My question is, whats the difference?!? I want to be able to mesure the pitch and roll of the aircraft, can the first example do this, can it be easily interfaced with the Nano??
The esky 0704 is a popular low cost rate gyro that is often found in low cost rc helicopters. It has a fair amount of drift and it only has a single axis so is probably not suitable if you want pitch and roll. The output of this gyro is a variable pulse width so its not quite as easy to integrate as an analog or i2c output gyro.
The other link did not work for me so I can't comment on that item.
You may want to look at the wii MotionPlus. This is a three axis gyro at an excellent price and a few people here have integrated it with Arduino.
Because gyros indicate rate of rotation and they all have some drift, you may need some other sensor to indicate when the plane is flying straight and level. A search for one of the many discussions on UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) should turn up plenty of info.
I figured it was probably a lot harder to interface one them with the arduino because I hadn't seen anyone else do it
The link was for a MLX90609 Gyro Breakout Board wich I think i'll go for.
I was thinking about Accelerometers and what use they may be in this case but what kind of sensor could you use to "indicate when the plane is flying straight and level"??
I'm off to search the UAV posts as suggested, thanks again.
[...] but what kind of sensor could you use to "indicate when the plane is flying straight and level"??
it could be something as simple as two pairs of mercury switches mounted (nearly level) inside the fuselage -- one pair laying in the direction from cockpit to rudder, the other pair laying in the direction from wingtip to wingtip. if switch A1 closes, you're pitching up; if switch A2 closes, you're pitching down. likewise, if switch B1 closes, you're rolling counter-clockwise; if switch B2 closes, you're rolling clockwise.
now, none of that will help you with yaw, however...
I came accross this when I was searching...second product (IMU Board)
It seems to me that this board and an aditional 2 gyro boards would give me everything I need and more!
It's a very interesting site too as eventually I want to make a UAV but for now my plan is this:
Inspired by my 5 year old who desperatly wants to fly my plane (regardless of how many cheap 2ch toys I buy him) I want to make a safe training mode for the plane
Essentially the Arduino would recieve the instructions from the controller and controll the servos/ESC accordingly...Unless said instructions happen to be ludicrassly dangerous e.g. barrell rolling out of controll, stalling, nose diving into my wifes car (you can tell that last one is from experience)
I think the data from the IMU board would be sufficiant for this.
your project sounds sufficiently challenging, but not so much as to be unattainable! I look forward to hearing your progress!
back when I was flying model aircraft, I built a similar rig in one of the club's trainer airplanes, using the mercury switches as outlined above to maintain a "sane, level 'holding pattern'" in the event of operator panic (use the 'barrel roll' switch on the 7-chan transmitter) or loss-of-signal -- the plane would fly figure-8's and circles at what it thought was between 150 and 300 feet above ground level. I used an 8051 microcontroller, recovered from an old IBM PC keyboard. The toughest part was getting a somewhat useable (I won't say accurate!) altimeter... probably the most expensive part of the whole thing, really. it was just a barometric sensor, and you'd have to "teach" the 8051 where 'ground level' was just before taking off.
I didn't do the project to save any expensive aircraft (it was only ever installed in an ARF trainer!), but really as an exercise to prove it could be done.
