Chinese Mega Pirate board

[teslahed]

I've got myself a new flight controller; a cheap Chinese clone of a megapirate board based on the arduino Mega 2560.

I've soldered a 10DoF GY-86 MS5611 HMC5883L MPU6050 module to the board as it doesn't come with any sensors.

The board has 4 mounting holes so you can mount the sensor board centered above it which is unusual.

I haven't tested it yet as i am waiting on an FTDI board to arrive to i can install the latest MultiWii software.



I'm going to try and get GPS working with this board once I've got the board working and a quadcopter to put it in.

[Gaza07]

That's a nice flight controller and an improvement over the original flyduino with it having all the connections around the edge, I still use the flyduino boards but wish they had the bent connectors on so it didn't have to raise the gps so high above because of the connectors, the sensor board you have used is also better than the option they offer with the board as it has the newer ms5611 baro, I intend getting the same sensor board to use with my flyduino's as the allinone's I have now are a bit dated and I'm sure the new gyro/acc and baro will be a big improvement when using the megapirate firmware 

The only thing I would do differently is shorter stand offs although I suspect you used what you had 

[teslahed]

I've just tested the Mega 2560 board again with a new FTDI i got this morning and i still can't get the arduino software to upload code to the flight controller. I've tested the software and FTDI with my old Paris MultiWii board and it definitely works (I can upload code no problems). Is there anything different i would need to do to upload the multiwii code to the 2560 board apart from selecting 'Arduino Mega 2560' in the 'boards' menu? I've not used a mega 2560 based arduino flight controller before so i might be missing something obvious.

If i don't find a solution soon I'll just post it back to the people that sold it to me for testing - it might well be faulty.

[teslahed]

I just tried one last time to get the board working and managed it. It works fine so i wont need to send it back to ebay which is nice.

When the arduino software got to the point of trying to upload to the board i pressed the little reset button on the flight controller itself. It uploaded fine as soon as i did this. I didn't think to try this sooner because none of the other arduino based flight controllers i have used needed you to do this - even the ones with reset buttons.

Are other Mega 2560 boards like this?

[Gaza07]

No the FTDI adaptoer should send a reset command just before the upload maybe the mcu had crashed and ignored the soft reset and the only fix was the hard reset, glad to hear you have it working, now your going to be tempted to upload megapirate so you can mess with the mission planner 

[teslahed]

I will try that at some point but at first i might just get it flying with the MultiWii software as i know how to use that. Once I've got the basic GPS functions working in that i might give megapirates a go for the GPS waypoints (i assume that's the main advantage).

[Gaza07]

Well mainly yes and you also see where on the map your copter is not that you don't know but its a really nice program to tinker with 

[teslahed]

I presume it guesses where the quadcopter is based on the waypoint distance and estimate speed as otherwise you'd need a radio that sent back telemetry?

Just having a look at;

Mission Planner running Megapirate NG on a Crius All in one Pro

[Gaza07]

No it knows exactly where you are based on the reading from the gps sent through serial port 3 via a wireles connection even blue tooth but that got a limited distance 

[MadMax]

Is this using the apc220 modules you posted about in another thread ?
it was mentioned that blue tooth has very limited range, but I,m sure ive seen some long range versions of blue tooth, since those posts,
I will post details if I can find it again 

No it knows exactly where you are based on the reading from the gps sent through serial port 3 via a wireles connection even blue tooth but that got a limited distance 

[Gaza07]

Yes your right it is using the apc220 module or something like it, blue tooth just doesnt have the range, I would be very interested in a longer range blue tooth connection if you can find it again,
if you do please post details in the telemetry section 

[Gaza07]

Here's a screen capture of the latest mission planner with a gps fix over my back garden 

[smg id=22]

[MadMax]

Its not big enough when you click it but if you click details it takes you to the gallery where you can expand it, so where it says home is actually your back garden then ?

[teslahed]

I've just finished installing this board in my PVC quadcopter;



Not tested yet but it does seem to be picking up about 7 satellites when i put it on my windowsill.

I'm using a cheap rctimer GPS module on the second to top layer.