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Building a quadcopter running on Arduino Yún

Zoe RomanoJune 8th, 2015
Comelicottero

Comelicottero is a quadcopter based on Arduino Yún created during the Master in Computer Science at the Universita’ degli Studi of Milan (Italy) by Simone Castellani, Giovanni Intorre and Andrea Toscano:

The idea was to build a drone able to be controlled through WiFi from any PC, tablet or smartphone . Comelicottero is equipped with an accelerometer and a gyroscope for the stability obtained by a PID-based control system. Since Servo library is too slow for the quadcopter dynamics, an hardware PWM was implemented to obtain a 400Hz PWM signal.

The communication between the ground station on a PC and the quadcopter relies on WiFi and, in order to get better results, Bridge library was replaced with an efficient python script on OpenWRT-Yun. On top of that all the code was written to maximise Arduino Yún capabilities. The Navigation System has been designed, simulated on PC, implemented and tested. The autonomous navigation is going through an additional testing due to magnetometer interferences with motors’ magnetic field.

The user can control and monitor data coming from the drone using a gamepad attached to a laptop with a custom software installed.

Comelicottero_PC_Ground_Station

The sketch and all the documentation will be soon available on GitHub and released with GNU license. In the meanwhile follow their Youtube Channel for updates.

 

Comelicottero_Wiring

15 Responses to “Building a quadcopter running on Arduino Yún”

  1. sprsys Says:

    great …..

  2. Deev Says:

    interesting. looking forward…

  3. mubashar266 Says:

    please some one help me to make this becuase i want to submit this project as my final semester project can any one give me the full link or pdf file for step by step tutorial plzzzzzzzzzzzzz

  4. bradsedito Says:

    What is the approximate range of a drone system using Yun’s WiFi? I’m assuming if it’s using 802.11 you could attach a camera onboard and enable a live video downlink via code, yes?
    -brad sedito

  5. andrea_toscano Says:

    @bradsedito: with Ralink external antenna I achieved ~35 meters of Wifi range.
    You can even add an external antenna to your laptop in order to broaden the range.

    @mubashar266: sorry for the delay, but I won’t have time to revise and comment the code until September.
    I’ll let you know as soon as I finish. Thanks

  6. bradsedito Says:

    Thanks for the approximation, I decided to test out that configuration and I achieved similarly ~40 meters of decent signal quality – so it’s September, have you had time to finish up the code? I’d definitely like to see how you tackled it, cool idea you had with this. you can find me at bradford.sedito(at)gmail(dot)com

  7. matiasm Says:

    Looks like a great project. I am trying to do something similar, control stepper motors using an android app through wifi. I am having the same problems you mentioned about the bridge. Are you able to give any details about:
    …in order to get better results, Bridge library was replaced with an efficient python script on OpenWRT-Yun…

    what is the process for replacing the bridge library, or could you point me in the direction for a tutorial etc.

    Cheers!

  8. rtshiitg Says:

    Please provide us code and steps in a details

  9. tumincm Says:

    can give sketch arduino sir ?

  10. tsoutsouni Says:

    Hello.. great job!
    I would like to ask about the code you have on it for arduino. Another question is if i could put some ir sensors to avoid obstacles.
    Thanks

  11. rockeronline00 Says:

    Hi Guys,
    you can find Comelicottero’s (Arduino side) code on my github account here:
    https://github.com/toskyRocker?tab=repositories

    Only the ground station is missing in the repo, at the moment.
    Don’t hesitate to contact me for further questions.

    Thank you
    Andrea

  12. sarwadenj Says:

    which library you used for DC Motor?

  13. andrea_toscano Says:

    @ sarwadenj : no lib, the motors I used were brushless. So I generated plain PWM signals

  14. JasonT Says:

    Hey man that is a great project I wanted to ask you a few questions about your setup and the wiring details.

  15. andrea_toscano Says:

    sure, send me a message with the form you find at andrea-toscano[dot]com thank you. Andrea

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