Remote controller

Hello everyone!
Now it’s time to introduce some information about, how we want to control this flying thing. Firstly, we need to have some wireless modules to be able to communicate with the main part of quadro by RF. The second thing which is necessary to do that, is the remote controller. Probably most of you have in childhood a toy, which was controlled using some kind of remote controller. This (the most popular) kind of controller looks like in the picture below (etc.).

Controllers such as this one, are commonly used with toys, remote controlled models, etc. They have some advantages and disadvantages. Let's focus on cons. They often are heavy, big and in my opinion quite awkward,  not to mention that you need to take out the batteries from the socket, put it into the charger, wait until they will be ready to use and again take them out from the charger and put into the socket. They also are quite expensive. Moreover, they have built-in wireless module which is working at a single bandwith. So, if we want to use that kind of controller in our project, we would have to buy it, take out from it all the electronic stuff (including wireless module) and put there our own. 

Referring to the following facts, we decided to use in our project well-known for everyone and also commonly used PlayStation 2 (PS2) game controller known as PS2 PAD (joypad, gamepad). It is shown below.

There are several advantages of such a solution. Firstly, it is quite cheap (we decided to buy unoriginal pad which cost only 20 zł). Secondly it’s convenient (or handy) and I think, each of us had it once in hands. It is light and we can use a battery and wireless module which we want to use, without throwing out any of original parts except the wire. Additionally, there is much more buttons, which can be useful  further (we are using some of them for now).

How to use the PS2 PAD to controlling quadro and how to connect and communicate whit PAD using µC (microcontroller), I’ll describe precisely in further posts. 

That’s all for today. 

Have a nice Easter! :)

Principals of quadrocopters

As I promised a few days ago, today I try to explain what do we want to build, how it works (and flies :) ) and what do we want to achieve eventually.

What a quadrocopter is?

Quadrotors, also called quadrocopters are multicopters, which are lifted and propelled by using four rotors. Basically, it consist of four motors with propellers and a kind of electronics which control stability during the flight. All of those parts are attached to frame, which has shape of ‘X’ or ‘+’. Quadrocopter in many cases is steering by some radio controller – it means that it could be classified as an UAV (Unmanned aerial vehicle) or drone. Nowadays, the popularity of quadrotors increased, especially among model-makers, because of chip equipment necessary to build it. Let’s take a look how it works.

Why quadrotor flights?

Quadrocopter needs for construction a frame, propellers and electric motors. To obtain the best performance and a simplest control, motors and propellers should be placed at the same distance between them [pictures on a left side]. The frame should be strength, tough, but also have light weight. Due to this factors, carbon composites seems to be the best choice. 

Electrical motors must be powered and controlled :). So, quadrotor to flight need some electrical components. They are ESC (Electronic Speed Control) modules, which are responsible for powering a single motor, and controlling. Depends on a type of motor, it could need different control. In a future I will describe what type of motors and ESCs we will use.








As it was mentioned earlier, quadrocopter consist mainly of four motors with propellers. Each of them produces both a thrust and torque about center of rotation, and also a drag force, which has got opposite to vehicle’s direction of flight. We have to use four propellers: two pairs of counter rotating props (two rotates clockwise, and two rotates counterclockwise, on the opposite arms of frame). If all of them rotates with the same angular velocity, the vehicle will move up and down. If controller wants to change the direction of flight, one of motor must increase its RPM (revolutions per minute), and the opposite motor have to decrease its RPMs. It is adjusting its pitch and roll forces Also, vehicle could adjust its yaw by applying more trust to rotors rotating in the same direction. In this case, quadrocopter would rotate around his center of rotation. The pictures will describe it more briefly:

At the end of this post, some motivation for us and you :) maybe our vehicle will never acts as in those movies, but we will be happy and satisfied if it fly and works properly :) More videos on http://www.flyingmachinearena.org/videos/

References:

[1] http://www.rchelicopterfun.com/quadrocopter.html
[2] http://wyvernupenn.blogspot.ca/2010/04/mechanical-design.html
[3] http://cog.yonsei.ac.kr/quad/quad.htm
[4] http://oddcopter.com/2012/12/12/easy-diy-quadcopter-build-part-1-the-parts-list/
[5] http://oddcopter.com/2012/12/19/easy-diy-quadcopter-build-part-2-the-build/
[6] http://www.slideshare.net/lenntilley/quadrocopter-build-manual
[7] http://www.slideshare.net/LenzGr/how-to-build-your-own-quadrocopter

Hello World!

Welcome everybody! :)
The main idea of blogging here, is to share with you our progress through building our own quadrocopter. We will try post some news on every weekend. I try to get an additional information about our project and quadrocopters generally later in this week :) Stay tuned with us! ;)