I attended the 3rd outdoorflying in Zürich and it was a lot of fun. Of course I had my digital video camera with me and now you can watch the whole day in a short 9 minute clip. Of course there are some scenes with the EPI-OSD hardware with the new C-OSD software from Cascade. A short clip with EPI-S (current measurement) is also included. It was really fun to meet some guys from the forum and to have “real” talks. And of course we had some sausages over the fire (The fire was heated by Mikrokopter(s))
Yeah, it’s summer and now I have time to continue my investigations in FPV-flying. Some weeks ago I had a little disaster and crashed my FlightCtrl and my NaviCtrl (shortcut in the connection cable).
So I had to order a new NaviCtrl immediatly. I had luck, the MK-GPS and EPI-OSD survived.
And now – my Kopter is back (better than ever *ggg*)
Ok, let’s get to the topic.
A lot of people asked me, how I mount the camera and the EPI-OSD on my Mikrokopter. Thats a little bit complicated to explain and so I took some pictures to show you how I did it. Update – 30.05.09: Attention, if you want your C-OSD Version to work fully together with the NaviCtrl you have to connect the EPI-OSD to the debug port of you NaviCtrl!
I hope that I will have some time in the next weeks to do my first FPV Tests with video recording to post it here (maybe the weather is nice
Nice weather at the weekend – so that’s the result.
A nice flight in my village (250 inhabitants). You can see our house, our garden, the small church beside our house. You can watch the video in fullscreen – it still looks very nice. – Enjoy
Today I want to describe the mounting of the MK3Mag on the NaviCtrl board.
To have a good connection you have to solder the multi-pin-connector inverted and fix the MK3Mag with two screws to the NaviCtrl. If you look at the following pictures it should be self-describing.
Without the mechanical connection to the NaviCtrl the MK3Mag may fell of during flight – and it will be VERY difficult to find it again.
Today i finished the construction of my “third” MikroKopter. In the moment the Mikrokopter is a “patchwork” of the other two that i buildt before.
I have made a lot of pictures to illustrate the construction of my very simple MikroKopter. I believe that it is possible to build it up in one day.
Another very cool thing is the new NaviCtrl, which is currently in testing-phase by the MK-Betatesters and will be available for the community in some weeks. It’s a board with an ARM9 32 Bit Mikrocontroller on it (STR911FA). There are also a lot of connections free to have a lot of fun. For example: GPS, MK3Mag, USB, I²C, SPI, UART, … That means that the MikroKopter community has a new “playground” for the next months.
Of course the new NaviCtrl works best together with the MKGPS1 (a GPS board with an ublox LEA-4H chip) and MK3Mag (a three-dimensional magnetic sensor – which is used as a compass). With the actual releases for the Betatesters of the Mikrokopter community i can say that the MikroKopter stays in the air in a way that you would NEVER expect.
I have also filmed the autonomous position hold. I will try to put the video online in the next days.
Ok, enough written – here are some pictures:
So the MikroKopter gets more stable and now it’s time to test the FPV CCD camera from Sony together with the EPI-OSD (on screen display) and my video goggles.
Endlich wieder mal ein Update. Bin zur Zeit mit vielen anderen Dingen beschäftigt, habe aber doch noch etwas Zeit gefunden meine GPS Implementierung voranzutreiben. Heute gibt’s hier mal ein paar Infos zur Hardware. Es handelt sich dabei um ein GPS Modul von uBlox das sich in einem Empfänger von Conrad Electronics befindet (GPS RECEIVER 16 KANAL CR4 (USB) Bestellnummer 989777-62 – Stand 08/2007).
Das Design entspricht fast zu 100% dem “vorgeschlangenen” Demo-Design von uBlox. Da das Modul auch noch eine UART (serielle Schnittstelle) besitzt, ist es kein Problem das ganze an die FC anzuschließen. Da der ATMEGA 644 jedoch nur eine UART sein Eigen nennt, muss man auf die Kommunikation mit dem PC verzichten (bzw. nur ONE-WAY möglich). Oder man rüstet den uC um und bestückt den ATMEGA 644P. Dieser besitzt eine zweite UART. Dann muss man nicht auf den Kanal vom PC zur FC verzichten und kann die Settings wie gewohnt über das MK-Tool programmieren.
Eine andere Möglichkeit wäre, über Schalter das GPS Modul “umzuverdrahten” wenn mit dem PC kommuniziert werden soll. Habe mich noch nicht auf eine Version festgelegt
Hier noch ein paar Fotos zur Hardware:
Infos bzgl. Software und verwendetem Protokoll (wird wohl UBX werden) gibts demnächst, wenn ich genug Zeit zum Basteln finde.
EDIT: Inzwischen verwende ich das GPS wieder in seinem “eigenen” Gehäuse. Funktioniert hervorragend und die Elektronik ist geschützt. Im Moment wird USB und Serielle Schnittstellt nach außen geführt. Dann kann man das Modul schnell umkonfigurieren oder checken wie viel Satelliten verfügbar sind. PS.: Der MK steht in der Luft wie angenagelt
Juni 18th, 2009 by 
Speedy
(The fire was heated by Mikrokopter(s))
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