This is a concept design for a handheld air traffic control system for model airplanes. This project is designed to allow a small handheld device to track the flight path of multiple model airplanes at a flying field. The mikroATC firmware can display either a vector map or aerial mosaic image tiles of the flying site. You can navigate the map view using the controlpad buttons.
In the YouTube video the flight pattern shown was created by the built-in mikroATC simulator routine.
The display code supports tracking multiple model airplanes at the same time. Each model airplane that is tracked has its own unique ID, display name, and telemetry struct data. This demo is powered by a MikroElektronika MMB board with a Microchip dsPic33 P33FJ256GP710A MCU and the mikromedia gaming shield.
The source code is not available for download as it is still in development.
I am currently developing the protocols for the wireless telemetry link using mikroC Pro for dsPIC. I still haven't decided on the final data modem to use for the project. It doesn't help that there seems to be a new and exciting RF modem coming to market every day!
I am reusing a lot of source code for this project from several previous experiments I did on creating a Mac based FPV / UAV Ground Station.
Here I'm using a mikromeda board to test the prototype GUI for mikroATC.
This is a photo of mikroATC using an aerial photomosaic image as the map background.
This is the vector graphics version of the map display.
This is part 2 of a tutorial I wrote on using network serial ports on a Linksys router. In part 2 of this tutorial I am going to show how to get a UDP based network serial port running on your Linksys WRT54GS dd-wrt powered router.
This is an animation of netcat receiving a Locosys GPS NMEA datastream via UDP.
The nice thing about Linksys WRT54GS routers is that you can get them for about $25 on eBay. You need to check the model number to make sure it has enough ram to run the full version (standard generic) of dd-wrt and have plenty of memory available to create a JFFS storage partition. You can check out the details and specs of your router model on the dd-wrt router database.
You need to start by following the all the steps on my first blog post to get a working TCP based serial link before you try this tutorial. Part 2 of this tutorial also expects you to have created the JFFS partition and installed the custom build of netcat from the first tutorial. Also, you need to confirm that you are able to remotely connect by TCP to the serial port on your Linksys router and read data from the port.
For this tutorial my Linksys WRT54GS router already has the 10 pin 0.1" serial port header connector soldered onto the circuit board and the router is running dd-wrt with a local IP address of 192.168.1.30
The Linksys WRT54GS router has two serial ports. One of the serial ports is easy to use and the other serial port is tied up with the serial console on the router.
This is a screen capture of the CHDK Motion Detect Plus script in action.
I created a new CHDK motion detection script called "Motion Detect Plus" to take repetitive shots with motion detection.
This Motion Detect Plus script adds a repetitive shot feature to the standard CHDK "motion.lua" script. This is useful for compiling a motion time-lapse sequence using motion detection to trigger the photos instead of a traditional intervalometer.
The script is called motionP.lua and should work with most cameras that support CHDK.
When you are working with source code it is nice to have the code properly indented. You can automatically reformat your unindented C / C++ files in Notepad++ to have proper indentation using the TextFX and NppAutoIndent plugins.
When using the mikroC compiler it is best to have your indentation done using 2 spaces instead of the tab character. For this task it is handy to have Notepad++ automatically convert the tab characters into spaces.
Today I had a delightful parcel arrive in the mail - my prize from the 2012 Winter Warmup RetroChallenge. The gift was sent all the way from Scotland by Royal Mail and arrived in West Dover in only 10 days. The prize was a PSION series 5 PDA that was generously donated by Dale ( wgoodf ). Thanks Dale!
This was my first time using a PSION PDA so I really appreciated Dale's tip about the battery hatch being located behind the hinge on the back. Without that tip I'm sure it would have taken me ages to find it.
The PDA has a touch sensitive greyscale screen with a green coloured backlight, a foldout keyboard, a built-in microphone and speaker, and a stylus. The PSION 5 comes with a few apps such as a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a database program, a dictionary and thesaurus, a day-timer, scientific calculator, communications program, an audio recorder, and a sketching program. The side of the PSION PDA has a CF card slot that makes it easy to transfer documents onto the PDA from your desktop computer.
Here I turned on the PSION Series 5 PDA for the first time.
The onscreen numbers are the tilt in degrees. The 3D axis view compass shows the orientation of the X, Y, and Z axes. The red line is the X axis, the green line is for the Y axis, and the blue line is the Z axis.
In the demo the blue (Z axis) line always tries to point upright.
Comments (2) 
