Stabilized Jet flight

[Jippieee]

Just wondering if this could be done with Gluonpilot and some programming.

I have an EDF Jet (FlyFly Mig29) with two ducted fans and trust vector control. It seems a nice challenge to me to deploy the gluonpilot for flight stabilization (and for the fun of it perhaps homing). The first step would be to control autonomous hovering with the thrust vectors. This requires pitch, roll, yaw and altitude/power control. Apart from the magick of a hovering Jet this will make launching really easy Currently the Jet is already able to hover using 3 rate servo's but eventually the Jet becomes uncontrollable and falls out the hover.

I suppose this is a piece of cake for the gluonpilot hardware (true?)

My current concern is that I need all 4 pcm inputs (pitch, roll, yaw, gas) because I fly futaba fasst. Is there a way I can still control flight mode (normal flight, hover, high-alpha, homing). I still could ommit the yaw control but I prefer to have it. Another little thingie is that 6 output channels are not enough to control a full blown jet (2* vector altitude, 1*vector yaw, 2*taileron, 1*gas) and, this would be nice, 2* canard, and 2*aileron for in flight stabilization. Again, the last options would be nice but requires all together 10 outputs. Any plans for hardware 0.2

Any other consideration that I have to make before I dive into this? Suggestions are welcome. Of course I share the code if this ever will become a success.

Thanks,
Marc

[Mitch]

I think the board would be an excellent starting point for your project.

There isn't a fasst receiver yet that you can tap for all channels in the ppm stream. I've reverted to FM ppm for these cases until that receiver is available.

There are still a bunch of spare pins on the pic that could be used for additional pwm outputs. OC7 and OC8 could even be used for hardware pwm by simply jumpering them to an unused header.

I think your difficulty will be the firmware. Lots af work to get where you want to go.

[Tom]

Hi Jippieee,

First of all: you have 5 PWM inputs on the gluonpilot board. If you want more, you'll need to hack a PPM receiver...

Yes, 6 outputs might be not enough for you. However, if you manage to control these 6 servos in a meaningfull way, than your project will already be a success!
Hardware v2 might have 8 PWM outputs, but there are no plans for this yet.
The board does have an SPI and I2C port, and there exist I2C to PWM modules: http://www.min.at/prinz/oe1rib/I2C-Servo/ so if you really need this, this could be the solution as add-on to the gluonpilot board.

The first challenge would be to use the standard gluonpilot software in your plane. When this works, you can step by step add additional stabilization modes.