Best way of dealing with a new airframe

Hi everyone

I’m expecting to experiment with a new airframe using a Pixhawk.
As suggested here, I was about to post in the drone-discuss group instead of posting it as an issue in Github, but there it encourage us to post it here.

I would really appreciate some advice about how to modify the existing code to include a new airframe. I’ve spent a few days trying to understand most of the code as well as seeking files which will need to be modified, and first of all I have some general doubts as the following:

  • Is it better to modify an existing frame or to create a new one?
  • If I choose the second way, am I going to be able to choose it in the planner (where I understand the frame of the vehicle is chosen)?

I don’t really know if there’s somewhere else where I could post these doubts or some others I’ll surely run into during the following weeks (as well as explaining a bit more about
my project and my results), or this is the most appropriated place.

Thanks in advance,

Eduardo

Hey Eduardo,
If you are working with ArduPlane go to the JSBSIM website and there is a tab for Aeromatic. Here it will generate the xml files necessary for a new aircraft. Here is the link:
http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net/aeromatic2.html

Wow, what a resource, thanks.
But I’m afraid I’m trying to develop a brand new type of vehicle, some kind of blimp.
After creating the new frame in the code, I’m still trying to learn how to deal with it in Mission Planner (as well as with new flight modes, but this is secondary since I could modify existing ones), after continuing the development of my blimp. I’m pretty scared and lost about how to fit it in the Mission Planner.
As I said, thanks anyway for the info.
Regards,

Eduardo

Any luck Eduardo?? I’m trynig to plug in a different model but moving the jsbim/aircraft model into the autotest/aircraft library explained here: http://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/setting-up-sitl-on-linux.html#using-a-different-jsbsim-model
When I run a MAVProxy SITL, the params never load. How do you get a different model in?