MBED_DEMOS


This is a team of people who are creating demos for ARM MBED events. These programs will have been used in hands on labs, hack-a-thons and other event demonstrations.

Internet of Flying Things

Table of Contents

  1. Flying things phone home
  2. Description
  3. Key elements
  4. Platform

Flying things phone home

Description

Multicopters and other RC/autonomous aircraft are expensive, and flyaways do happen. We can use an mbed cellular-connected board for telemetry and last position. Further, mbed boards can provide GPS data for flight control.

Key elements

  • Cellular radio for telemetry
  • GPS module for position reporting, and for autonomous flight, loiter and return to home (RTH) features
  • Interface with flight controller
  • Interface with sensors
  • Web service for data and position logging, including to help retrieve lost aircraft (ARM-Sensinode NanoService)
  • Cellular antenna connector to provide options for greater range in remote areas
  • Ceramic GPS antenna

Platform

This project will use the u-blox C027 platform. For smaller size and weight, we may spin a dedicated board. On multirotors, GPS units are often mast mounted to reduce interference, and they often include an I2C compass, like HMC5883L, since the compass also benefits from the reduced EMI.

Proof of concept will use C027 and a popular, ARM-based flight controller that uses open-source software. Flight controller (FC) options include:

  • Aeroquad 32
  • Flyduino MW32
  • NAZE32
  • OpenPilot Revo
  • Pixhawk
  • UAVX
  • VR Brain

Ideally, the FC we support first will be easy to source worldwide, lower cost, use open-source flight control software. It should also support external GPS, of course.

All wikipages