Controlling Mikrokopter with a SpaceMouse on an OpenWrt Router

I improved my SpaceMouse MikroKopter flying setup so that it's now more practical. In the old setup for piloting the MikroKopter with a SpaceMouse ( look here) - I used my notebook for running Riddim. This mainly had 3 drawbacks:
- setup time until i can start flying with this setup was very high
- not reliable enough ( I install software and do experimental stuff on my notebook too often to believe it could be a reliable MultiKopter Controller )
- in the notebook setup piloting was only possible when sitting

In the new setup i use one openwrt router ( asus wl500g premium ) to run the riddim software:


The Datalink to the Mikrokopter is done with ZigBee Pro - which is connected over one MK-USB to the router ( later i can get rid of the MK-USB and use one of the 2 native serial ports in the router to save weigth and power).
The keyswitch to start the mikrokopter and the other switches are connected to an mini gamepad i bought for ~5Eur and took apart to connect wires.




The whole thing is powered by a 2S LiPo ( to ensure the 7805 is not getting to hot).




résumé

Pros:
- very intuitive ( you move the mouse as you want your QuadroKopter to fly )
- one free hand - only one hand needed for flying ( so you have one hand free for operating other functions, for a cigarett, a mobile phone ,a tissue , ... )
- keyswitch to start the Multikopter often lets spectator smile ;-)

Cons:
- router needs ~1min to boot ( i deactivated some stuff in the init.d allready but i have some more options left i can try like boot_wait_time, removing modules i dont need , ... - i hope i can get it ready in <30s )
- landing ( more touch down than soft at the moment with preasure sensor )
- not really suitable for acrobatic flight

credits
- xm for help on porting to openwrt
- sublab for infrastructure

6km DUBwise Connection

Holger showed up with a nice improvement of the Range-Extender which gives the possibility to have more than 6km distance between the MK and the Mobile-Phone. The related Forum Post is in german, but perhaps you can see on the Pictures what it its all about ( Hint: big antenna ).

DUBwise Range Extender

Finally i had some time for a Project which was in my mind a long time - the DUBwise Range extender.




The Bluetooth Modules in Mobile Phones are very limited in Range ( for reasons of power consumption and size) - which is OK for normal usage of Mobile Phones but was a problem for some use-cases of DUBwise.
The range extender is a little box for the jacket which contains one Zigbee-Pro module ; a Bluetooth Module and power supply. Zigbee and BT are crossed ( rx=>tx ; tx=>rx ).






Now I connect to the BT module in my jacket with the Mobile Phone ( which is <10m in range normaly ) and the (long) distance to the MikroKopter is Made by a ZigBee Pro connection. ( specifyed range ideally by 1mile / 1.6 km )

Beside the range there is one more advantage. I can leave ZigBee on the MK permanently - I dont have to switch between Bluetooth for DUBwise usage and ZigBee for Riddim ...

new 4 BL-Ctrl's

I had to solder 4 new BL-Ctrl's for my UAVP-NG and other QuadroKopter experiments:


3 worked out of the Box - one has a problem - the shunt always burns when i power up with firmware 0.41. ( exact problem in german here: http://forum.mikrokopter.de/topic-3946.html )