Robotic microhelicopter tutorial

Try www.sparkfun.com...can't remember if theirs is a 4DOF or 6DOF.

May be a bit big
http://www.sparkfun.com/shop/index.php?shop=1&cart (2581&cat=1&itemid@6&

http://www.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Accelerometers/IMU_6DOF-v1.pdf
Maybe the version without the sockets would be small enough

Insanely cool!

Do you envision this eventually being fly-by-wire, or will the usual
helicopter flying skills be required?

-- Gordon

Bravo

Very nice!


Check these guys - looks like just the ticket:

   http://www.cloudcaptech.com/crista_imu.htm

-Brian
--
Brian Dean
BDMICRO - ATmega128 Based MAVRIC Controllers
http://www.bdmicro.com/

Have you had any problems with control latency with Bluetooth?  I've
found that it is difficult to fly helicopters with a few ms of
delay in the servos.


I'm partial to the Rotomotion unit, since I designed it.  It also
has a servo controller and radio interface, which could replace
some of your existing components.

The autopilot.sf.net project has source code for the Rotomotion IMU
and a complete hovering flight controller.  Hopefully that will
help you make quick progress with your project.

Trammell

Indeed a basic PWM remote should have 10 ms average latency
from transmitter to servo, whereas my current setup has
20 ms on the Bluetooth link, plus 10 ms to the servos.
As far as manual control is concerned, I can't tell the
difference between "very hard" and "extremely hard" anyway.
And for computer-controlled flight I know the servos will
tolerate being refreshed much faster than 50 Hz if needed.


Yes I am aware that Autopilot and Rotomotion are very popular.
BTW another Pascal Brisset is using portions of Autopilot in
the Paparazzi UAV project - I would like to clarify that I am
someone else.

-- Pascal (Paris, France)

Pascal,

You might want to use your middle initial to differentiate yourself
from the other person especially in an english speaking environment
such as this one and especially the other person seems to have similar
interest as yours.

As regards to the IMU, we recently bought an IMU from microstrain. The
package is definitely weightier than your requirements but it may just
a question to remove the plastic part of it. We got the 3dm-gx1 but
there are others:
http://www.microstrain.com/3dm-dh.aspx

Igor.