Handsome young autopilot reports for spaceplane duty The Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team this morning welcomed aboard a handsome young autopilot for our Vulture 2 spaceplane - the hot-off-the-press 3D Robotics Pixhawk. 3DR kindly offered to donate a couple of Pixhawks to the cause, after ArduPilot fixed-wing lead developer Andrew Tridgell suggested we'd benefit …
You might wanna look at 'fag' batteries Lester.
these newish small lipos are readily available now as they are used in the vapor fag things.
tons of different sizes, but for example a 14500 is AA sized. It can come with short circuit protection circuitry built in and has a capacity of around 800mah.
And since it's at 3.7v nominal will typically power arduino stuff, etc without the need for a booster. However even if you still use a booster - you get a lot more capacity that ultimate lithiums.
The other benefit is, being AA sized you can stick em in a regular AA battery holder - pair em up, etc.
Well, one way to handle direct video link would be to leave that old school analogue.
a 5.8ghz 600mw transmitter with a helical antenna facing directly down should be good for over 20 miles range straight down at least. And they only cost about 50 quid.
20 quid receiver (use another helical here for even great range or a cloverleaf) and a screen and you can watch in real time.
stu
On 5.8ghz, you'll be lucky to get 3-4km even with clear LoS, even with a 13dbi at the rx end. Yes, you'd get 20mile range if you're 5km up due to lack of atmosphere, but while one end of the link is at sea level, your range is very small on 5.8.
Better with a 900mhz or 1.2/1.3ghz rig, but the antenna shape will destroy all advances made by the clever airframe design.
I have been following LOHAN since inception and what the project has told me is that it is extremely complex getting a craft to the hights required. It further strikes me that given the high degree of complexity and planning required for this project, how bloody nearly impossible it is to design and build a rocket system to deliver a capsule to ISS.
I appreciate that LOHAN is restricted by resources availability and it's really great to see how having a limited budget forces those involved to come up with far sighted ideas. But, it just makes me even more amazed that Space-X etc. can do what they do.
Complexity isn't the issue, it's complexity on a budget. Any fool with a few billion to spare can get a complicated thing like a delivery capsule built, they just need to employ lots of smart people to build and test custom parts. Trying to do the same thing with off-the-shelf bits and a couple of amateurs is a whole other level of complexity.
Personally I'm interested in seeing if a NavSparc board (a GPS receiver with programable IO like an Arduino and costing only $20) is going to change the economics of autopilots significantly.
Speaking of budgets, at some point I'd love to see a list of everything that went into designing and building LOHAN and what it would have cost if you'd bought it all off the shelf. You've slowly accumulated rather a lot of in-kind support from some very nice suppliers over the life of this project, which is great, but not duplicable by the average shed tinkerer..
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