So this is it!! There is a website in the making for this as well, but that will be more about the actual bits that get built, this is more a brain storm and a place to kick ideas around as well as document the entire process.
Pics galore I promise.
First the boring bits and some background information.
RULES
Many of you are old enough to remember the old startrek series where they had communicator's, I remember watching a couple with my dad and him telling me when he was young and watched it he thought it would be so cool to invent a communicator, a device you flipped up and could talk to people on!! Obviously science fiction, and yet a decade or two after that mobile phones appeared! At first a little like the star trek communicator and then much later the mobile phone of today, able to pay bills and buy things in a shop with just a simple swipe.
I watched the old James Bond films with him and especially Gold Finger, in that they had a laser that could cut through things!! He said at the time it seemed like something that would never happen and even if one day it was possible it would be the size of an industrial estate! 30-40 years on you can buy laser that cut pretty thick ply etc off ebay cheap.
He told me about wondering when he was my age if in 100 years or so we could get a space ship on mars and see if anything lived there, since then we have sent a space ship past Pluto and landed on Mars!
As a boy he wondered if one day maybe we could build a place in space where people could live............ok we only have the international space station but its getting there.
My point?
None of the above broke any laws of physics, they were simply science fiction because no one had done it yet. People hadnt got together and thought the problems through and come up with solutions.
He was 14 ish when he got a commodore PET 80 computer, but it didnt do much, there wasnt the world wide web although there was apparently a kind on internet.
In the 21st century we have access the most information man has ever been able to reach at a press of a button, a forum is a place where people come together, so to me if you combine both of them things and have a positive attitude I am sure what hasnt been done before is simply something waiting to be done. The project i am doing has already kind of been done, there are a few big differences and mine is very ambitious. WHEN I make it work there are more applications than first seems likely, I know the last bit because of conversations with people (companies) who would be very interested in a simple solution.
So the rule is NO saying it CANT be done UNLESS you can prove beyond doubt it violates a law of physics! By all means point out possible problems and things I may have missed, and your welcome to express doubts, but be prepared to offer some backing for your doubts, a simple it cant be done and no proof = YOU CANT DO IT, dosnt mean WE CANT!
Equally I am prepared to offer papers to prove aspects that seems difficult, if they are paid for stuff I cant post online I will try and get a link or at least the paper identifier, if there isnt a paper but a way to do an experiment to see if something can or cant be done then we do the experiment before declaring its impossible. In short this is to be a positive thread that brings out the best of ETO, kind of like back when we all had alot of fun making mad stuff.
The thread will jump around a bit, this is a bit beyond my control and rather than stop and wait for something I will switch to another aspect of the project. There is so much to do I see no reason why (apart from exams etc) that there is dead time.
There will also be a fuel thread because its a large topic on its own and it will just confuse things all in one thread.
I guess next step is to explain as much as I can exactly what this is for and what it is intended to do, the final aspect as to the what exactly its getting and how that is done isnt important and isnt something I can go into. But honestly the little bit I cant tell you isnt important and dosnt really affect anything with the project, it does place a couple of special conditions we need to meet but the reasons behind the why are not important to get this done.
So next post I will outline as much as I know at this point, the one thing we dont yet know is what its going to look like, except a fixed wing plane and I dont know how big it will be yet, this cant be done until alot of the systems have been worked out and I have a good idea of total weight for the wing loading etc. So there is some ground work and experimenting to be done before the final plane can be designed. Because of parts etc the first thing I am going to do some work on is the ground station control unit, i am waiting for some parts and information before I can do much on the system side for the actual plane, so rather than wait around I will get on with parts I can now.
The case size has been narrowed to one of two cases, I would like to use the smaller case but lets see how it goes. The layout of things will be done mounted on cardboard or whatever I can get hold of, once the final layout is done and I am happy it will be machined from Aluminum and covered with perspex and vinyl lettering etc.
Tomorrow I will post ics of some of the DEV kits I am using, once something is working on the dev board I can move too doing a pcb for it. This is not an exercise in getting a single chip to do everything!! and squishing as much code in as small a space as I can, I intend to break the sections into parts and have the micros talk to each other, I prefer on the ground station side to break it down into small chunks. On the actual plane is a bit different as we have weight to consider.
The radio comms side between ground and plane is more than one system, but to get the ground controller moving I dont need to add the radio side for a while, in the end the chips will just pass messages to the radio board and these are sent to the plane, so in parts we can use hard wire for now and later on add in the radio side as I intend to use a bus system.
Currently inter chip is likely to be SPI and RS232 and sensors are likely to be mainly on a I2C bus, I would rather keep it separate like that than do something like a complicated can system. No actual computer involved, but there will be the odd R PI or 2 as I need a screen to connect to the ground box to display telemetry and other things, but I dont intend to use laptop or computer as such.
the only other point to add is, alot of the parts of this have already been done on the hex's and quads i have built, so the vision system when I get to it has been tried and tested, I do want to improve on it and where I can I will use existing video, you tube also has videos that will demonstrate some of the techniques its based on. Next post will be pics of the kits and starting materials and hopefully I am going to answer cowboy's question on how I intend to measure the amount of fuel
. I want to alter something I have already tried but this time take some pics, I need to double check something but will explain that by picture as try both ways out.
I know the technique I want to use but I thought of something that might negate the inherent problem of fuel moving moving about in a tank. No idea if it will work until I try it at the weekend, I wont be trying it with fuel but with IPA, if it works with that it will work with fuel but the calibration will be different.
While I dont know the actual size yet of the plane, I do know the wing span is likely to be over 62"
When I explain the time and distance this thing needs to obtain keep one thing in mind.........a 30cc 2 stroke weedwacker runs a pretty long time off a ltr of fuel, we will be using something like a .79cc engine and two .45 -.65 engines
Pics galore I promise.
First the boring bits and some background information.
RULES
Many of you are old enough to remember the old startrek series where they had communicator's, I remember watching a couple with my dad and him telling me when he was young and watched it he thought it would be so cool to invent a communicator, a device you flipped up and could talk to people on!! Obviously science fiction, and yet a decade or two after that mobile phones appeared! At first a little like the star trek communicator and then much later the mobile phone of today, able to pay bills and buy things in a shop with just a simple swipe.
I watched the old James Bond films with him and especially Gold Finger, in that they had a laser that could cut through things!! He said at the time it seemed like something that would never happen and even if one day it was possible it would be the size of an industrial estate! 30-40 years on you can buy laser that cut pretty thick ply etc off ebay cheap.
He told me about wondering when he was my age if in 100 years or so we could get a space ship on mars and see if anything lived there, since then we have sent a space ship past Pluto and landed on Mars!
As a boy he wondered if one day maybe we could build a place in space where people could live............ok we only have the international space station but its getting there.
My point?
None of the above broke any laws of physics, they were simply science fiction because no one had done it yet. People hadnt got together and thought the problems through and come up with solutions.
He was 14 ish when he got a commodore PET 80 computer, but it didnt do much, there wasnt the world wide web although there was apparently a kind on internet.
In the 21st century we have access the most information man has ever been able to reach at a press of a button, a forum is a place where people come together, so to me if you combine both of them things and have a positive attitude I am sure what hasnt been done before is simply something waiting to be done. The project i am doing has already kind of been done, there are a few big differences and mine is very ambitious. WHEN I make it work there are more applications than first seems likely, I know the last bit because of conversations with people (companies) who would be very interested in a simple solution.
So the rule is NO saying it CANT be done UNLESS you can prove beyond doubt it violates a law of physics! By all means point out possible problems and things I may have missed, and your welcome to express doubts, but be prepared to offer some backing for your doubts, a simple it cant be done and no proof = YOU CANT DO IT, dosnt mean WE CANT!
Equally I am prepared to offer papers to prove aspects that seems difficult, if they are paid for stuff I cant post online I will try and get a link or at least the paper identifier, if there isnt a paper but a way to do an experiment to see if something can or cant be done then we do the experiment before declaring its impossible. In short this is to be a positive thread that brings out the best of ETO, kind of like back when we all had alot of fun making mad stuff.
The thread will jump around a bit, this is a bit beyond my control and rather than stop and wait for something I will switch to another aspect of the project. There is so much to do I see no reason why (apart from exams etc) that there is dead time.
There will also be a fuel thread because its a large topic on its own and it will just confuse things all in one thread.
I guess next step is to explain as much as I can exactly what this is for and what it is intended to do, the final aspect as to the what exactly its getting and how that is done isnt important and isnt something I can go into. But honestly the little bit I cant tell you isnt important and dosnt really affect anything with the project, it does place a couple of special conditions we need to meet but the reasons behind the why are not important to get this done.
So next post I will outline as much as I know at this point, the one thing we dont yet know is what its going to look like, except a fixed wing plane and I dont know how big it will be yet, this cant be done until alot of the systems have been worked out and I have a good idea of total weight for the wing loading etc. So there is some ground work and experimenting to be done before the final plane can be designed. Because of parts etc the first thing I am going to do some work on is the ground station control unit, i am waiting for some parts and information before I can do much on the system side for the actual plane, so rather than wait around I will get on with parts I can now.
The case size has been narrowed to one of two cases, I would like to use the smaller case but lets see how it goes. The layout of things will be done mounted on cardboard or whatever I can get hold of, once the final layout is done and I am happy it will be machined from Aluminum and covered with perspex and vinyl lettering etc.
Tomorrow I will post ics of some of the DEV kits I am using, once something is working on the dev board I can move too doing a pcb for it. This is not an exercise in getting a single chip to do everything!! and squishing as much code in as small a space as I can, I intend to break the sections into parts and have the micros talk to each other, I prefer on the ground station side to break it down into small chunks. On the actual plane is a bit different as we have weight to consider.
The radio comms side between ground and plane is more than one system, but to get the ground controller moving I dont need to add the radio side for a while, in the end the chips will just pass messages to the radio board and these are sent to the plane, so in parts we can use hard wire for now and later on add in the radio side as I intend to use a bus system.
Currently inter chip is likely to be SPI and RS232 and sensors are likely to be mainly on a I2C bus, I would rather keep it separate like that than do something like a complicated can system. No actual computer involved, but there will be the odd R PI or 2 as I need a screen to connect to the ground box to display telemetry and other things, but I dont intend to use laptop or computer as such.
the only other point to add is, alot of the parts of this have already been done on the hex's and quads i have built, so the vision system when I get to it has been tried and tested, I do want to improve on it and where I can I will use existing video, you tube also has videos that will demonstrate some of the techniques its based on. Next post will be pics of the kits and starting materials and hopefully I am going to answer cowboy's question on how I intend to measure the amount of fuel
. I want to alter something I have already tried but this time take some pics, I need to double check something but will explain that by picture as try both ways out.I know the technique I want to use but I thought of something that might negate the inherent problem of fuel moving moving about in a tank
. No idea if it will work until I try it at the weekend, I wont be trying it with fuel but with IPA, if it works with that it will work with fuel but the calibration will be different.While I dont know the actual size yet of the plane, I do know the wing span is likely to be over 62"
When I explain the time and distance this thing needs to obtain keep one thing in mind.........a 30cc 2 stroke weedwacker runs a pretty long time off a ltr of fuel, we will be using something like a .79cc engine and two .45 -.65 engines
Last edited:
