This video shows a full autonomous flight with my APM quadcopter. The flight starts with a takeoff up to 20 meters, then the quadcopter flies through 10 “spline” waypoints before returning to the launch position for an autonomous landing.
APM quadcopter arial video compilation 3
A new compilation video shot from my home built APM quadcopter. In this video I am testing a new gimbal design again. It is not perfect, there are still some vibrations. I think I need to mount the gimbal to the fuselage with some sort of rubber dampeners. The silicone hoses between the frame and the fuselage are not enough.
Water rendering in Realization Engine v13
In update 13 a have added water to the world. The water is created using a reflection texture and a refraction texture that are applied to the water surface. The textures are distorted and animated by two DuDv maps. There are also specular light reflections on the surface, the surface normal is calculated using two normal maps.
More info here: https://axelsdiy.brinkeby.se/?page_id=1006
FPV Quadcopter Racing Simulator
I wanted to do a small project in the Unity 5 game engine to learn some of the basics. This it what I came up with after around 10 hours of work.
It is a simple FPV quadcopter racing simulator. You control a small and agile quadcopter using the analog joysticks on a game-controller. A real RC simulator transmitter can also be used. It is possible to fly both in first person or in third person. There are not many quadcopter simulators or games out there, maybe it would be interesting to add more features and make this a more like a complete game/racing experience?
Download here: http://quadsim.brinkeby.se/
Realization Engine update version 10
Made some progress with my graphics engine. In this video I show a simple menu. I have also added a lot more content to the world, like trees, rocks and more flowers to make it more interesting. There is also a very simple physics engine that controls the behavior of moving entities. This is demonstrated by the (very unrealistic) sliding crates and barrels in the video.
Link to the Realization Engine page
Testing new gimbal on the APM quadcopter
I have always had some problems with vibrations on my APM quadcopter. This is because my homebuilt gimbal was not sturdy enough. This is an attempt to make it better.
My new gimbal that I have built has a ball bearing on the opposite side of the tile motor, making the entire construction more sturdy. I have also built this one out of thicker plywood to prevent the wood from flexing as mush. As can be seen in the video, the results are pretty good, but there are some vibrations when a fly fast forward. Maybe this is because I still have the roll motor mounted the the fuselage using an old 3 mm plywood that can bend slightly. At the end of the video, there is a crash. While I rapier the quad I will try the make the gimbal even better.
Realization Engine – computer graphics demo
This is another 3D graphics engine I have made using modern OpenGL, Java and LWJGL 3.0. I wanted to make something a little more realistic than my previous project, “Tile World 3“. So far I have made a simple terrain using a height map and implemented multitexturing using a blend map. There is also a first person camera that can walk around on the terrain, the “player” can jump and respond to physics. This “graphics engine” will be the platform for more experiments in the future. For example I want to try water rendering with reflations and particle systems.
I will upload a new version of the runnable application to this page every time I make any progress. Try them yourself! The demo requires Java and a decent graphics card to work.
New airplane – Sky Cruizer 2
This is a new airplane that I have designed and built during the winter. It is a pusher with large wheels and flaps designed for rough flying fields. This plane is large compared to my other designs. It runs on the same large 8000 mAh 3 cell batteries as my APM quadcopter. The original “Sky Cruizer” was an airplane I build many years ago when I wanted something fun to cruise around with, this new plane shares both the color scheme and purpose of the first Sky Cruizer.
Tile World 3 – 3D game demo with Java and LWJGL
Tile world 3 is a game demo a have made using Java and LWJGL. The demo is programmed using modern OpenGL with GLSL shaders. The user controls a first person camera, and can explore the world by walking, running, swimming, jumping and sneaking using the mouse and keyboard or a XBox360 controller. The demo features simple 3D collision handling and some simple animations. This is a very interesting and very educational project, so I will probably continue working it and ad more features.
Download the demo here: To the game demo download page
Read more about the project here: To the Tile World 3 page
APM quad in cold and windy winter conditions
A new video of some flying with my APM quadcopter. The newly installed LEDs impoves visibility a lot. The video was shot on new years day. The weather was cold and the wind speed was high, about 10 m/s, but the Ardupilot in GPS assisted mode makes it easy to fly even in those conditions.