[Paparazzi-devel] Re: Paparazzi

[antoine . drouin]

Hi Ahmad

glade to hear from you

Selon Ahmad Shakeel <address@hidden>:

> Hi Antoine
> 
> Nice to contact you again!
> 
> I have studied your project and it seems that you have
> used the FMA copilot and GPS only for IMU, and no
> accelerometers and gyros but the results are fairly
> good.

We use only two sensor, GPS and infrared. 
Our first infrared sensor was taken from an FMA autopilot. We now build our own 
(plans are in the CVS).
 
> Regarding the autopilot.sf.net project few basic
> things I cannot figure out and expect that can answer
> few questions and if I am wrong at some point, please
> correct me.
> 
> First they are using controller board to take the
> sensor data and to control servos. 

right

> All the rest of the
> processing is done on a arm processor (iPAQ) for
> Kalman filter (INS) and both of these are onboard
> (inside the helicopter). 

almost right. They are now using Xscale boards (cerfboard 250/255) instead of
ARM. They have more processing power (Xscale 400MHz). We (paparazzi) have bought
2 of their (rotomotion) old ARM cerfboard.

> They are also using the
> desktop computer on the ground for observing the
> real-time data through wireless modem.

I'm not sure about the wireless modem. When the were only hovering close to the
station, they had a Wifi link to their laptop. I don't know what they use now
that they fly out of range of the Wifi, but i remenber a message from Tram in
the mailling list, requesting info on radio modem.

We use the audio channel of our 2.4GHz video transmitter to transmit telemetry
data to the ground. We are about to test these radio modems : 
 http://www.coronis-systems.com/produits/PageProduit.php?IdCategorieProduit=21

> 
> Is the above structure true? Actually those guys have
> gone far into the project and it is very difficult for
> a biggner to know the basics!

We feel the need for documentation in our project. We will write some. I'll let
you know when it's done

hth 

Antoine

> 
> Thanks
> Shakeel
>  
>