartport telemetry to soft serial 1, invert it, and map it to the ppm input pin. Even on the F3 boards I still had to run a wire from a second uart to the RX. Now the smartport pin can be almost anywhere. I'll elaborate on this later. No more FrSky smart port inversion hack needed.

Hooking up a serial GPS and I2C compass

I have a few "PX GPS with Compass" which is a Ublox neo7 nano with HMC5883L compass.

Hooking up the gps was simple. rx, tx, 5v, and ground and it works. My flight controller, the HGLTech "F4 V5PRO Flight Controller" AIO, doesn't have i2c pins. Specifically I needed SCL and SDA. I read that those are after shared with UART3 on boards like the Omnibus F4. After many hours of trying every betaflight cli command I could research, I discovered I needed 1-10k pullup resisters on both i2c lines. So I hooked up 2 2.2k resisters from the i2c lines to 5v and it works! Some compasses might burnout eventually with the 5v pull-up instead of a 3.3v pullup. Whatever, it works for now. I have more.

Wiring the resistors neatly seems nearly impossible. I need a barometer also. Since the barometer and compass share i2c lines... I ordered a barometer that has built-in pullups. It works! No need to add my own pullup resisters.

The baraometer I got is a BMP280:
https://www.amazon.com/Adafruit-BMP280-Barometric-Pressure-Altitude/dp/B013W0RR6Y/ref=sr_1_1?tag=quadconfig-20

Thursday, July 27, 2017

Wraith32 motor controllers and Omnibus F7 flight controller. The perfect pair.

I just got 5 Wraith32 35 amp motor controllers and an Omnibus F7 flight controller from http://MyAirBot.com.

The Omnibus F7 flight controller and Wraith32 motor controllers are the perfect pair because they can both handle 32khz gyro and motor update speeds.

The Omnibus F7 has dual gyros, an MPU6000 and an ICM-20608. If you don't want to worry about soft mounting, use the MPU6000. If you want the fastest lowest latency control of your motors, then use the ICM-20608. The ICM-20608 is also known as RaceFlight's Super-Secret-Gyro (SSG). AirBot manufatures RaceFlight's boards, so they have had access to the SSG since it was first available. The ICM-20608 uses the fast SPI bus like the MPU6000 but it can run at 32khz instead of 8khz. The F4 flight controllers can barely handle 32khz, so this F7 is much better equipped for the job.

The Wraith32 motor controllers are able to be updated at 32khz. They are the same size as the AirBot's older Super RacerBee 30 amp motor controllers. They are 30x16x6mm and weight 4.8g. They support 3-6s voltages and 35amps current sustained and 45amp bursts. They have some new features such as current limiting and voltage limiting to stop them from burning up. Each has one high powered RGB led that can light up your quad's arm and help indicate which side is forward and which is backward. These are 10x brighter than the leds on some other motor controllers like the superbee. They are already activated and work right out of the box with with DSHOT1200. When updating Blheli32 firmware on them a check will be made of their serial number against an online database for re-activation. Re-activation only took a split second and flashed on the screen with no user intervention while the firmware was written. To use BetaFlight pass-through programming you have to use BetaFlight 3.2 which is currently in Beta but has some amazing new features.

To update these motor controllers you will need Blheli32: http://www.blheli32.com/download/
To use BetaFlight 3.2 you will need a new BetaFlight configurator 3.1.2 or higher: https://github.com/betaflight/betaflight-configurator
To install BetaFlight 3.1.2 Configurator you will need to download it, unzip it, then in Chrome go into Settings, More Tools, Extensions enable developer mode, load unpacked selection, and choose the dir where you unzipped it.
and a BetaFlight 3.2 hex firmware: https://ci.betaflight.tech/job/Betaflight/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/obj

Sunday, July 16, 2017

My quadcopter parts

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

RunCam Split

I pre-ordered RunCam split from getFPV and bangGood. I just got the getFPV one yesterday. It is awesome.

By default it starts recording when powered up. It does not record when powered via USB.
On the RunCam3 with auto-record turned on it would record while charging which could fill up your SD card and overheat.

When power is lost it closes the file and only loses the last like 1.5 seconds of video.

With the auto-record and auto-stop defaults, I don't ever need to use the buttons.

The SD card locks in and can't open while in the stack. I don't mind this, I use usb to offload files.

If the SD card fills up it will put a message on the fpv view which could obstruct your view. I think this is fine. It doesn't completely block the view and a 32gb card would take over 100 minutes of video to fill.

The camera comes with 6 or 8 m3 hex head screws. So I can use the same m3 allen wrench on everything on my quad now. Every other camera seems to use phillips screw head.

There is an adapter to make the skinnier camera the same thickness as an 1177. It mounts great on a realacc 214 frame. No motors in the fpv view. They do show up in the HD view. I am trying to extend forward or raise the camera. Higher angle than 40 degrees might work. I don't want to fly that high of angle though. I like to land sometimes.

I had to mount the RunCam split on the bottom of my stack and hgltech v5 f4 pro AIO on top of it because the aio has a big antenna connector on top. I had to make sure the usb is on the correct side so that the battery connector would not block it (coming down from above on the AIO). I used 25mm nylon screws coming from the bottom to the top. So bottom to top is: nylon screw head, 4mm frame, 2 nylon nuts, runcam split, 3 nylon nuts, AIO, 1 nylon nut.

I haven't actually flown with it yet but the FPV feed looks great so far. HD view looks great like RunCam3. I ordered a third Split already direct from runcam. I tend to over order awesome products. I have 4 of the AIO and 4 of the realacc frames.

Update 07/12/2017: I flew it last night and the footage looks great. The only small issue is the fish eye effect. I will try a gopro style lens and see if it gets better. It is mostly visible when on the ground. I crashed into a building and into the ground and the Runcam split didn't break. I was really hard on the camera ribbon cable when I was installing it bending it back and forth and yanking on it trying to get the board to fit under my flight controller and under my esc wires but it didn't break it.

Here is my flight video:
https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=OLSS8HqvCkQ

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Trip to China

I'm in China for a month so I won't be posting much. I was able to fly my quad in Shenyang and Benxi but now I am in Beijing and can not fly here. I think someone flew their camera drone too close to the airport and the government banned all drone flight within the 6th Ring road which is like 15km from the center of Beijing. So most of Beijing.

I flew from the US to Shanghai with my 8 quad batteries no problem. Going from Shanghai to Shenyang they took away 2 of my 1000mah batteries because they had no label to show that they were under 10,000mah. My 6 other 1000 and 1300mah batteries are larger and they are ok. Got to watch out for those super tiny 10,000mah batteries I guess...

I went to the China Unmanned Systems Expo 2017 in Beijing.

Check out my flight footage. I got to dive buildings, fly at night, land in water (record under water - no fish were harmed). Lots of fun.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8VYr7iU7713GCmc-3XABHzteleJrpK_q