Quadcopter stunt pilot game

Concept is to have fun with your quadcopter. Get points for spins, rolls, landings, combined stunts.

Comment 2

My inspiration for the project is that I was tired of flying my micro and nano quadcopters around the house and terrorizing the cats. I wanted something fun to do. I started by landing them on a square of cardboard. I tried to see how many times I could land on it. Then I wondered how many flips I could do without crashing. After that it was how many combinations I could do. I thought this might be something that could be automated for scoring.

Using any standard, micro, nano quadcopter that does flips. Standard sized quadcopter outside. Game is meant to be played indoors.

Tracking device – TI Bluetooth Smart sensor tag (SensorTag CC2650 use the altitude , magnetic and nine axis sensors) or LightBlue Bean (accelerometer and reed switch)

http://www.ti.com/ww/en/wireless_connectivity/sensortag2015/index.html
https://punchthrough.com/bean/guides/getting-started/intro/

The concept is to have fun with you quadcopter. Get points for spins, flips, landings, combined stunts. This will be a proof of concept to see if a scoring platform is functional in an IoT environment.

Internet connection:
Raspberry Pi Zero with Redbear IoT pHat (WiFi and Bluetooth)

Cloud storage:
Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Development languages:
EvoThings Studio
Python
JavaScript
HTML5
MQTT
Node-Red
Others TBD

What it does

  • The RPi is paired to the Bluetooth device on the quadcopter, the RPi analyzes the data, sends the results to the cloud, Smartphone/tablet app (or HTML5) displays the points. Score is tweeted at the end of the game.
  • Stretch goal is to post players scores in the cloud.

How I built it

Core operation is a Raspberry Pi Zero operating as a Bluetooth router to WiFi

Challenges I ran into

Nano quadcopters do not have enough power to lift the TI Tag.
Micro quads are the same.
A mini quad lifts the sensor board ok.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Getting the RPi to communicate with the Bluetooth devices

What I learned

Nano and micro quadcopters do not have enough lift for a TI tag.

What's next for Quadcopter stunt pilot game

Design a sensor pack that will be small and light enough to work with nano and micro quadcopters.

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Updates

posted an update —

Proof on concept 2. Fly sensor with Estes Dart (micro quadcopter). Failed to lift even when I tried attaching just the Sensor Tag circuit board. I found a mini quadcopter that should lift the sensor pack ok. I'll revise the project to note that this is a proof of concept to build a small sensor pack to work with a micro quad.

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posted an update —

Proof of concept 1. Using the EvoThing site, I was able to use the sample Javascripts on my smartphone. I was also able to modify the script and upload it to the smartphone. Proof that data can be pulled from the tag. I will need to figure out some JavaScript to pair down and react to the tag data.

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