Automatic landing gear

Hy All!

Do anyone know, how to set up or where to connect the landing gear servo, if I would like to an automatic operation. For example, higher than 5 meter turn the landing gear to upper pos.

Great thing to know how! It would be a great implementation. How would you “automatize” this function?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Depending on the speed of descent, you could use a sonic range finder fixed to the bottom of the quadcopter, and when a certain range is detected, trigger the landing gear servo.

You could then use the loops within the Usercode file to perform the ping.

Paul

Actually this is a great idea and we want to add that to our Skyjib which wears the Skijib Landing Gear. Also, another good thing would be if you could add like an emergency feature in case of loosing height due to motor failure or whatsoever (I think the A2 comes with that out of the box).

Anybody has tried something like that so far?

I am thinking of using another atmega chip then connect an ultrasonic/sonar sensor, which can trigger landing gear’s position. I will try to make one for my quad. Btw, the automatic landing gear circuitry is isolated from the quadcopter’s FC, though the power can be sourced from the APM’s servo power rails, or use a suitable servo to power the atmega chip, sonar and the landing gears. in that way, the codes for automatic landing is separate from the APM’s code. :slight_smile: The atmega chip will actuate the servo of landing gear once the sonar’s output (analog or actual distance) matches the desired height to activate the landing gears.

I actually found this video on youtube:
youtube.com/watch?v=5LJCrm_x … _i7ERsZX3w

Seems like somebody already did quite a good job. We´re trying to make it run on an apm though.

It would be simple and maybe safer to put it on another arduino, but it would fit nicely/be cleaner to have it all on the APM…

When in landing mode or RTL (which I assume uses the underlying landing mode) the copter descends quickly to a predetermined altitude (10m?) then descends much slower until it lands. i had always thought that the point it changes to the slower descent (it always looks to me like it’s ‘feeling’ for the ground from then) would be the ideal time to automatically lower the landing gear. I assume that for those in the know it should be pretty straight forward to add something in to trigger a channel at this point. Well above my knowledge I’m afraid.

Yes, Arduino can really work, but I am thinking of the smaller footprint boards, the Arduino Micro perhaps.
But I would still opt to build the automatic landing gear controller using bare ATMega chip (bareduino) to make the board cheaper and a lot smaller by eliminiting “Excess” pins as well as the USB-to-serial peripherals.

Alternatively, I would use ATTiny development boards like Digispark ATTiny85 which has 2cm x 1.7cm PCB.
It would really be safer to use external processors, but would require additional weight. So smaller circuits could be more ideal for this matter.

For the sonar, a US-100 ultrasonic ranging sensor can be a candidate, it has temperature compensation for better accuracy. It can be easily interfaced with any Arduino board, even with the bare ATMEGA chip (burned with arduino bootloader, of course)
:slight_smile:

github.com/diydrones/ardupilot/issues/691