Custom made quadcopter

[Michael]

I am a computer programmer, and I also know some electronics. I love micro-controllers, I did some projects with PIC32 (and other smaller PICs).

I bought an AR Drone 2.0, and fell in love with it (kind of), but because it is so small, there is not much more I can do with it... except add LEDs or small things like that.

I want to get a ready made quadcopter with GPS, I have my eyes on the F450, and also I want to get a FatShark PredatorV2 RTF FPV.

But before I get all that, I have some questions:

1) Does information like battery percentage of the quad display through the FPV? other info like altitude, GPS, etc would also be very useful to get through the FPV.

2) I want to add sensors to it, like distance sensors pointing in all directions (up/down/front/back/left/right), and I want to add a microcontroller in between the receiver, and the NAZA module, and override the commands I am giving if it "sees" something close to the drone... or using that info, I can make it avoid obstacles if I want to fly it autonomously using GPS.
So the question is... can I "insert" another control (made by me) in between the receiver, and the NAZA module, and give it commands how to fly?

3) (with question #2 in mind) Is the receiver on the drone analog or digital? is it possible to send data (binary data) from the remote control to the drone?

4) Is it possible to send data the other way, from drone to remote control? for example if the sensors see something in front of it, to have an alarm(beep) in the remote control?

I might have a few more questions later

 

[Mike]

1. To get that type of data, you'll need to get an On Screen Display (OSD) Module for your FPV setup. If you're going the DJI route with the Naza, they have iOSD:

http://www.dji-innovations.com/feature/iosd-mark-ii-features/

You can also look into other OSD modules that run off of their own sensors and then essentially plug in between your camera and video transmitter to overlay the OSD data into the video - but if you're going Naza, it's probably best to buy the OSD DJI builds since it will integrate the best.

2. Anything is possible, but you'd probably want to work with an open source board if you're looking to customize: OpenPilot, KK, Thalamus, etc. You can also do some searches online for quadcopter collision avoidance. A lot of people are already doing it with sonar and infrared. Apparently IR works much better.

3. You should be able to send 1s and 0s between the tx/rx, but you'd need to look into the specific protocol being used. Most common is PWM, PPM, and DSMX. The video is normally analog.

4. Yes. I use FrSky telemetry and my sensors plug into my rx and send the data down to an LCD on my tx.

For 3 and 4, there are likely other, more flexible solutions. I'm more familiar with the off the shelf stuff.