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Showing posts from November, 2009

GUI almost done...

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The GUI for my tricopter is almost finished. Watch a screen capture video  here . It's working very fine and it is pretty handy.  What needs to be added is a possibility to flash new firmware to the tricopter. I would like to include avrdude in my GUI, but I still need to do some test with avrdude, Arduino bootloaders & RS232 cables... The GUI will be released when it is finished. The Arduino pro mini m168 is now filled to 85%. I will change over to an Arduino pro mini m328 so that I'll never run out of space. It seems as if I am going to build an extra tricopter with the ESC's from mikrokopter.de. That is a good opportunity to test everything again, making sure that building a Shrediquette DLX doesn't cause any problems. Edit: Today I sucessfully flashed my m168 and my new m328 via RS232 + bootloader + avrdude! I also managed to run avrdude hidden inside my GUI (so you don't have to enter any parameters, everything is done automatically with one single b

Last project tweaks

I realized that programming an Arduino with Bascom & ISP-Programmer might be too complicated for people that to not work with robots and microcontrollers frequently. That is why there will be some changes to the setup soon: I will write a tutorial on how to transfer my program to the Arduino via avrdude and a simple RS232 serial link (first, I have to find out if it really works...). The second simplification will be a GUI, where you can set, change and check every parameter of the tricopter. Development of the GUI might maximally take a month or so. I will begin to make it soon. In the end, making your own Shrediquette-tricopter might work like this: Buy an Arduino pro mini + RS232 cable Get or make the TriGUIDE pcb Get the RC components (motors, ESC's, etc) Build a frame Flash the Arduino using my precompiled source code +  avrdude   Install my GUI (TriGUI might be the name...) Set the parameters that match your equipment   Fly

Outdoor performance

Today, I recorded some outdoor scenes. Agility was improved, I think I should try a double-flip....

Circuit and PCB layout released!

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Today I can release the circuit and the PCB.  My little tricopter project seems to be fully documented now, it was a success and lots of fun. And now for something new.... I want to become snowboard pro ;-D. I will most likely post a video of the outdoor performance of the tricopter soon. This is the layout : (thanks to " AVR-Frickler" for tweaking the layout!) And here comes the circuit : TriGUIDE_v3.pdf You can download the Eagle files here: TriGUIDE_v3.zip

Source code released!

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Almost exactly one year after starting this project, I can finally release the source code of the tricopter. I translated the code to english (mainly variable names etc.) and added a lot of comments and explanations. I hope that you can understand the code, it is actually quite straight forward. Feel free to ask questions and give comments. Source code: Tricopter_02_ShrediquetteDLX.txt PCB layout etc. will follow during the coming days.