Post one: Project Begins

Notice:

This is the official first post for the opensource quadcopter to be constructed by Patrick Cross, Casey Hungler, and Zach Block. More details on the projects goals/desires and other about based information can found in the about page which will be made shortly after this post.

Mechanical Progress:

Currently the project mechanically has become in a bit of a mess. When the idea was first made the quadcopter would be a quadcopter with 4 motors one on each end. After some funding related issues, the quadcopter design needed to be changed to a tricopter with a drive motor in the center. This funding issue seems to be resolved though and will hopefully be returning to a quadcopter design soon. No official design as of right now but this should be decided very shortly and then more design for the quadcopter code can be made. It would also be helpful to maintain a quadcopter design because a 3D model in this design has already been constructed.

Stellaris Progress:

The Stellaris Launchpad has accurately completed a PWM oscillation that is fully programmable at run time meaning the motors can be controlled. The stellaris launchpad has also accurately read in and transmitted packets of data using interrupt handlers at 115200 baud the baud of a Bluetooth module. Next on the list for the Stellaris is to complete I2C communication to read in data from the sensor for the quad.

Android Progress:

Currently a lot of effort is being put into getting an Android phone to connect to the Eclipse/Android SDK. The phone that was origonally tested is the Motorola Atrix 2 but this phone's original cable was lost which may not seem important but turns out to be very important. Without this cable the device will not recognize even with drivers pre-installed likely to do unwired lines on the USB housing. Until an Android is found that can be debugged this part of the project is on hold. Luckily once this is complete there is source code already out there that handles bluetooth connection making construction of this part fairly painless. 

Wireless Com:

After testing the xbee's and the bluetooth module for some time it was found that there is infact a way to chain the modules together making a stable long range connection to the phone. The setup is as follows where <-> signifies wire and --- signifies wireless.  Android phone --- bluetooth module <-> xbee radio --- xbee radio <-> stellaris launchpad. By using xbees a 2 way com can be stably created that handles things such as packet loss and checksum's in the background.