The Most Important Part

What is *THE* most important part of a digital design project like this, besides motivation, good planning and research skills, and a little money?  The micro-controller board, of course!  But which board to choose?  If you go with a board that has too few digital I/O pins, too few A/D channels, or not enough PWMs, then you're stuck purchasing another board.  At $50 or higher per board, that could be a big mistake.  Most people would say "The one with the most of everything, then I would be covered!"  That's not always true.  What if that board with everything and a side of chips (pun intended) is really bulky and heavy, but needs to be very lightweight and small because it will eventually be used in a quadcopter or flying drone application?  All those extra pads and the massive board real-estate could be a benefit during development, but would come back to bite you in the end because it literally won't get off the ground.

For the purposes of picking the board, and for that matter, every other piece of hardware involved in the project, we must clearly DEFINE the project.  Granted, in an educational sense, you want to maintain your flexibility so that you can do a multitude of projects with the hardware you purchase.  Even with that in mind, you have to find that "ultimate project" and determine the goals based on that.  If that requires an additional purchase of another micro-controller board later to get that quadcopter off the ground, then plan accordingly.  

Jordan and I will be working towards our ultimate goal of, you guessed it, a QUADCOPTER!  Ever since seeing some of the online videos of wild, acrobatic, nimble, and truly amazing stunts performed by quads several months ago, we were both hooked on doing a closely related project.  Here are some links to a few of those videos, mostly from the GRASP Lab at the University of Pennsylvania:

• Aggressive Maneuvers for Autonomous Quadrotor Flight - Amazing control!
• A Swarm of Nano-Quadrotors - Slightly freaky, but very cool!
• Trick Video by Warthox - Non-autonomous tricks, meaning he is controlling the quad with a remote control.

Any hard-core RC people out there are probably saying "You don't need a micro-controller board to make a quad!"  You're right.  You don't.  Warthox's video above is non-autonomous flight, not controlled by a micro-controller.  You could buy a frame, an RC transmitter and receiver, 4 motors and 4 motor controllers and be flying in no time.  I don't want to offend anyone, but that's more of an exercise in learning to fly the quad than making and learning from an awesome digital design project.  That's where you DO need a micro-controller.  If you want the flexibility and educational benefit of programming, like changing flight characteristics based on changes in sensor readings or programming an autonomous take-off and landing routine, you need a micro-controller.  This DOES NOT remove the possibility of hooking up a nice RC controller and flying it manual.  It just adds an ever expanding dimension.

The next blog entry will cover the selection of our micro-controller board.  I already have an idea, but I want Jordan to go through this exercise.