GPS Plane

[Jozo]

Hi, I´ve been programming for some time now and made the following application with ppl. I´ve been testing and working on this project for some years now with various languages because the idea came long time ago when just few people heard of GPS. PPL has proved to be the ferfect (also cheap) solution to realise it. I will describe the program:

I've programmed a client application that runs on a mobile phone with a GPS receiver. It is build in a remote control plane, but without the remote control haha. It reads GPS, calculates the various data of the plane and calculates like an autopilot what action/movements the plane should make according to a pre-defined flightplan also with GPS points. The mobile phone is connected to a servo controller so the autopilot part of my program can actually fly the plane. There's no limit in distance because there's no remote control anymore.

I've programmed a server application to use optionally on a pc/laptop.
It is basically the same but the GPS data is fed through GPRS from the mobile phone so you can monitor and fly your plane from a pc/laptop, for safety...

I'm testing it (yet on the ground, later on in the air) right now. I'm shooting the progress on video. It can take a month or two but then I hope to show you some results.

I also made some tools to make flight-plans, change settings etc.

I made some libraries with classes to make it usefull for future/other applications.

:cool:

[Mike Halliday]

Unbelievable :eek:

This looks great!

Do you have a demo/trial we can try?

Not into remote control planes myself, but the concept is most definately worth looking at! :)

Keep up the brilliant work and keep posting to the forum!

Mike.

[LarryCos]

Very Impressive!

[Leginus]

Wow. Being and avid flyer of R/C helis for aerial photography I find this very interesting. Look forward to some videos!

Good Work!

[Jozo]

Thanks for your replies. With that exitement I´ll react with some details.

First of all, yes I will provide a working demo in a few days. I need some time to make an ini file you can use for some values wich are not in the setup yet like comport for gps. You could test it like this.
With the course editor you can scan some GPS points in your environment or enter known GPS points, I call them waypoints and save them as seperate waypoints or save them as a flight. With each waypoint you have to provide some data like the speed the autopilot should hold on to. Or do you want it to hold on to a certain throttle value. The max. distance to a waypoint that is considered as reaching that waypoint. The deviations on the flight courses to follow, to prevent the plane to react to precise and fly sinus like waves instead of nice straight line. And more you'll see...
But of course you will have to test it without the plane, I wish I had it all ready yet.
So drive in your car around the waypoints or reach them, just play with it.
On the screen you'll see what is happening. The course to the next waypoint of your flight is in the compas. If the autopilot is on (click on the light) the throttle, rudder and ailerons are set automatically according to the flight. If it is off you can set them by clicking on the meters, one for the throttle, one combined for rudder and ailerons, of course it will have no fx on your car haha, maybe on you driving it.

Then about the helicopter. Flying it with a pc/laptop/2nd PDA seems no problem but the autopilot can only fly objects with a certain minimum speed, not hovering objects because it needs data from 2 GPS points to calculate with (differences). But it looks cool anyway to fly it with your laptop. In fact I already took care of the fact that the object can vary like two engined planes or a car. I use a parallax servo controller in my test plane. I made a setup where you can link a servo connected to i.e. port 1 of the controller to the rudder value of the autopilot. So the autopilot will know the port of the servo to change when it wants to change the rudder value. You can use more ports for the same 'task' like two rudders or two engines, just think of any flying object of wich you can alter x, y or z.
You can even use an engine with propellor for steering for example.
In short, if you want to hover with a helicopter on an autopilot at all you need 3 GPS receivers at the outer edges of your helicopter (maaaaybe 2 if you're sure it won't flip upside down) to create a triangle. Or you'll need an artificial horizon and a compas. That's very complicated to test with...

Jozo

[Jozo]

I think I'm the only person on earth who violated the international rules for usb cables wich prohibits to produce a cable with two mini usb connected to eachother (externaly powered by 5 V) for my servo controller hahahahahahahaha didn't work hahahahaha
:D :D :D

[Leginus]

well don't we all love spammers