Helicopter/Howard Community College/Fall2011/501 Eagles

Electronic Sections Expected

Problem Statement

-Download games from ITunes to play on ITouch.
-Arduino
-Improve instructions
     - associated with battery
     - capturing recording video
-Flying with PC

Team Members

Summary

Week 1

For week 1 User:Chaagii 0817/enes100/eagles member was working how to play TargetHunter game by using Itouch and Ar.drone. That game is designed to play person who likes to play alone. In order play that game you will need only 3 things: ardrone, Itouch/Iphone/Ipad, and stickers. What you need to do is to put stickers wherever you want and basically your stickers will show up your enemy. Therefore, you need to destroy them to get credits. By earning credits you will able to upgrade your equipment. TargetHunter costs 3.99$ in apple store.

Andyn6361 was tasked to find an application that records the flight of the Ar. Drone. An application called Drone Ace was able to record the flight. A problem arised as the battery lost substantial amount of power as the helicopter was flying. Another task was assigned to find high-efficient batteries. It was determined that the longest flight time a battery has provided was 20 minutes but there is a chance of damaging the motor.

Dcalderon was to start working with the Arduino Uno. The only problem was that this member lacked the knowledge of how to function the Arduino or how it works. With some research, for week one this member was able to download the software for the Arduino on a computer. He then was forced to update the driver of the Arduino on this software due to that the Arduino was not carrying out the commands cause it was using the wrong board for the codes. After doing so, this member carried out one of the simple tasks that the Arduino has to offer as examples which is blink an LED.

Week 2

For week 2 User:Chaagii 0817/enes100/eagles member started working on AR.Race Ar.Race Game and AR.FlyingAce Flying Ace. We discovered that those games are available for free in Application store and Itunes. However, you will than two Ar.drones and two Iphones/Ipads/Itouchs because those games are designed to play on multiplayer mode. Also, AR.Race required to have traffic cones, which costs almost $100. AR.Race is designed to race through cones, but Ar.FlyingAce is designed to battle with friends by using ar.drone. This game is almost same as TargetHunter; however, TargetHunter doesn't have multiplayer mode and you have to pay to download this game. People can choose outdoor hull or indoor hull to battle, but if you are using indoor hull you should but special kind of stickers, so camera can recognize as an enemy. Ar.drone automatically recognize you as enemy when you use outdoor hull. If you want to buy indoor or outdoor hull just go Parrot store

Andyn6361 was assigned to use the battery charging station to charge batteries and record them. To record the charging, the Logview program is required. Logview was downloaded and the VCP driver was also downloaded. There was a problem with Logview not recording the charging and the rest of the week was used to troubleshoot the problem.

Dcalderon started the second week by trying to carry out a more complex task then just blinking an LED. His intentions were to blink an LED light by using an analog button. As you can see in his individual page when you click on his name and under week 2, he provides videos as well as a more into depth description of his work. Now this task was more complicated and of course surfaced a lot more problems but these problems seemed to be solved. In addition, he also added an Arduino page on wikiversity where if you visit this page you can view a tutorial of how to get started with the Arduino as well as learn more about the Arduino and it's wikibooks page as well.

Week 3

User:Chaagii 0817/enes100/eagles this member started to test TargetHunter game. What you need to do is you need to have stickers or outdoor hull as your enemy. Every time when you destroy your enemy, you will earn credits. Using that credits, you can upgrade your equipments. Also, you will able choose how many enemy that you want etc... If you want to more details, you can go here personal page

Andyn6361 was able to troubleshoot the Logview recording problem as the record button on Logview needs to be on to document the charging. After some trials of charging the batteries, there was a concern as the battery charging station continued to stop at 7-8 mAh, declaring the battery to be full. Proceeded to troubleshoot the problem.

Dcalderon went ahead and tried another task with the Arduino. This time what he wanted to do is control timing. What his intentions were was he wanted to send commands to the Arduino to blink an LED a certain number of times and for a certain amount of seconds. This task is not as simple as just blinking the LED which is pretty simple. This task you have to modify the code in a way that the Arduino will read it and after reaching the goal, it will not make any actions to the LED. This as well you can view in this member's individual page along with more links and pictures. In addition, this member started to work with DC Motors. His idea was to work a DC Motor with the Arduino just as the LED will blink with the Arduino. His attempts all resulted in failure due to that just the Arduino itself can not power a DC Motor.

Week 4

User:Chaagii 0817/enes100/eagles this member basically tested the batteries and figured out that normal battery lasts only7-9 minutes. We need more powerful battery, so we can make tournament in next spring semester. He found out that normal battery have 1000mah. However, we are able to buy more powerful battery through online. For example, you can buy 2600mah battery which you can use up to 24 minutes. One con thing about this battery is little bit expensive $85.

Andyn6361 continued to troubleshoot the problem of the battery charging station stopping at 7-8 mAh. It was discovered that the battery had reached a maximum amount of voltage and the battery charging station wanted to stop the charging before the battery went to overload. Once this was discovered, discharging the battery was attempted. Another task was to create a tutorial on operating Logview. At first, a tutorial of installing Logview was made due to the various necessities Logview requires to operate that may confuse a user.

Dcalderon continued to work with the DC Motors. This time he switched over to working with motor shields and the Arduino. He added motor shields to the Arduino tutorial page. He then started to connect the DC Motor to the motor shield which is mounted on the Arduino and tried to use one of the code sketches that ladyada.net offers. This resulted in a failure do to that the arduino software did not recognize the library of words the code was using since it came from ladyada.net. Under Downloads of that page though, this member downloaded the libraries and set them up together with the arduino software to see if that would help recognize the library but still this attempt ended up with more failures and frustration.

Poster

Pictures are shown at the right side of the project page

Story

For this project we had four members each all with different tasks to take and work on over the course of four weeks. We divided the tasks with one member, working on how the drone records while in flight and as well as worked on the batteries of the drone. The second member worked on one of the drones and trying to establish connection with the drone and a PC. The third member worked on trying to get the drones to work on an itouch and play games that can be downloaded as applications from itunes. Lastly, the fourth member tried to become familiar with the Arduino Uno in order to be able to later work with the motors of the AR Drone.

The first member, ::Andyn6361, was the one in charge with the recordings the drone made and working with batteries for the drone. He first started out by looking for ways to be able to record video for the drone while in flight. He found out about applications that can take good video as well as take pictures but these applications involved purchasing where some involved a cost of $5.99. In addition he researched and found out the life span of a battery while the drone is in use. He also did some testings using a dual power unit to see how much electricity is being charged into the batteries.

The second member, ::Dkromer1996, was the one in charge of trying to establish connection with the drone and a PC. His weeks involved the downloading of programs and softwares that he can use in order to get the drone to function with the PC. Every time though, he would surface problems that involved extracting files as well as looking for files to use to establish connections. After a lot of trials that would only result in problems and failures, he decided to start all over as when he first started to look for better programs/softwares/files. He also tried trial and errors of arranging these files in order so they can work with each other to try to establish precise connection. Toward the end, he wanted to help one of the members to establish the connections of games that will work for both apple and android powered phones.

The third memmber, ::Chaagii, was the one in charge of getting the drones to work in playing games on an itouch.This involved the purchasing of applications such as TargetHunter that was $3.99. In his progression of the weeks, this member started to play with all 3 drones. He ran across a problem with one of the new drones not connecting with the itouch so that was something he looked in to. In addition, he came across the idea of buying traffic cones ($57.99) and or donuts ($49.99). What these items are used for, are for obstacles to play in the games that the itunes market offers of applications. He then decided to use the stickers that the drones brought to put on items as obstacles. He found out how the games were played in order to beat the games and the rules of the games. He also tried working with Android but didnt find that much options to choose from for applications to buy. He only found two applications on the Android market to download for games to play with the Drone. He then found out that playing these games with the drone, it kills the battery faster and it would usually last about 7-9 minutes. He researched more information and found out about other batteries that will expand the battery life of upto 45 minutes choosing the sizes of the batteries in "mah".

The fourth member, ::Dcalderon, was in charge with working with the Arduino. In the first week, he was clueless in working the Arduino. He found out through researching and made a tutorial which is included as a link on this team page or you can simply search for Arduino in the search bar. Some of the tasks that this member was able to accomplish was making a code to make an LED blink constantly. In addition to that he also wrote a code that can get an analog button to work with the Arduino and make the LED light blink. He posted videos of these tasks on youtube.com and linked them to his individual page. Also, he was able to learn more how to control an LED and telling the Arduino how many times to blink and for how long to blink, basically controlling the timing of the commands. From their, he decided to stop working with LED and start working with DC Motors. This way he can eventually get to start working with the motors that the drones use in order to control speed and oneday be able to build a drone of our own. There were a lot of method tried which ended up in failure that included connecting the motor up to the Arduino just as he did with the LED light. This failed because there wasnt sufficient enough energy to power the motor. From there, he turned his frustration over to look for hope in motor shields. He added in the Arduino tutorial, an introductory to motor shield and what they are used for. He found out that this is exactly what he wants to use if he wants the Arduino to work with a Motor shield. Due to lack of knowledge of how the Motor shields work, he is running through a lot of problems in getting the motor shield to work with the DC Motor and arduino.

Decision List

1. Understand the Arduino software => Program the Arduino Uno to perform simple circuit tasks => Program the Arduino to work with Ar. Drone

2. Find gaming applications for the Ar. Drone => Use racing application to start tournament with other Ar.drone flyers

3. Familiarize the Logview software that documents battery charging => Test battery efficiency

4. Find program to connect Ar.Drone to personal computer via wifi => Find applications for personal computer to fly the Ar. Drone

Material List

For this project, we were able to justify the purchasing of two AR Drones more which are $299.99 each. In addition to acquiring these two drones, we were able to also get the batteries that were included in order to experiment with them and develop some theories to try to perfect the life of the batteries for the drones. Also for another part of our project, one of our members was trying to play competition games on his itouch. In order for him to play these games, he would have to download some applications and being that most of the applications required to be bought, he did buy some applications for him to play the drones in game modes. The name of this application is called TargetHunter and costs $3.99. For documenting the charging of batteries, a dual power unit was obtained along with a usb cord to connect the dual power unit to the computer and a wire to connect the battery to the dual power unit.

Software List

-Arduino software (version 0022)- a software that uses programming (C++ coding) language.

-Itunes 10.5

-I Touch 4G

- Windows 7

- Logview

Time

Team members are spending 3 hours in class to discuss project goals and decisions while spending 4 hours of individual work outside of class. In total, 7 hours is spent on working on the project every week with a total amount of hours worked on the project for each person to be 28 hours. With 4 team members in this project, the total comes to 112 hours worked on this project.

Tutorials

We found great tutorial about how to control Ar.drone. Tutorial 1 After this video we believe that you will be able to control ar.drone, so you will be able to play Ar.Race, Ar,flyingAce, and TargetHunter games. If there is anyone wants to learn how to use Arduino, Arduino here is great tutorial that you can use to learn this software. There is a tutorial to download Logview as the installation process is complicated.

Next Steps

Our next steps for the helicopter project consists of the arduino and the AR Drone battery. Our focus for the drone's battery is to have the strongest, longest lasting power to fly the drone for extended amounts of time. Currently the drone can only fly for about 10-12 minutes on a full battery before it dies and ends its flight. Also, the drone's battery charge time is over an hour so we will find alternative chargers to speed the charge duration for quicker charges. Currently, Dcalderon is working with the arduino and progressing with software and light simulation. For the next project, he will continue working with the arduino and a motor shield for the arduino to enhance its capabilities.