AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual -1-
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual Inhaltsverzeichnis 1 Introduction 1.1 System overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.1 X-CSM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.2 AscTec Hummingbird PowerBoard . 1.1.3 AscTec AutoPilot . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.4 AscTec 3D-MAG . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.5 GPS unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.6 Motors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.7 X-BLDC brushless motor controllers 1.1.8 Propellers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Transmitter . . . . . . . .
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual A.2 Updating firmware on the HighLevel(HL)-processor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.2.1 Tools required for the update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A.2.2 Uploading firmware to the HL-processor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 20 20 B Troubleshooting B.1 Slight tilt in pitch/roll with the pitch/roll stick in neutral position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B.2 Considerable tilt in pitch or roll . . . .
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual 1 Introduction Thank you for purchasing a Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) air vehicle equipped with the AscTec AutoPilot. Please read this manual carefully before you start to work with your new device. It is strictly forbidden to use them in any military environment or to retail them to any military or military related organization. Using any of our components for larger scale flying objects is also not allowed.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual 1.1.2 AscTec Hummingbird PowerBoard Motor I2 C + – – + The PowerBoard is used to distribute power and communication lines to all motor controllers. It comprises a switching power regulator to generate a stable 6V supply for the AscTec AutoPilot board, a high-power MosFET to switch the motor current ON and OFF and a 5V regulator to supply any custom payloads like e.g. a 2.4 GHz wireless video camera.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual 1.1.4 AscTec 3D-MAG The AscTec 3D-MAG is a triple-axial compass module used to determine the vehicles heading by measuring the Earth’s magnetic field. The AscTec AutoPilot mathmatically transforms the measured vector into the horizontal plane and can thus determine the correct heading even if the vehicle is tilted in pitch or roll. The 3D-MAG is a high resolution instrument, which is required as the Earth’s magnetic field is relatively week.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual 1.1.8 Propellers The AscTec Hummingbird’s standard propellers are made of flexible PP-plastics. Their low mass and high flexibility make the vehicle one of the safest R/C quadrotor there is. This is especially convenient when conduction indoor experiments. However, please make sure you always keep a safe distance to people and follow the safety instructions above. 1.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual 2 Things to do before the first flight The AscTec Hummingbird w/ AutoPilot comes completely assembled and tested. You only have to do the following steps to make it work in combination with your equipment. 2.1 Mounting the propellers To improve the durability of the propellers during a The propellers can be slid over the axles and be faste- crash you can optionally add a cable tie (e.g. 2.5 x ned using a plastic nut.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual mAh. With a state-of-the-art 2100 mAh battery the MHz) or the AscTec USB-to-cable adapter to vehicle is able to hover up to 20 minutes without any your Windows PC. If your system requires a dripayload, and up to 12 minutes with 200 g of payload. ver for the USB chip, please download it here: http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual Once the R/C setup wizard says Calibration data col” lected“ go back to the Flight Parameters“ form and ” click on Transmit Values“. The form should briefly ” turn yellow (while transmitting data) and then back to grey if the data was transmitted correctly. If it doesn’t turn grey again click Transmit Values“ again. After ” that, click Write to FLASH“ to permanently store ” the new set of parameters in the vehicle’s FLASHmemory. Now, go back to the main form.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual 3 Operating the AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot 3.1 Status LEDs The interval is getting faster the lower the battery voltage gets. At 9 volts (critical limit!) the tone stays steady. Please land the vehicle soon after the tone appears, as the LiPo battery might get damaged if it is discharged under 9V. There are four status LEDs on the AutoPilot board. 1 2 3.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual • Do not ignore the battery warning giving by the until you are able to fly in tight spots. AutoPilot (acoustic signal as described above). Discharging the battery deeper than 9V could Make sure that the battery is fully charged, connected drastically reduce its lifetime. and mounted correctly. Switch on the vehicle and be • All sensors on the AutoPilot are compensated really careful during the startup phase. The vehicle for temperature drift effects.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual (front!) is pointing away from you, as in this case the vehicle will move forward if you push your pitch stick forward. Now, give a little throttle and the vehicle should lift off. In manual mode, the throttle stick on your remote directly controls the average thrust of the rotors, the pitch/roll stick sets a desired angle in these axes. Try hovering in a height of about 1m and concentrate on the red marking which is the front of your vehicle.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual height, at least at eye level. For the landing you also need to make sure that there is enough free space surrounding the vehicle, as especially close to the ground Hand control in GPS mode the GPS position might drift quite a bit due to signal reflections.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual 4 On-Board serial interface 4.1 Physical interface To communicate with the vehicle using the XBee link or USB cable adapter please connect to the correct virtual comport using the following connection settings: LL I/O Baudrate: 57600 Flow control: ”Hardware” for XBee, ”None” for USB cable adapter HL I/O Databits: 8, 1 startbit, 1 stopbit, no parity LL Serial 0 Compass connector 4 HL Bootloader Jumper Buzzer connector ADC LL 4.2 Data protocol 3 4.2.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual GPS Data Advanced: GPS data + position and speed estimates after data fusion data ˆ= (crc & 0xff); data ˆ= data << 4; The data structures in detail are shown in Appendix return ((((unsigned short) data << C. →8) | ((crc>>8)&0xff)) ˆ (unsigned There is a unique packet descriptor/ID for every struc→ char) (data >> 4) ˆ ((unsigned ture.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual transmit all structures that were requested and wait for the next poll. Due to the limited bandwidth of almost all kinds of radio modems it is recommended that you only request (poll) the packets you need, e.g. if you are only interested in the computed pitch and roll angles you should only poll IMU CalcData and none of the other packets. These bits can be used to only →enable one axis at a time and → thus to control the other →axes manually.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual 5 Contact Information Ascending Technologies GmbH Graspergerstr. 8 82131 Stockdorf GERMANY Phone: +49 89 89949847 E-Mail: team@asctec.de Web: www.asctec.de CEOs: Michael Achtelik, Klaus-Michael Doth Dipl.-Ing. Daniel Gurdan, Dipl.-Ing. Jan Stumpf Handelsregister München: HRB 166748 Ust.-ID: DE254728199 Ascending Technologies GmbH - 18 - www.asctec.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual A Installing firmware upgrades A.1 Updating firmware on the LowLevel(LL)-processor The LL-processor is the heart of the vehicle running all critical functions as sensing and filtering, attitude estimation and flight control. The code on this processor is protected and cannot be accessed using a JTAG interface nor be read through the serial interface. Software running on the LL-processor can only be changed by Ascending Technologies.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual green status LED should be flashing again, signalizing that the new code is running. A.2 Updating firmware on the HighLevel(HL)-processor In its factory programmed state the HL-processor is only used to monitor the battery voltage and to parse and forward GPS data. Plenty of computing power is left for user applications. Using the software development kit (SDK) provided by Ascending Technologies users can write their own code and upload it to the HL-processor.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual GPS status LEDs should be flashing again, signalizing that the new code is running. Ascending Technologies GmbH - 21 - www.asctec.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual B Troubleshooting This chapter holds solutions to problems which might occur during the operation of your AscTec Hummingbird w/AutoPilot. B.1 Slight tilt in pitch/roll with the pitch/roll stick in neutral position Due to unavoidable measurement errors or the unbalance of mechanical parts it is perfectly normal that the AscTec Hummingbird w/ Autopilot is not always 100% levelled during flight with the control sticks in neutral position.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual the unwanted tilt is gone. • Faulty calibration of the accelerometers: If none of the reasons above apply the problem might be due to a bad system calibration. In this case please contact AscTec for assitance. B.3 Bad reception during flight If the vehicle does not react while it is airborne, please check if someone else uses the same channel. Make sure your TX battery is fully charged and that the antenna is fully extended.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual C Data structures to be polled for information struct LL_STATUS { //battery voltages in mV short battery_voltage_1; short battery_voltage_2; //don’t care short status; //Controller cycles per second (should be ˜1000) short cpu_load; //don’t care char compass_enabled; char chksum_error; char flying; char motors_on; short flightMode; //Time motors are turning short up_time; }; struct IMU_RAWDATA { //pressure sensor 24-bit value, not scaled but bias free int pre
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual //16-bit temperature measurement using yaw-gyro internal sensor unsigned short temp_gyro; //16-bit temperature measurement using ADC internal sensor unsigned int temp_ADC; }; struct IMU_CALCDATA { //angles derived by integration of gyro_outputs, drift compensated by data →fusion; -90000..+90000 pitch(nick) and roll, 0..
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual //pseudo speed measurements: integrated accelerations, pulled towards zero; →units unknown; used for short-term position stabilization int speed_x; int speed_y; int speed_z; //height in mm (after data fusion) int height; //diff. height in mm/s (after data fusion) int dheight; //diff.
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual int latitude; int longitude; //GPS height in mm int height; //speed in x (E/W) and y(N/S) in mm/s int speed_x; int speed_y; //GPS heading in deg * 1000 int heading; //accuracy unsigned unsigned unsigned estimates in mm and mm/s int horizontal_accuracy; int vertical_accuracy; int speed_accuracy; //number of satellite vehicles used in NAV solution unsigned int numSV; //GPS status information; 0x03 = valid GPS fix int status; //coordinates of current origin in
AscTec Hummingbird with AutoPilot User’s Manual int yaw; //current thrust (height controller output); 0..200 = 0..100% int thrust; }; Ascending Technologies GmbH - 28 - www.asctec.
