Arduino basics applicable to quadrotors

Question

Hey everyone,

I'm an engineering student and as part of my course next year I am going to be working on a project to create an arduino controlled quadrotor from scratch. I have no experience with arduinos and little experience programming but I have managed to get hold of an arduino uno and some basic parts to mess around with over the summer before term starts again. The actual project will be using an arduino mega and accelerometers and gyros but i want to start with something a bit simpler and cheaper before I start messing around with more expensive components.

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about some simple projects to get me used to the arduino environment that would also be applicable to my project.

I've already thought of mocking up one arm of the quadrotor and getting it to balance with tilt sensors and a motor connected to a propeller.

Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

TSJ

ntewinkel · Answer

Hi Tomos, If you have not used Arduino before, you might want to start with a simple tutorial. This previous post lists a few you can try: http://www.element14.com/community/message/75588#75588/l/easy-beginner-tutorial-for-arduino I know that some of it is pretty basic, but the skills used for the basics (like blinking an LED) transfer to pretty much everything else. The oomlout tutorial includes a tutorial for controlling motors and their speed, so that might be useful. You can then use those building blocks to take the next steps. To start with a tilt sensor you might just want to have it light up LEDs (maybe vary the brightness) to start with. And I like your idea of balancing a single arm - I guess you'd have the pivot located such that the motor end of the arm can swivel below and above so that the motor speed would have to be adjusted to keep the arm level. Good luck on your project! I hope you post or blog about it on e14 Cheers, -Nico