I am wanting to use an Arduino Mega on a R/C plane to communicate to an Arduino Mega ADK on the ground via a long range radio module. The Mega would control 5 Servos, 2 One speed starting motors, Inputs needed for 2 R/C turbine engines, and send back data from GPS, Altimeter, pitot tube, temperature, battery level, fuel level, live camera feed. The ADK would then send and receive the information though the usb port or though bluetooth to an android tablet or phone.
Is this possible. How much will it cost. Can I get the parts in Canada. Does anyone have schematics and/or code I can use for reference.
I am a beginner with Arduino, so don't treat what I say as gospel, but more back of the envelope calculations. My sense is it is going to be challenging to do all of this, and it will depend on various details, including how much information you want to send back, how long you plan to be aloft which in turn dictates how many batteries you are going to need and the weight, your programming skills, time scale to build the unit, and your budget.
There are a couple of red flags that I see as a beginner:
The motors will need a separate power supply from the Mega, which only runs at 5V, and even one motor can use too much juice, particularly when you have more devices. This in turn increases the complexity of the project. You can get motor shields to help with this, but the common shields that I've seen for sale, don't have 5 servos, usually 2. This may mean stacking shields, or it may mean having to provide extra wiring for the power to the servos.
Another motor question is do you know how much torque and speed you need for the airplane? If you don't know now in the design stage, it can be rather frustrating to find out the motors are under powered when you try it for real.
The Arduino will not be capable of integrating a live feed of video at the same time as everything else unless you want severely restricted video resolution. It just doesn't have the capacity for doing it. If you need video, you either have to send the video separately, or think about upgrading to a beefier processor like an Arm.
Bluetooth is fairly limited in terms of its bandwidth, so video may or may not be possible to the smartphone. Wifi has more capacity, but it does burn through the batteries more.
Transmitting video eats up a lot of bandwidth, which in turn may mean your long distance radio needs more power, and/or limits how far away from the controller you can be.
Doing stuff on the phone is a completely different setup, and will take a whole new learning curve.
If you go through with this, you need to break it down into smaller pieces, and work on each piece. Unless you are an experienced programmer, and you have done other, smaller embedded projects, I suspect to do the whole projects will overwhelm you. It probably can be done, but if you are thinking you can knock it off in a weekend or two, you may get frustrated.
Yea, you should separate the the control from the video so the video feed won't eat up the control. I've seen it done as an university design project but I don't think they use arduino (as least not for the video feed) can't remember exactly.