How to cite lab manual Videos

+michael silverhouse Thanks for the compliments and great questions; I'll see what I can answer right now:(1) Yes, the Vicon sample rate really can be up to 300Hz. My code only has it running at 150Hz, however. I just updated the description a LOT under the video. See details there. All 60 cameras take a sample, the sample is processed, and 3D vehicle position (X,Y,Z) and orientation (3 Euler angles roll, pitch, yaw), AND their first derivatives (rates) and 2nd derivatives (accelerations), are available at a frequency of up to 300Hz, with an X,Y,Z position precision that is <0.1mm. The Vicon system is a highly-capable, but very expensive system used primarily in the motion-picture industry to make Hollywood movies. You can research it. Its sample rate is adjustable. Since I am only running my flight controller at a commanded rate of 21.4 Hz, I could have probably slowed down the sample rate to as low as that, but I kept it at our lab's default of 150Hz just so I wouldn't have to change it. I used a modulus operator to only use every 7th Vicon frame. Again, see the new description under the video.(2) Google and research Vicon. It requires at least 3 reflective markers (usually spheres ~ 1/2"in diameter, with reflective tape on them), to identify and determine the orientation of a vehicle. If you ever plan on flying upside-down, you'd need 4 markers I think to truly determine orientation. Otherwise it can get confused. The reflective tape on the spheres is essentially the same stuff on vests for riding a bike at night. The reflective markers we use are sold by Vicon. In short, here's how Vicon works: You must have at LEAST 2 visual cameras with a visible-red filter on the lens. Around the lens there are like 100 bright red LEDs. The bandpass red filter on the lens allows only this color light to enter. The camera pulses the LEDs on for a fraction of a second, according to the commanded frequency, then opens the aperture to look for the reflection at that wavelength as it flashes the light. This is helpful for removing noise. The markers show up as bright spots, since they reflect the red light emitted by each individual camera. Vicon then does some sort of matrix algebra I believe to determine the 3D position of each marker it sees, knowing the exact orientation and position of the 2 or more cameras that see the marker, and the XY pixel location of the markers on the camera's photo-receptor. Once the position of each marker is determined, the shape is compared to a known shape pre-calibrated on the vehicle, to determine which vehicle it is seeing and what the orientation of the vehicle is. This data is processed and sent to my MATLAB flight controller.(3) Read my updated description under the video. I added more info about each channel. My flight controller uses one or multiple PID or modified PID control loops for each channel to get a desired response. Answering this question fully requires a great deal of work, so I won't expound more. My PID techniques, navigation algorithm, etc, took me a couple years to work out, working on them part-time. So, each RC PWM control signal, for each of the 4 channels, will be somewhere between 900~2100us, depending on your setup. My flight controller computes what each signal should be, then sends those commands to a PIC microcontroller via ethernet UDP packets. Someone else wrote the PIC code and was more comfortable with UDP than serial communication. Ethernet UDP is much faster than serial, but serial is plenty fast for this application. If I were doing it myself from scratch, I would have used an Arduino, and I would have sent the commands to the Arduino over serial. Anyway, so the PIC receives the commands and makes a PPM signal which goes into the trainer input on a Turnigy 9XR radio. The radio takes this signal and sends it to the vehicle.I recommend the Turnigy 9XR or the FrSky Taranis radios. That's about it. I mean, look at the Spektrum DX8 overpriced non-re-configurable radio. Do you really want to hold down the black trainer button for hours while you do testing? All switches are reprogrammable on the two radios I mentioned, among about 100 other reasons they are better radios overall. The FrSky Taranis is my favorite.I am using the Arduino, with my Timer2_Counter library, in conjunction with pin change or external interrupts, to READ, not write, the PPM signal coming out of my Tx. This way I can use the Tx to turn my flight controller on and off, and to datalog the actual commands processed by the radio. For writing a PPM signal you need to use timer interrupts. Not hard, for an experienced embedded programmer, but also not trivial for someone who is not.--Hey, if you get your sound card PPM signal generator working, **will you please make it open-source and share it with me?** I'd really like to see that. I have absolutely no idea right now how to control a sound card on a PC. Im very interested. On the same note, when I get my PPM writer and reader library completed for the Arduino someday, I'll make it open source and share it too. You can read the whole code. **On second thought, whether you get it working or not, please share it with me if you will.** I'd like to see the code regardless, even if it only kind of works.  One more thought: the max audio output on a PC will be +/- 0.7V. You'll have to use some transistors I'm sure to get it to be 0 to 5V or 0 to 3V or 0 to 3.3V (all of which would work) to be read by an RC Tx.