Rc plane autopilot
RicoLL
Posts: 2
Hi, I'm new to this and I was wondering if anyone knew of a simple to use auto pilot or plane with one. I need the autopilot to keep the plane circling about 50 to 100 yards away from me. I want to be able to launch it from my boat to use it to spot fish and I won't always be able to control the plane so I would like it to circle on its own. It needs to be as simple as possible as I am not very tech savvy and will be busy while it is operating. And if there is any way for it to know to follow my boat why I move that would be good too, but if I need to take it down to move that's fine too.
Comments
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/another-parallax-propeller
I don't think you need the GPS unless there is a prevailing wind pushing the airplane off location.
You would fly the airplane to an appropriate height and location, trigger a patterned flight mode, and when finished you would release back to manual to land.
You could just have a Parallax Propeller provide flying in a pattern that you trigger from your r/c transmitter if you have extra functions. Or the Propeller could monitor GPS and adjust the pattern accordingly.
There are few nice small Propeller Boards that fit into an r/c airplane scheme.
http://www.parallax.com/Store/DiscontinuedProducts/tabid/795/CategoryID/69/List/0/Level/a/ProductID/568/Default.aspx?SortField=ProductName%2cProductName
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11525
In the sea off of England it is impossible to see any fish. In the lakes of Finland it is generally impossible. Only when fishing off a pier nearby Sydney harbour have been able to see the fish I was trying to catch. How is this plane going to spot them?
An RC plane will only stay up for five minutes or so before it needs a recharge or battery change. You are going to spend more time changing batteries than fishing.
Of course having to get hold of your plane every ten minutes from your boat is a challenge.
Perhaps a quadcopter would be a better idea.
Or how about a boat fitted out with a sonar fish finder. Have it move nice and slowly so as not to frighten the fish. Much easier to get it to circle your boat.
I would think sonar is the way to go though.
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for one day, teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
@Heater
If there are birds feeding on bait fish that have panicked and swum to the surface, there is a large school of predatory species below. So the camera watches for bird feeding activity on the water.
That is the most obvious item. One can see schools of herring as changes in color in the water.
And one can read the water for shoals and current activity.
~~~~
In my opinion, anything that an Arduino can do with a DIY auto-pilot can be done even better by a Propeller. But it seems the web site has gone over to the dark side.
~~~~
Sonar fish finders have gotten quite sophisticated, but they just look at the world right under you. But climbing 1000 feet into the air, you can actually see what is happening over the visible horizon at sea level.
My first auto pilot used a BS2 in an electric converted Sig Rascal 40. I could easily stay aloft for 45 minutes on it's 10,000mAh 3 cell LiPo. It would follow a route of up to 14 or 15 waypoints. Upon reaching the last waypoint it would continue to fly figure 8s over it.
It used the Parallax serial GPS and a auxiliary rudder to steer. It was completely separate from the RC controls with the exception that I could activate or deactivate the autopilot via the transmitter. Stabilization was accomplished using the FMA copilot - a thermopile based wing leveling system, you can see it under the fuselage just behind the main gear.
That's pretty impressive. And a pretty plane.
Thanks, it is one of my favorite designs. I'm glad to see that it is available again, they now call it the Rascal 72EG - now designed for electric.
My Humminbird Side Scanning Sonar can see a hundred feet (or more) to each side of the boat.
For ocean commercial fishing, an r/c drone may actually be a very valuable product. If you aren't catching fish, the drone might help determine which direction is best ... either where there might be fish or other boats. It can also provide some clues about the weather.
I believe that some fishing operations use Scan Eagle. It's pneumatically launched and retrieved by snagging a line with it's wingtip. My friends son designed the launcher.
While electric airplanes are nice and neat, a glow fuel powered airplane could stay in the air several hours.
25 years ago I was taking aerial photos some wheat and potato fields with a RC airplane. After taking pictures on one field my friend and I had the bright idea of leaving the airplane in the air as we traveled to the next field a quarter of a mile away. I flew the airplane while sitting in the back of a pickup truck. That was the last time I ever tried to fly an airplane while traveling. I was a bit bruised when we arrived at the next field. Turns out farm roads are really bumpy and since my hands were busy flying the airplane, I wasn't able to keep myself from getting tossed around in the back of the truck.
I used an airplane called the "Butterfly". It had a 99" (2.51m) wingspan. I could take pictures of a 1/2 mile stretch of land with it. I'd fly the airplane 1/4 mile away in one direction, turn it around and fly it straight towards myself taking pictures every few seconds. Once the airplane was overhead again, I'd continue the flight for another quarter mile. I'm still amazed I never lost an airplane doing this (though I did crash more than a few). It's really hard to see a RC airplane 1/4 mile away and 1000' in the air.
I'm not sure how one would land an airplane at see. I know someone who used a badminton net to catch the airplane when there wasn't enough room to land (a bit like the net(edit: they didn't use a net, they used a line) used in video Rich posted). Takeoffs shouldn't be a problem. If it's a small airplane it could be hand launched by throwing it into the wind.
The "Butterfly" I used was easy to hand launch but it could only stay airborne for about 30 minutes. An airplane large enough to fly for several hours might be hard to hand launch.
I know there are lots of RC seaplanes but I think they need a pretty smooth water surface for takeoffs and landings. I'm not sure how well they would work in the open sea.
Even with an autopilot, I'd think one would still need to know how to fly a RC airplane in this application. I don't think there are many autopilots that could handle the takeoffs and landings well.
When the airplane wing flies by, the cord snags a wing tip, and the small weight apparently wraps the cord around the wing a few times. Thus the plane is on the line and the boom can be lowered for removal.
This video shows how the line is held taut.
That's a pretty tough airplane. I think any of the airplanes I've ever made would have had a wing ripped off if I tried something like that.
Why are you so discouraging? He's experimenting!
I'm all for experimenting. Some little experiments and trials can save you from a lot of time and expense in building a big project that is not going to work in the end.
In this case the first order of the day is demonstrate that RicoLL's RC plane with a video camera can actually find fish in the way he expects under the conditions he fishes.
Then we can think about the next step.
While I enjoy fishing, I had a business partner that was a true expert fisherman. Whenever and wherever we fished together, he would consistently pull more fish and larger fish out of the water.
So what a 'true expert fisherman' is looking at may not be apparent to someone of an engineering mindset. And to make matters more awkward, most 'true expert fishermen' are not about to tell you how they do it.
They just tell you that you have to 'think like a fish'.
'think like a fish'
Oh yeah. I know two brothers who love to fish on Finnish lakes. I have been out with them a few times. The problem of how to catch pike can consume their every waking thought for a two week holiday. Anyway, one of them is a psychologist by profession, I have listened to him for many hours whilst out on the lake talking about psychology. The psychology of the pike:)
And to make matters even worse, there are the few elite Zen masters that actually can do so.
As for me, I just wonder what all the fish think of people trying to think like them. Or I think I think so. (You know what I mean, don't you?)
Something very fishy about all this.