Some advice needed for quadcopter control

Post questions, comments and feedback to our 3Dconnexion Windows Development Team.

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
Renwahh
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 11:33 pm

Some advice needed for quadcopter control

Post by Renwahh »

Hi there, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question but here goes.

I have recently purchased a DJI phantom quadcopter and am interested in trying to get my SpacePilot pro to work as a control mechanism.

To that end I have found a device that connects the computer to the R/C Transmitter (Futaba 8FG), and now I need to work out how to program the SpacePilot Pro to speak to the transmitter through the PCTx device. Unfortunately I have limited programming experience, and the SDK scares me a little. Has anyone experimented with this already? would I be trying to reinvent the wheel here? Will I have to find a programmer capable of creating software for this or can it be bought?

I did some searches but found limited information, except for one guy on youtube who seemed to have accomplished it so that he could overcome his parkinsons disease and control the chopper, but it looked like a very custom piece of kit.

Any help would be appreciated
jwick
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 3331
Joined: Wed Dec 20, 2006 2:25 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: Some advice needed for quadcopter control

Post by jwick »

Google will find some videos of people using the SpaceNavigator and quadcopters, including some AR Drone videos we did.

You can tell 3DxWare 10 to send Joystick events. These events can generally be used to drive the RF controllers.

There is a good chance that no software development will be required. Just editing XML files.

To be truly clever though, some mathematics could be used to incorporate the direction of the vehicle with respect to your direction, to eliminate the roll left to go right problem all joysticks have when the vehicle is facing you. Driving from an onboard camera doesn't have this problem.
Renwahh
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2013 11:33 pm

Re: Some advice needed for quadcopter control

Post by Renwahh »

Thanks jwick, I will give it my best shot, appreciate the advice.

Cheers
Post Reply