Perl EPO Glider 800

Recently (by that i mean about 2 months ago) brought a glider from www.rchobbyaddict.com. Have finally managed to assemble it.  Here are some pics and a video of the glider. It uses a brush-less DC motor, 4 servo motors, and a 2S1P 800mah battery. Will give detailed specs in a post in one or 2 days after the flight.  

Ferrari Italia 458

Undoubtedly the best looking Ferrari in the world. Made in 3Ds Max 2011. Rendering time: 55 mins/per frame @1080p

Update : Last 3 images took 9 Hours at 3840x2160 ..

Quadrocopter - Part 8 - Failure

The quadrocopter project was going fine till i decided to start soldering the circuit for the flight controller. I've burnt my hand countless times while soldering - frankly speaking im lousy at it - but this was worse.

I was powering the circuit from the BEC (Battery Elimination Circuit) on one of my ESCs. As it happens due to the genius of my soldering technique i accidentally shorted the GND and the VCC of the BEC together and as soon as i connected the battery there was a crack sound and the inevitable distruction of the ESC. Thankfully we did have a spare ESC at home that was being used in a hovercraft project that my flatmate was working on so that got sorted.

The Burnt-Up ESC.

After that things got worse. The maiden test flight - not conducted by me - of the quadrocopter (done just by connecting the ESC's to the RF receiver with no gyros and no control circuitry) did not go well - as expected - and the entire thing just flipped over after going about 8-10 feet in the air and came down in a less than controlled fashion (Damn gravity). The damage was minimalist - the lower acrylic sheet got a crack on it and 2 of the propellers had light scratches on them. After this i decided to replace the acrylic sheets with something less brittle  some time later decided to make the entire structure - this time with a few changes.

Then that someone accidentally sat on the flight controller board for the quadrocopter (also called Luke) and broke it into 2 pieces. Thankfully i had spares for all the components for the board so i will be re-soldering it and this time i will be careful.

I will write a post as soon as im done with the new structure and the new board but that could be some time.

Quadrocopter - Part 7 - Updates

Its been about 2 months since I've written about anything on the blog. This was mainly because i got lazy and partly because i had nothing new to report. So now for the updates on the quadrocopter project.

Firstly i got the pyramid ready and fixed on top of the quadrocopter.This is how it looks:

Note:The RF Remote in the pic is not the one im using now. This was just a temporary 9ch radio that the people at RCHobbyAddict.com sent me until the ones i ordered arrived. It was freaking awesome though.

I also added some acrylic sheet pieces to be used as landing gear which was not a very good idea so i replaced them with some foam pieces - they work extremely well.

I also measured the weight of the quadrocopter and it was about 1.7Kg (including 2 batteries).

I then finally received the the RF transmitter and receiver that i ordered (Hobby-King 2.4GHz FHSS 6Ch Tx-Rx - Mode 2) from RCHobbyAddict.com at a reasonable price.This worked rite out of the box and all i had to do was plug it in. I've done some testing and was able to get about 600 meters range (Line of Sight) after which the limitations of my testing area came into play and so i left it as it is.

PS: I just bought an apple keyboard and by-jove its comfortable to type on so i hope there will be a lot more blogging.

Quadrocopter - Part 6 - Bringing Balance to the Force

Its been about 2 weeks since i posted anything.So here are a few updates.The quadrocopter design is finally complete(well sort of) and so is the flight computer. The sensors (Wii Motion+  and Nunchuck) are here. They seem to be working. The ATMEGA328 (Arduino based) which is the main component of the flight computer also arrived about a week ago and worked flawlessly.

This is all pretty cool but the main news is that I've finally ditched the name CPUV because i realized it sucked and now im going to name (Warning : Star Wars reference coming up) it "The Force". The flight computer is called Luke as it shall bring balance to the Force. Any more Star Wars references are welcome.

Ok now that my moment of insanity is over , here are the designs:

Right now I'm building the pyramid (reminds me of my very first blog post) on top of the quadrocopter.I might try to change the ring i used for the base to something smaller when i actually start building the landing gear but this render took an hour and i was not really in the mood to edit it and render it out again. 

The assembly instructions for everything except the landing gear are here in this animation which i made with some horrible light and shadow settings (Who cares as long as the basic idea gets through).

Note: The animation shows the motors being mounted straight. This is fine if you have 2 clockwise propellers and 2 counter-clockwise propellers. In-case all 4 of your propellers are of the same type (as is the case with me) then you need to tilt 2 of the motors slightly at an angle (between 5 to 10 degrees).

The circuit for the quadcopter is actually the same one being used in the www.multiwii.com. I'm using the one in the X configuration (link and link). The front of the quadcopter will be the part between the arms having the white and blue LED's. Here is a pic of my circuit. Arrow marks the front of the quadcopter.

Right now my quadrocopter is almost ready to fly. All i need to do is connect the RF receiver (for which the order was placed about 12 days ago but i still have not got it. I expect a further delay of 4-5 days). Once i get  that component we are gonna fly. If you are looking for some material on the various RF modules available go here.

Links to part 1 ,part 2 ,part 3, part 4 & part 5

Quadrocopter - Part 5 - Paisa Ye Kaisa

 Here go a few updates on the quadcopter (CPUV) project. As mentioned in my previous post I will be using the Wii Motion Plus and  Wii Nunchuck for the IMU of the quadcopter to keep it stable.I ordered both of them recently from eBay and they just got delivered. Also i needed a micro-controller to manage the quadcopter's movements so i ordered an ATMEGA328 with an Arduino bootloader on it, again from eBay. I also ordered a spare battery , and a Hobby-King 6-Channel 2.4GHz FHSS Transmitter and Receiver from RCHobbyAddict.

I shall explain i detail all these component choices in detail once i get the quadcopter to fly and write a complete build log along with the schematics and components.

Now that i have purchased almost all the major components required for the quadcopter i just wanted to give the estimated cost of the entire project for someone looking to build one:

Item	Price/Piece	Quantity	Price
Brushless DC Motors - EMAX 2822	505	4	2020
Brushless ESC - EMAX 18A	889	4	3556
Prop Savers	61	4	244
Propellers - 9x6E	112	1	672
Adapter 12V 5A	450	1	450
Li-Po Balance Charger	2212	1	2212
Connectors(Bullet,Berg etc.)	-	-	250
RF - 2.4GHz FHSS 6Ch Tx & Rx	3250	1	3250
Materials(Aluminium,Acrylic,Bolts)	-	-	350
Wires	-	-	100
LED Strips (RGBW) - 12 LEDs in Each	120	4	480
ATMEGA328 - Arduino	335	1	335
Wii Motion Plus	1075	1	1075
Wii Nunchuck	490	1	490
Lipo Battries 3S1P 2200mah 20C	1225	2	2450
Small Electronics	-	-	200
Misc(Glue,Tape,Shipping etc.)	-	-	500

Total : 18,634

Links to part 1 ,part 2 ,part 3 & part 4

Paintball

Here is the design of the automatic paintball gun that i'll be putting up on the quadcopter.

Quadrocopter - Part 4 - Spinning out of Control

In the previous post i mentioned that i needed gyroscopic sensors and accelerometers to stabilize the quadrocopter.For more detail on these sensors visit Gyroscope and Accelerometer. Basically what i'll be doing is using these sensors find out the orientation of the quadrocopter relative to the ground. With this data i can adjust the speed of the various motors (using something called as PID Controller) to stabilize the quadrocopter in a particular orientation. Now to move the quadrocopter in any direction you adjust the speed of any one (or all) the motors so as to get the proper direction of motion. For more info on how a quadrocopter actually flys go here.

There are two ways (that i have thought of) to obtain these sensors:
               1) Buy it off the self
               2) Salvage it from any commercially available product that already has these sensors (such as the PS3 Move, Nintendo Wii, iPod Touch, your new touchscreen phone,etc.

Both ways have their advantages and disadvantages.

Buying off the self makes it very easy to interface the sensors with any micro-controller but it is expensive when compared to the alternative.Salvaging it from a consumer device is tricky and requires a bit of hacking but is less expensive depending on what device you use.I decided to go for the second option.

Now i had four choices of devices:

• My iPod Touch 1st Gen
• My Phone (Samsung Wave S8500)
• PS3 Move 
• Nintendo Wii

I gave up on the iPod and the phone because they did not have a gyroscope sensor (kind of important) plus i did not want to seem them destroyed if CPUV crashes. So i decided to go with the PS3 Move or the Wii. I was leaning towards the Move as it also had a 3-Axis magnetometer but after some help form Kenn Sebesta (http://www.eissq.com/ps3_move/) i found out that i would need a programmer for the onboard STM32 chip to get it to work for the quadrocopter. I would have to write a custom firmware into the chip as the current firmware switches off the entire controller as soon as it goes out of Bluetooth range ( going to happen in my case). The programmer costs about $20 in the use but shipping it to India the price including shipping goes up over $60 which is a problem. For $60 (about Rs.3000) i could get myself a decent 6-Ch RF controller which is also necessary. 

So i decided to go with the Wii. I will use the gyros in the Wii Motion Plus and the accelerometers in the Wii Nunchuck for the project as of now. Working on the Move would have been awesome but sadly the cost involved is too high for something that i can do without. I will try to upgrade the quadrocopter later but as of now in sticking with the Wii.

Wii Motion Plus

Wii Controller + Nunchuck 

PS3 Move

Links to part 1 ,part 2 & part 3

Quadrocopter - Part 3 - Tied Down

First of all the name. I've decided to go with CPUV (or Chatur-Pankh-Udaan-Vastu). Thanks Anshuman for suggesting that name.

In the last post i mentioned that i was going to do a test flight and put up a video so here they are:

For the test we (me and my roommate mudit) initially decided to use a RF link to control the quadcopter but due to some technical difficulties (i.e laziness, unwillingness to work and a general lack of interest in actually doing so) we could not actually use that so we put a small program on an ATMEGA16 that initializes the motors and then gradually increases the speed of the motors till it reaches a maximum and then to minimum rather quickly and then repeats the process over and over again.

Now the quadrocopter does not have any gyros or accelerometers as of now to stabilize it (More in part 4) therefore i had to tie it down to a table or else it would have taken off, spun out of control and probably crashed.

Links to part 1 & part 2.

iPhone 4

Renders of iPhone 4 made in 3DS Max 2011 using mental ray textures. 

Quadrocopter - Part 2 - Lighting It Up

Ok i got a bit further with the qua, drocopter (link to part 1) project. I've finished the wiring for the motors and added a few LED's. I've also mounted the propellers and decided on the the design of the landing gear.

As far as the stuff still left to do the list goes as below:

• Flight Computer
• Gyros and Accelerometer for stabilization 
• Radio Control
• System software for monitoring telemetry

I'm hoping ill have everything done by the middle of may. Will upload all schematics and code then. After that i'll try to add some more gadgetry to the quadrocopter such as:

• GPS
• Automatic Paintball gun
• Camera Mount with Pan-Tilt

As far as the Accelerometers and Gyros i was thinking of going for the sensors on either the Nintendo Wii Motion Plus or the Sony PS3 Move controllers because they are way cheaper than buying off the shelf parts and will involve some sort of hacking. Now my roommate is  also building a quadrocopter and he decided to use the Nintendo Wii so in the spirit of being different i am going for the PS3 Move. Also the move has a 3-axis magnetometer on it so thats always good. I still have to order the move controller and will probably be doing it in a day or two after a bit more research. If you want to read more about why we need these sensors please go here.

Now a few pictures of the updates to the quadrocopter:

The Quadrocopter - All wired up

The Propeller - I had to use binding wire to hold it in place as the rubber rings that came with the prop saver are really not safe and tend to break. 

The Power Conduit - Used to distribute power to the main motors and the LEDs. This one is the +VE terminal

Wiring - Red for +VE Black for -VE ... The thick wires are for the motors,The thin ones are for the LEDs and The yellow ones go to the battery.

3.5 mm Gold connector for connecting the Li-Po Battery

The LEDs go on - 48 in all - 12 Red 12 Blue 12 Green and 12 White

From the bottom

In the Dark

That just looks cool

Update: Conceptual Renders

Conceptual Render -1

Conceptual Render - 2

Conceptual Render - 3

Conceptual Render - 4

The motors are also wired up and i'll be doing a test on flying the quadrocopter tomorrow using my roommates flight computer and will post videos ASAP. One more thing i'm sick of calling it quadrocopter. Any suggestions for names ? 

Creating HDR Images using a normal (phone) camera

I was getting a bit annoyed trying to explain a few people (you know who you are) that the iPhone camera is not different from their phone cameras (also having a 5MP sensor) and that with just a bit of hard-work they can also get HDR pictures. All u need is an app that does that for you ...

Ok fine for all the people who do not want to install an app on their phone or want to create HDR using a normal "Digi-cam" there is another way. You can use Photoshop (or GIMP for you Open Source freaks) and make yourself a an HDR image.

The process is fairly simple but this post is just for the above mentioned people and for all the others who are oblivious to the fact that this can actually be done. So is what u need : 

            1) A camera that has adjustable exposure settings  

            2) Photoshop or GIMP (why did they have to name it that?)

            3) A tripod or a stand of some sort that you can put the camera on. (Not really necessary if you have very steady hands)

Now put the camera on the stand and click a bunch of pics of the scene from the same location but with each pic  vary the exposure. The first pic you take should have the least exposure. The next one should have a higher exposure and just keep on increasing till u reach the max exposure.The basic idea is for you to have the same image at different exposure levels.You need at-least 3 images with different exposures(low,normal,high) for this to work but the more you have the better the final output.

Here are the images i took using the camera on Samsung Wave S8500

 Exposure -2.0

 Exposure -1.5

 Exposure -1.0

 Exposure -0.5 

 Exposure 0.0

  Exposure 0.5

 Exposure 1.0 

 

 Exposure -1.5

  Exposure 2.0

For creating the final HDR output just do the following steps(Photoshop only):

File>Automate>Merge to HDR....

Now select all the files u need to be merged and click OK.... After that just adjust the image using the slider to your needs and done.... Save file as .hdr (32bit bpc).

An interesting thing to note here is that if your pics are a bit misaligned then Photoshop will correct it for you but it will take a longer time to calculate the result.

Here is my final output. I could not upload a .hdr file to picasa or flicker so i just took a screen shot of it and made it a .png file

If you are wondering that that looks exactly the same as some of the pics above then you are right and i shall explain why in another upcoming post because this needs a detailed explanation.

Also here is my tripod (well sort off). It is a piece of thermocol with a slit in it to keep my phone in.

If u need the find out what exactly is HDR go to Wikipedia or wait for me to write an article on it (I shall do it soon in another week or so).