Parachute planning mission

ArduCopter
1

Hello friends,
First of all, I don’t really know in which category could be assigned this post, if you do so, please tell me and I’ll modify it.

So, I’m planning to send a payload to nearspace with a Helium balloon. All powered with an APM sending telemetry to ground via Orangerx 1W transmitters.

I’ve almost everything ready and now I’m planning the freefall descent.

The best way I’ve think to do it is just freefall from nearspace (30000m±) until a determined altitude (let’s say 200m) and then deploy the parachute automatically.

So the APM it’s the best way to do all the ‘‘flight’’. BUT, I’m having some issues to program that automatically deployment.

I’ve read about the command parameters:

CONDITION_CHANGE_ALT
DO_SET_RELAY

The relay part is solved. I’ve the relay working perfectly with my RC channel 7.

So I’m asking you to help me with the mission planning to let the payload make a mission like if it was taking off, then flying until the moment the balloon burst and then at a determined altitude, the apm activates the relay.

Thank you very much for your time and help.

2

this would be better asked on the vehicle forum.

3

I’d suggest using the arduplane “geofence” feature, which can cause actions to be triggered on certain events, such as “minimum altitude” and “maximum altitude”. Its designed to make the vehicle “switch modes” ( into GUIDED) when one of these things happens. If you set your geofence geographically very, very large, and at ( say) 500m min altitude, then as the near-space object falls “through” that large horizontal virtual surface at 500, it should change to GUIDED mode. more details here: http://ardupilot.org/plane/docs/geofencing.html you’ll also want FENCE_AUTOENABLE set ON, so it automatically enables after takeoff, so you don’t have to. You’ll have do experiment with FENCE_ACTION, FENCE_MINALT etc to make it do what you want. good luck.

4

Thank you David, I’ll try to test it in a few days.

So, previous the balloon would take off, I’d have to arm the apm isn’t it?

5

Hello David, I’ve been triying the way you recommend to me and I have some questions:

  • Do I have to set an autonomous take off above the geofence minimum altitude and set ON the autoenable feature?
  • Let’s say the “near-space object” enters in that fence area, it goes up to 30000m and then falls down… When going outside the fence, it will enters a guided mode but triying to return to the geofence return point… How do I active a servo or a relay to deploy the parachute in that situation?

Thank you very much for your help and time…

6

I moved the post to “Arducopter” category due to I think that the Arducopter users are more familiar with the parachute params than the Arduplane.

Thank you guys!