I'm working on an inertial navigation system for an autonomous aircraft. An Arduino Mega communicates with an inertial measurement unit (six degrees of freedom, 3-axis gyros, 3-axis accelerometers), a 3-axis magnetometer, static and differential pressure sensors (altitude and airspeed respectively), ultrasonic rangefinder (for very precise landing altitudes), and a 5Hz GPS.
I just completed a first flight which limited the scope of the test to a glider that kept the wings level and the nose on the horizon (using the pitch and roll data from a Kalman filter running on the IMU data updated at about 54Hz). Here's what that system looks like: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ttrueman/3770700718/
It's a lot of fun and I highly recommend Arduino hacking to anyone that wants to give hardware a try.
(I know this comment goes on and on but if you work with i2c, SPI or serial often check out Saleae's Logic: http://www.saleae.com/logic/ which is a cheap logic analyzer that is incredibly useful and well done.)
That sounds really amazing. I'd love to build an autonomous solar powered glider someday and have it just fly all over the world sending back data.
I guess we just need really lightweight batteries first so it can make it through the night. It could seek out free wifi hotspots to use to report the data back to me.
You should check out my friend Nikolaj's project page. He has done a load of RC and electronics projects that are along the same lines. They are documented here. http://dzl.dk/projects/index.html
There are a few tesla coil projects too that are kind of fun :-)
I just completed a first flight which limited the scope of the test to a glider that kept the wings level and the nose on the horizon (using the pitch and roll data from a Kalman filter running on the IMU data updated at about 54Hz). Here's what that system looks like: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ttrueman/3770700718/
It's a lot of fun and I highly recommend Arduino hacking to anyone that wants to give hardware a try.
Here's a good starter kit: http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_i...
One simple project that seemed cool to me was this LED one: http://blog.bsoares.com.br/processing/controlling-rgb-led-wi...
If you're ambitious you could try building your own UAV based on Arduino using Ardupilot: http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/ardupilot-main-page
(I know this comment goes on and on but if you work with i2c, SPI or serial often check out Saleae's Logic: http://www.saleae.com/logic/ which is a cheap logic analyzer that is incredibly useful and well done.)