After
confirming the command signals reaching from the smartphone to the arduino uno
through Bluetooth connection, now it is viable to proceed signal detection at
the quad copter which is transported from the arduino through the rc module.
The command signal was received by the arduino uno in serial data through the
serial port. The data is then processed and encoded into a PPM signal. The RC
module then decodes this signal and changes it into a PWM signal which is recognised
by the APM flight controller board. Therefore testing is done to confirm
correct signal transportation through all these stages.
The
overall interaction and the commands that go through the system can be
simulated with mission planner software. Set up is done by connecting the APM
flight controller board to the laptop, and then everything is activated as
normal operation, only that the propellers are taken off. This way all the
input signals that are detected by the APM flight controller board are transferred
to the mission planner software on the laptop to be analysed. The default main
purpose of the mission planner software is to tweak the settings on the APM
flight controller board which will decide how the firmware will react to the
input and produce output from it. However this automatically produces
simulation on the input signals which we can use for testing.
The
function on the mission planner that we used for this testing is the radio
calibration setup. This function provides visual representation of the command
input received at the APM board’s input port which is connected to the receiver
of the rc module. The testing is done by observing default radio input and then
see the changes which occur due to application of command on the smartphone
application.
