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Fly An R/C Plane With an iPhone
An anonymous reader writes "Ever wished your iPhone could do more than just play some cool games? How about using it as a spread spectrum transmitter to fly your R/C Toys around, complete with using a Linksys router as a receiver?"
Was his server also running on an iPhone?
Upon hearing this news the FAA has now banned iPhones as a kneejerk reaction to potentially taking over commercial flights, especially if you also use said iPhone to herd pigs via the iLivestock app.
"To err is human, to mod Funny divine."
Since you have a linux computer on board, you could extend this beyond just real time control. Programmed flight paths? Use a smaller embedded linux computer and add extra gear, maybe cameras and GPS, you could do all sorts of cool stuff (although, now this is starting to sound like a military spy plane... expect a knock on the door from the FBI)
I lost me sig.
I RTFA. The guy claims to fly model planes, code in php AND had a *girl* in his bed. While he was coding php?!? It was either his sister, or I call bullshit on the whole story.
Ever since battery technology made high performance, high fly time electrics possible, the indoor/outdoor electric RC genre has exploded.
One of the people who revolutionized this market is a friend of mine who runs wildrc.com. He invented a very durable electric flyer called the IFO. It's made of kite materials - rip stop polyester and carbon fiber rods. Just in the time that the IFO has been in existence, the batteries and motors have evolved so that his original 5 minute flight time has increased to the point where you get bored before the batteries run out - 20 mins to 1/2 hour in some cases.
Lots of people are experimenting with computer controlled flight, and on the high end you have companies like Aerovironment doing military UAVs and solar aircraft.
I remember visiting hobby shops in the 1980s and wishing there were more electric RC airplanes and helicopters, there was maybe one at the time and it had a 4 minute flying time. Everything R/C was also ridiculously expensive, especially the radios.
Now 20+ years later my wishes came true...
Those of you that don't fly should know that even minor glitches can lead to the total loss of your plane. If you do it right - get a simulator, get some training with an instructor, learn to build planes correctly - you minimize your losses but exceedingly few r/c pilots have never lost a plane. (I've lost one in 4 years or so of flying but I don't fly anywhere near as much as I'd like). You can think about where you want to put your plane but you have to get to the point where you can instinctively move the controls to do any maneuver you think of in under a second. If you can't it's called getting "behind the plane" which is bad (ie your thinking and planning to move your plane needs to be ahead). It's not rocket science but it's probably comparable to learning to ride a bike or ski or surf for the first time only if you get it slightly wrong your plane is history.
The last thing you want to do is risk your plane with an unreliable hack on the plane (or flight surfaces, or anything holding the plane together). It could cost you hundreds of bucks, days of work, and if your plane is gas powered or heavier than a few hundred grams it could hurt someone. (Fatalities are rare with smaller planes but not unheard of).
Also depending on where you live controlling your r/c plane with a radio that isn't designed and certified for it might not be legal even though the part of the spectrum you're using may be free to use (eg. 2.4GHz).
Frankly I haven't even gone to 2.4GHz. I know from having other devices on those frequencies that it's a noisy part of the spectrum. At the moment it's still quite new tech which is cool but I don't fully trust it yet for anything critical.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This seems Horribly familiar.
http://www.chaotickingdoms.com
Site seems slashdotted, but this might be similar to the DIY iPhone-Controlled R/C Car story from October -- links to this video tutorial about the project.
But what have *you* done lately?
Sat on my ass in my Mom's basement, eating cheetos & trolling slashdot.
Oh - wait, that's not me - that's you!
Why not put the iphone on the helicopter and use it to control it. Use the accelerometer data to stabilize the helicopter, the wifi geolocation ability to figure out where it is(for the most part...), and the camera to avoid obstacles using some sort of optic flow algorithm. Maybe even use google maps imagery to figure out where it is even better.
Ever wished that every tech website and commercial orgnisation didn't assume that you are an Apple drone with an iphone? I refer to the summary, which uses the phrase:
Hey! I have an iphone? I didn't know. Could you send it to me? Thanks!
I have a perfectly good mobile phone which works well with platform independent software and includes accelerometers, touch sensitivity and other amazing innovations. Yet my phone and my custom are of no interest to the majority of tech websites or businesses.
Similarly, it pisses me off that 90% of music docks are ipod-only, rather than being compatible with something crazy like a standard mini-jack.
Cue moderation to -1000, mild criticism of something tangentially connected to Apple.
Read Pynchon.
How to use an iPhone to Fly R/C Airplanes and Helicopters
HOW I DID IT: I've had an iPhone for about a year now, and find it quite indispensable. It's handy in so many situations, and fits into a lot of nerdy stuff I do. However, it hasn't fit in perfectly to the main nerdy thing that I like to do: Fly radio control airplanes and helicopters. For that, I use a really high quality piece of hardware from a company called JR, a JR 9303 radio. It works great. However, one day it occurred to me, how cool would it be to use my iPhone to fly my RC stuff? The answer was "So cool" obviously. I tossed around the idea for a couple of months and ultimately gave up on it because the iPhone doesn't have a receiver I can put in the airplane to fly it with.
So the idea sat untouched while I learned how to program stuff on the iPhone for other nerdy purposes. My roommate requested I make a chadwick balancer for him using the accelerometers. (For those who don't know, this is a device they use in real and model helicopters to find out if something is not balanced. Main blades, tail blades, shafts, gears etc...) While I was learning about the accelerometer functions in the iPhone, the idea pinged me again, and I thought, How cool would it be to fly an R/C model using the accelerometers inside the iPhone?! Alas, still no receiver.
IMAC Season came and went, and so did indoor season. I was busy practicing for contests I knew I'd be beat at, and building planes I knew were way to good for me. =) Then, one fateful day, I deleted some PHP program I was working on by accident. This was a LOT of work, and I was exceptionally pissed off about it. I was distracted by some girl in my bed (Don't EVAR program PHP with a girl(s) in your bed!) and maybe a beer or six in my blood. I was writing a series of test programs for a SOAP interface, and had named one of them 8.php. (The more seasoned nerds among you can probably see where this is going). The program had turned into a complete disaster and was causing "internal server errors", and I wanted to delete it. While girl was yammering in my ear I typed rm *.php instead of rm 8.php, and hit enter. Deleting every php file in the folder. Hours of hard work gone into the void.
The next day I went and bought a time capsule from Apple so this would never happen again. The side effect of this was that I had a Linksys 54 to play around with. I always had this grandiose idea of building a WIFI sniffer/jammer. I figured there may have been some people playing around with these routers. And gosh, was I right.
The DD-WRT project is a group of people who have reverse engineered many popular brands of routers and have managed to load a small linux distribution. As soon as I saw that they had independent programs running, it hit me like a bolt of lightning: My planes and helis don't need a receiver if they are carrying around the server. If I could carry around the router on board, I could fly my stuff.
So I started scheming. There were a lot of problems to be solved, and I am only just so nerdy. I made a list:
1. How do I get the router to talk to the servos? How much current can ethernet handle?
2. How do I control throttle with no stick?
3. What is the latency going to be like from iPhone->Router->Program->Servo?
4. What is the range of WiFi? Good enough for RC?
5. Can I fly with the accelerometers? I'm a stick banger. BIG time. How does one add expo to this?
6. Whose planes can I test this on? >=)
So I had my basic idea down. iPhone joins the Linksys router network. It gets an IP address. Then, I open up my pilot program. The pilot program interfaces with the router via SSH (I couldn't think of a better way that has redundancy, and speed, and was already buily by someone else). The pilot program interprets what the iphone is doing, and outputs data to one of the ethernet ports of which there are conveniently 4. Rudder, Ailerons, Throttle, Elevator.
Once I had
Ever since battery technology made high performance, high fly time electrics possible, the indoor/outdoor electric RC genre has exploded.
Nice Sony reference you've snuck in there! :)
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
MyAuntIsHot or MyAuntIShot?