Awesome work! I am in the fpv drone racing scene. There over the years a market for flight controllers has emerged. Now on chinese websites you can order on small board with MCU, Gyro, Barometer and more onboard, 1“ x 1“ in size. I hope more and more enthusiasts join this avionic community, so that some single board units appear. It looks like you just started the spirit!
Yeah, I'd love to see more people doing this. I never seem to have enough time to really get into it. I'm building a full size airplane from a kit and would love to see more options for an experimental aircraft like mine. How accurate are the flight controllers you're talking about for fixed wing drones? Do you have any suggested models?
Dan, I asked you in another video about how to do a pressure sensor. I found this one and see you've already done it. Good going! I just ordered two MPXV7007DP pressure sensors to try my hand at it as well.
Cool. Glad it was helpful. Let me know how it goes. I did some testing in a car with the airspeed sensor and it seemed to be pretty accurate. If you need pressure to speed conversion code, let me know.
Ended up on your practically free avionics video and came here next, I don't fly although its an interest but not affordable on any level for me so dream i do. Was thinking about your "slow" pi and Sd cards, the new Pi5 is way more powerful and can be booted from NVMe SSD, and they are working on an official hat for the M.2 SSD. Thanks for making the video with enough information for the untrained to follow along! Cheers from Canada.
Ah, cool. We did a family vacation in Toronto a few years ago. It was a good experience for the kids. I grew up about 50 miles south of central BC and we visited fairly often. I really love it up there. My mom (who is very German) could only find "real" bread at a German store just across the border. And it was a good place to get Kinder Eggs, which are contraband in the US.
Hey Dan, electronics' is the one area of the homebuilt I just cant get my head around. I am struggling with my MGL selection but with your video and RUclips I am slowly getting there.
Hey Andy. I'm enjoying learning about this stuff. Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day so I have to choose between airframe and electronics. How's your build going?
Dan, is there a chance I could have the pdf's for your different circuit board designs? I want to start by making the CAN Bus but eventually want to build all of them.
I made my GitHub KiCad repository public. I probably won't have time to export to PDFs until later (I have plans every evening for the next several days). Here's a link to the repository: github.com/danderflieger/KiCad/ You should be able to just open the project file in KiCad, then open the PCB file and then print it from there. I will caution that some of them need to be printed "mirrored" and some don't. I can't remember which ones are which. So pay close attention to your pin outs before soldering chips into place. And most of all, have fun!
Ivan, I had a minute and exported the DB9 CAN Bus PCB file to PDF. It's on the git repository I mentioned earlier - look for a file called "DB9CAN_Bus (11 Oct 2023).pdf" right in the root of the "KiCad" git repository. I THINK you should just be able to print it as is and iron it onto your copper clad PCB blank. I also did a quick write-up covering my process for going from a the KiCad file to an etched circuit board. It's in the README.md file, also in the root of the KiCad repository.
I remembered you replied but couldn't act on it immediately and when I could act I couldn't find your reply. Thank you for your kind help.@@dan_der_flieger
I printed the pdf at 100% with a laser printer and attempted to transfer it but it didn't do nice solid lines. Is there a trick to getting the paper to contact better with the copper on the board? Is there a recommended time to keep the iron in contact with the paper?
We had some guys do some testing with the BN055 and it was disappointing. It corrects itself to the gravity vector too quickly so a short coordinated turn messes it up in the air. At least that is what they told me. It expects to be in a cell phone not something moving in 3D space. All that said, flight testing it would make a great video. :-) If it can be made to work it would be a game changer.
The sensor choice has nothing to do with the algorithm it's running. Whether it's a quaternion-based approach, or a simple integration of the gyro with the accelerometer filter, the sensor choice is all about noise and power draw. If it's a simple integrated gyro approach, lowering the alpha value will reduce how quickly the gravity vector is corrected. Quaternion-based approaches should not have this issue.
I'm using the Adafruit breakout board along with their sensor API and their BNO055 library. I haven't really dug deep into either of those libraries, but from my cursory look at the sensor and the Adafruit documentation, the sensor is mostly a black box. You can (supposedly) pull quaternion data from it, but doing the math to convert it to angles for the EFIS might be a little too much for the chip on the Arduino (at least the one I'm using - they recently released a board with an ESP32 chip that might be better suited for it). Since I can also pull the euler angles right from the sensor with no conversion on the Arduino, that's what I'm doing. My hope was to just let the mystery of the black box's inner workings continue to be a mystery and let smarter people at Bosch figure out the math. 🫣 I can't guarantee that the BNO055 is actually giving out accurate euler angles without testing it ... Anyway, I'm mostly excited to have learned how to make my own circuit boards. That's new territory for me and it's really fun to do.
Hi Dan, cool ! I'm at decision stage for my panel, do I spend at least 5k on a EFIS or do I go DIY. My electronics skills are limited ( although I did have Direct tv free for about 6 years..lol ) I think I could probably follow along . My issue with Diy is that the internet is full with these projects, lots of excitement at the beginning and than it all seems to fizzle out and support becomes non existent. I see that your an actual pilot and I assume you plan to build your own EFIS, so I guess my question is.. you stick'n around :) Autopilot seems like a neet thing to have.. just say'n Will.
Hey Will. I'm still on the fence about my panel as well - but I still have a long way to go in my build and have plenty of time before I need to decide. After all of the hours I have spent on this stuff, I'm still not sure I would trust my life to it yet. Grand Rapids Technology (GRT) sells a really nice EFIS starting at around $2000. I'm looking very closely at it. You can purchase upgrades (software) to add things like synthetic vision, etc. after the initial purchase, too, as your needs change. So, I wouldn't count on any kind of support from me. 🙂 I haven't decided how much of this will actually become part of my airplane at this point.
I am Interested in the prospect of trying to build a similar display, as a experiment, and like the idea of the printed circuit board ,any chance of open source for the board lay out ,i would like to give it a try. nice work by the way.
Thanks for watching. I have all of my KiCad drawings on my GitHub repository: github.com/danderflieger/KiCad Have fun! Be ready for some aggravation while you experiment with it ... it's all part of the learning process.
@@dan_der_flieger I am OK with that, and I expect it, and planed on one single boar and computing unit , and I do not trust the Bosh IMU so I am getting the Mouser #:512-MTI-320-3A as a replacemen, the rest will be the same to create a single AHARS unit.
Cool! Please let me know how it goes with the Mouser IMU. I've heard the Bosch BNO055 drifts a bit, so it's probably not going to work. I haven't actually tested it in flight, though.
Awesome work!
I am in the fpv drone racing scene. There over the years a market for flight controllers has emerged. Now on chinese websites you can order on small board with MCU, Gyro, Barometer and more onboard, 1“ x 1“ in size.
I hope more and more enthusiasts join this avionic community, so that some single board units appear.
It looks like you just started the spirit!
Yeah, I'd love to see more people doing this. I never seem to have enough time to really get into it. I'm building a full size airplane from a kit and would love to see more options for an experimental aircraft like mine. How accurate are the flight controllers you're talking about for fixed wing drones? Do you have any suggested models?
Your doing amazing work sir
Thank you. Much appreciated.
Dan, I asked you in another video about how to do a pressure sensor. I found this one and see you've already done it. Good going! I just ordered two MPXV7007DP pressure sensors to try my hand at it as well.
Cool. Glad it was helpful. Let me know how it goes. I did some testing in a car with the airspeed sensor and it seemed to be pretty accurate. If you need pressure to speed conversion code, let me know.
@@dan_der_flieger You said that you did your own math. I'd love to compare results later on down the line, Dan.
Ended up on your practically free avionics video and came here next, I don't fly although its an interest but not affordable on any level for me so dream i do. Was thinking about your "slow" pi and Sd cards, the new Pi5 is way more powerful and can be booted from NVMe SSD, and they are working on an official hat for the M.2 SSD.
Thanks for making the video with enough information for the untrained to follow along! Cheers from Canada.
Yeah, someone else commented that the RPi 5 could do NVMe as well. It's about time!!
What part of Canada? Just curious.
@@dan_der_flieger Yes it is about time for sure, Eastern Ontario
Ah, cool. We did a family vacation in Toronto a few years ago. It was a good experience for the kids. I grew up about 50 miles south of central BC and we visited fairly often. I really love it up there. My mom (who is very German) could only find "real" bread at a German store just across the border. And it was a good place to get Kinder Eggs, which are contraband in the US.
Hey Dan, electronics' is the one area of the homebuilt I just cant get my head around. I am struggling with my MGL selection but with your video and RUclips I am slowly getting there.
Hey Andy. I'm enjoying learning about this stuff. Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day so I have to choose between airframe and electronics. How's your build going?
Dan, is there a chance I could have the pdf's for your different circuit board designs? I want to start by making the CAN Bus but eventually want to build all of them.
I made my GitHub KiCad repository public. I probably won't have time to export to PDFs until later (I have plans every evening for the next several days). Here's a link to the repository:
github.com/danderflieger/KiCad/
You should be able to just open the project file in KiCad, then open the PCB file and then print it from there. I will caution that some of them need to be printed "mirrored" and some don't. I can't remember which ones are which. So pay close attention to your pin outs before soldering chips into place.
And most of all, have fun!
Ivan, I had a minute and exported the DB9 CAN Bus PCB file to PDF. It's on the git repository I mentioned earlier - look for a file called "DB9CAN_Bus (11 Oct 2023).pdf" right in the root of the "KiCad" git repository. I THINK you should just be able to print it as is and iron it onto your copper clad PCB blank. I also did a quick write-up covering my process for going from a the KiCad file to an etched circuit board. It's in the README.md file, also in the root of the KiCad repository.
I remembered you replied but couldn't act on it immediately and when I could act I couldn't find your reply. Thank you for your kind help.@@dan_der_flieger
I printed the pdf at 100% with a laser printer and attempted to transfer it but it didn't do nice solid lines. Is there a trick to getting the paper to contact better with the copper on the board? Is there a recommended time to keep the iron in contact with the paper?
We had some guys do some testing with the BN055 and it was disappointing. It corrects itself to the gravity vector too quickly so a short coordinated turn messes it up in the air. At least that is what they told me. It expects to be in a cell phone not something moving in 3D space. All that said, flight testing it would make a great video. :-) If it can be made to work it would be a game changer.
Hmph. That's too bad. I was hoping for a simple, viable AHRS sensor. I'll have to give it a test at some point.
The sensor choice has nothing to do with the algorithm it's running. Whether it's a quaternion-based approach, or a simple integration of the gyro with the accelerometer filter, the sensor choice is all about noise and power draw. If it's a simple integrated gyro approach, lowering the alpha value will reduce how quickly the gravity vector is corrected. Quaternion-based approaches should not have this issue.
I'm using the Adafruit breakout board along with their sensor API and their BNO055 library. I haven't really dug deep into either of those libraries, but from my cursory look at the sensor and the Adafruit documentation, the sensor is mostly a black box. You can (supposedly) pull quaternion data from it, but doing the math to convert it to angles for the EFIS might be a little too much for the chip on the Arduino (at least the one I'm using - they recently released a board with an ESP32 chip that might be better suited for it). Since I can also pull the euler angles right from the sensor with no conversion on the Arduino, that's what I'm doing. My hope was to just let the mystery of the black box's inner workings continue to be a mystery and let smarter people at Bosch figure out the math. 🫣
I can't guarantee that the BNO055 is actually giving out accurate euler angles without testing it ...
Anyway, I'm mostly excited to have learned how to make my own circuit boards. That's new territory for me and it's really fun to do.
Hi Dan, cool !
I'm at decision stage for my panel, do I spend at least 5k on a EFIS or do I go DIY. My electronics skills are limited ( although I did have Direct tv free for about 6 years..lol ) I think I could probably follow along . My issue with Diy is that the internet is full with these projects, lots of excitement at the beginning and than it all seems to fizzle out and support becomes non existent. I see that your an actual pilot and I assume you plan to build your own EFIS, so I guess my question is.. you stick'n around :)
Autopilot seems like a neet thing to have.. just say'n
Will.
Hey Will. I'm still on the fence about my panel as well - but I still have a long way to go in my build and have plenty of time before I need to decide.
After all of the hours I have spent on this stuff, I'm still not sure I would trust my life to it yet. Grand Rapids Technology (GRT) sells a really nice EFIS starting at around $2000. I'm looking very closely at it. You can purchase upgrades (software) to add things like synthetic vision, etc. after the initial purchase, too, as your needs change.
So, I wouldn't count on any kind of support from me. 🙂 I haven't decided how much of this will actually become part of my airplane at this point.
I am Interested in the prospect of trying to build a similar display, as a experiment, and like the idea of the printed circuit board ,any chance of open source for the board lay out ,i would like to give it a try.
nice work by the way.
Thanks for watching. I have all of my KiCad drawings on my GitHub repository:
github.com/danderflieger/KiCad
Have fun! Be ready for some aggravation while you experiment with it ... it's all part of the learning process.
@@dan_der_flieger I am OK with that, and I expect it, and planed on one single boar and computing unit , and I do not trust the Bosh IMU so I am getting the Mouser #:512-MTI-320-3A as a replacemen, the rest will be the same to create a single AHARS unit.
Cool! Please let me know how it goes with the Mouser IMU. I've heard the Bosch BNO055 drifts a bit, so it's probably not going to work. I haven't actually tested it in flight, though.
will keep you in the loop.@@dan_der_flieger