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NexgenTimer Arduino Library

LiPo batteries are great for drones but you don’t want to over discharge them. To allow our Flight Controller to monitor battery capacity we used a non blocking scheduler and packaged our requirements up as an Arduino Library, NexgenTimer.

Our library is an amalgamation of the MillisTimer and ElapsedTimer libraries with some application specific examples and an extra Timeout class. It only uses functions from the Arduino core API and hence should work on all Arduino boards.

It can be downloaded using the Arduino Library Manager and you can read all about it in our latest article on Medium –

https://reefwing.medium.com/how-to-write-your-own-flight-controller-software-part-6-7ce0fa3e8008

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How to Write your own Flight Controller Software — Part 5

There are a number of libraries that make working with the LSM9DS1 IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) easy. In Part 5 of our series on writing your own flight controller software we will focus on the IMU and in particular explain the best ways to convert the gyro rate and accelerometer force data to a roll and pitch angle. The yaw angle is then calculated using the pitch and roll and magnetometer data. This discussion, is in the context of building a drone flight controller based on the Arduino Nano 33 BLE.

Our follow up part in this series will explain how to calibrate the LSM9DS1 IMU and store the results plus use sensor fusion to improve the accuracy of the angles and overcome sensor shortfalls.

Read the complete article on Medium.

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Design your own Arduino Motor Shield

The Nexgen Rover is an Arduino based robot designed wholly by Nexgen Codecamp. It is used in our technology related STEM courses aimed at high schools. The robot is based on Arduino technology and runs an Arduino UNO with a motor controller shield on top. This article explains how we designed and manufactured our own motor shield to suit the requirements of the rover. #arduino #stemeducation #uno #motor #shield #nexgen

https://reefwing.medium.com/designing-your-own-arduino-uno-motor-shield-ca507ab61f4b

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A Review of Open Source Flight Control Firmware

The evolution of open-source flight control firmware is fascinating and involves everything from years of committed development with no reward, to convoluted betrayal from previous partners and friends. In this article, we will review the most popular open-source projects, explain their antecedents and highlight the survivors. #arduino #drone #development

https://reefwing.medium.com/a-review-of-open-source-flight-control-systems-2fe37239c9b6

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How to write your own flight controller software – Part 1.

We recently published a new article about writing your own flight controller software.

Why would You?

It is a reasonable question. There are a number of Open Source and proprietary quadcopter flight controllers with firmware available. The problem is we want to use an Arduino board, to fit in with our other training programs. As soon as this becomes a constraint your options are very limited. In fact, your only real option is to write your own. So here we are.

Initially we attempted to port BetaFlight across to the Arduino Portenta H7, as this is designed for STM32 hardware and we know that writing your own flight controller firmware is tough and time consuming. We managed to get BetaFlight to compile for the H7 but because Arduino’s use a custom bootloader which is located right where BetaFlight normally sits in memory, flashing the firmware was problematic.

You can read all about our drone design adventures.