Week 16

After testing both the ultrasonic sensor as well as the IR sensor, we continued with the final sensor that we have in hand, the TeraRanger. Coding the TeraRanger was not an easy task as it has its own library and oning the serial monitor will cause the entire system to hang as well. We thought at first that it was the code that makes it hang. However, after troubleshooting we realised that it was actually the serialprint itself. Printing out the outputs was taking too much out of the arduino which slows down the whole program making it hang. Removing the serial monitor solved the problem and the motors were moving as intended and fast enough. We then decided to test it.

We had our first successful test flight the drone with the arduino and teraranger one connected to the pixhawk. However, it was very unstable as the rate at which the drone was flying back after detecting a wall was way too fast and it was very hard to regain full control of the drone. Thus we had to go back to the arudino code to make some adjustments and carry out more test flights.