Thursday, September 11, 2008

Preperations...

Just finished the Vane direction test. I have the vehicle hanging from a hook in the garage roof. It can be easily tipped or twisted. Its high enough that you can lie on the floor under it and observe the vane movement. For this we assume that the GPS has no fix and thus  the IMU is setup to try and hold a constant roll, pitch and yaw of 0. I exaggerate the gains and tip/twist the vehicle and observe that the vanes move the correct direction to counter act the roll pitch or yaw. It was working perfectly then it would suddenly pitch over and act strange.


After several trips through the code I realized that the GPS was getting a fix and it was trying to navigate to the next way point. Very surprising because the garage roof is where I store all my thing sheet metal so I would have bet there was zero chance of a GPS fix. In any case it looks like it is still a go for a Friday departure and a Saturday test.

3 comments:

William said...

Best of luck! Look forward to seeing some good results.

Thad Beier said...

Paul, all of us armchair rocketeers are wishing you, the real deal, all the best. I'd wish you luck, but luck has nothing to do with it -- you've got all your blood, sweat, and tears in that thing.

Iain said...

Good luck Paul, for all us readers of your blog, its been worth the wait!!
All the best mate!