I have Nick’s assembled two board solution also along with one set of the bare boards and his parts list.
I have to say that Nick could have done a better job of soldering on his assembled boards as I had to touch up a number of the solder joints and I changed out a couple of the connectors to more reliable connectors.
As far as Nick’s firmware goes, it was really designed for two horizontal thrusters and one vertical thruster. Since the more comprehensive thruster configurations are of the vectored type with two vertical thrusters, Nick’s firmware would have to have a major overhaul to control such a vectored configuration. I worked with Nick’s firmware a lot, consider it to be very basic, and no where as capable as Rusty’s navigation control firmware.
jumping from using a velleman controller in my first rov to using an arduino based controller was a big step, and I cannot comment regarding the programming as it is well above my skills .
video will be via another twisted pair ( still to find a good teather), I am using a cheap fpv cam and also a GoPro hero 2 with AV out and recording control using a plug in board and video switcher.
Hi Guys, Im my project, I use a HK Multiwii Pro, a ppm/pwm converter. I use a Arducopter mod, and work very well. Only de deep sensor I not get sucess on the software. If the @Jacobs have progress, please inform us!
Ther @jacob, how the Mission Planner you use? You mod something on de misson planner to show the deep on the screen? And how type of control you use? ppm? Very good your project! You are very bad with your ROV! I see your videos!
I use qgroundcontrol, and connect with udp over an ethernet cable. The pixhawk is plugged into a raspberry pi. For the controller I use an xbox controller and ROS, but you can use xbox controller with qgroundcontrol and use mavproxy instead of ROS. I think you might mean I am rough with it, and you are right It still works great!
-Jacob
I’m running the second option @Jacob mentioned and can confirm it works great too. I use a Logitech controller with qgroundcontrol and use mavproxy instead of ROS. Now that I’ve sorted some initial RPi power supply problems, it’s been running without a hitch. Largely thanks to lots of help getting the code right from Rusty & Jacob.
@jacob, how you compile the modded firmware, because I put the downloaded firmware, change the repository folder on preference of arduino 1.0.3 ardupilot Sketchbook, but the arduino not recoganize the scketbook of ardupilot. I try download via GIT, but no way. Sorry for my bat english!
The pixhawk doesn’t use an AVR microcontroller, the avr compiler supplied with arduino isn’t necessary. You can simply compile from the command line using ‘make-px4-v2-bluerov’ or ‘make-px4-v2-vectored’ under /ardupilot/ArduSub. If you would also like to upload the binary after compilation, use ‘make-px4-v2-bluerov-upload’.
Some detailed instructions are here: http://dev.ardupilot.com/wiki/building-the-code/
Also see the readme: https://github.com/bluerobotics/ardusub/blob/master/ArduSub/README.md
-Jacob
I think it’s time to put together a roadmap for the BlueROV software and electronics moving forward. Our basic plan is to write the majority of the code on the APM so that it can act as a standalone ROV controller or in tandem with the Raspberry Pi for more advanced features.
I’ll add a link here to a separate post about the roadmap once we put that together.
Sorry I haven’t gotten back to that! We don’t have a roadmap written out at the moment but we have made some major decisions and major progress forward on this.
First of all, if you haven’t seen it already, we’ve started the ArduSub project based on ArduPilot (docs in progress, code here). Since it is keeping up with the most recent updates to ArduPilot, it is not compatible with the APM2.6 and earlier. It is only compatible with more recent autopilots including the PixHawk and many others.
We’ve been working on this with help from several other contributors and it has come a long way. We have support for several ROV frame types, full integration with QGroundControl including gamepad/joystick control, and live HD video streaming. Since the code is based on a quadcopter autopilot, we were also able to leverage the existing control systems for active roll, pitch, and yaw stability as well as automatic depth holding. We are working on adding inertial position holding and other features as well.
As far as “roadmap” goes, we are focused on a “Version 1.0” release that is reliable, easy to use, and functional for a number of different ROV frame types. If you have any suggestions, recommendations, or you want to get more involved I would recommend joining our ArduSub chat on gitter and submitting an issue to the code if you have any feature requests.
Somebody have the APM 2.6 code to share? I download the code from “GitHub - jaxxzer/ardupilot-rov: Ardupilot for underwater ROVs”, but I don’t know how to compile to the APM, because the files coming with the extension .cpp on sketch’s and arduino just recognize .pde (if have other way to do the upload to the APM, please teach me!)
I have just a APM 2.6! My idea is use onboard a PPM to PWM converter to send the command to the APM, and use a RC Radio (TX9R) to send the PPM signal to the converter, QGroundcontrol to telemetry and a pressure sensor to the depth (MS5837-30BA) on I2C port. The video I will send by twisted pair. Now I work on the supply power, that consist on 220VAC/500VDC on the control station and a Converter 500VDC/12VDC onboard. In these way it’s possible send the supply power from outside with a small wires and no time limit to operate! Attached is my “body” of my ROV. When I have more advanced on the supply, I send here.
I am also working on the nearly same power distribution plan, can you tell me what circuit you are going to use to regulate the 500VDC to 12VDC on board.
What battery have you used, may I know the source for purchase?
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It still works great!