My son was took on a science project of building a quadcopter controlled by an arduino; however the teacher has only taught them how to copy example programs...I have tried to teach myself programming and am stuck! Can anyone help please
This job is well beyond the three of you put together. Think of a new project.
Mark
Your only hope would be to copy someone else's design and code.
HobbyKing sells lots of quadcopters which use Arduino compatible controllers. You could use one of these as starting point and then add some sort of custom feature.
I tried to add LEDs which would indicate the height of the quadcopter but the small motors I used produced ultrasonic noise. The ultrasonic noise interfered with the ultrasound distance sensor I planned to use. (Ultrasound sensors generally work okay with larger quadcopters.)
There are lots of cool things one could add to an almost ready to fly quadcopter.
Building a quadcopter and programming a quadcopter from scratch would take a very long time for someone who doesn't already know a lot about quadcopters and programming.
We purchased kit online and I was able to put it all together within a few hours...the only program we can find is an example stepper speed control...it only has to lift off the table and shutdown...I feel we are close I just can't get the CW and CCW correct for it to lift instead of spin
Stepper motors are not designed for the speeds needed to spin a propeller to make anything heavier than a sheet of paper take off. Since the stepper alone weighs more than a sheet of paper, the stepper motor is a non-flier.
Thanks
jayandrhettkarr:
We purchased kit online and I was able to put it all together within a few hours...the only program we can find is an example stepper speed control...it only has to lift off the table and shutdown...I feel we are close I just can't get the CW and CCW correct for it to lift instead of spin
I take it this wasn't a quadcopter kit?
Battery powered hovering machines are relatively new to this world. These have become possible do to recent improvements in battery, motor and control electronics technologies. Combining motors, propellers, batteries and other electronics into a machine which is capable of flying is not a trivial task.
I've built a couple multirotor vehicles from scratch but I've always used motors, propellers and electronic speed controllers (ESC) based on known working examples (i.e. I copied someone else's work).
You might be able to demonstrate how a quadcopter controls its yaw with stepper motors but as PaulS mentioned, it's not going to lift off the table.