Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Quadcopter Quick Update #1

   Here's a quick update:

 I received the Arduino Pro Mini today and the 6 degree of freedom accelerometer and gyro sensor.



  Yes, they are that awesomely small.  I soldered a right angle header onto the end of the Arduino that has the pin-out for serial data transfer.  I can now attach my FTDI cable that emulates a com port with a USB connection.


  I haven't had much time to work with it yet, but I was able to run a quick test to see how quickly my position update function will run (the one with the fancy math).  With semi random and arbitrary non-zero inputs it takes 2ms to run through all of the math.  It only takes 1.5ms if all of the inputs are 0... not that that will ever happen in real life.  I would love for this number to be much lower, but at 10% of my ideal total loop time I don't see it as being a deal breaker.  We'll see how much time everything else takes.

  Next step is to connect to the sensor and figure out how to communicate with it.

Phillip

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