Planet Arduino

Comelicottero is a quadcopter based on Arduino Yún created during the Master in Computer Science at the Universita’ degli Studi of Milan (Italy) by Simone Castellani, Giovanni Intorre and Andrea Toscano:

The idea was to build a drone able to be controlled through WiFi from any PC, tablet or smartphone . Comelicottero is equipped with an accelerometer and a gyroscope for the stability obtained by a PID-based control system. Since Servo library is too slow for the quadcopter dynamics, an hardware PWM was implemented to obtain a 400Hz PWM signal.

The communication between the ground station on a PC and the quadcopter relies on WiFi and, in order to get better results, Bridge library was replaced with an efficient python script on OpenWRT-Yun. On top of that all the code was written to maximise Arduino Yún capabilities. The Navigation System has been designed, simulated on PC, implemented and tested. The autonomous navigation is going through an additional testing due to magnetometer interferences with motors’ magnetic field.

The user can control and monitor data coming from the drone using a gamepad attached to a laptop with a custom software installed.

The sketch and all the documentation will be soon available on GitHub and released with GNU license. In the meanwhile follow their Youtube Channel for updates.

A new release of OpenWrt-Yún was announced today on Arduino Forum by Federico Fissore and you can download it from this page.

1.4.2 includes both bug fixes and new stuff.
We fixed some glitches in the webpanel (a bug was found by wildpalms: thank you!).
The OpenWRT Image Builder and the software produced by the http://allseenalliance.org/ is now available for download.

Compared to 1.4.1 this release contains:

• OpenWrt-Yún (Linux side)
  Added “image builder” to the build process. See details on Github
  Added alljoyn feeds and packages. See details on Github

• Web panel
  Fixed wrong JSONP serialization. See details on Github
  Fixed a javascript error in webpanel login page

The complete list of changes is available here.

A few years ago, the most common method to put an Arduino project on the web was to add a small router loaded up with OpenWrt, wire up a serial connection, and use this router as a bridge to the Internet. This odd arrangement was possibly because the existing Arduino Ethernet and WiFi shields were too expensive or not capable enough, but either way the Arduino crew took notice and released the Arduino Yun: an Arduino with an SoC running Linux with an Ethernet port. It’s pretty much the same thing as an Arduino wired up to a router, with the added bonus of having tons of libraries available.

Since the Yun is basically a SoC grafted onto an Arduino, we’re surprised we haven’t seen something like this before. It’s an Arduino shield that adds a Linux SoC, WiFi, Ethernet, and USB Host to any Arduino board from the Uno, to the Duemilanove and Mega. It is basically identical to the Arduino Yun, and like the Yun it’s completely open for anyone to remix, share, and reuse.

The Yun shield found on the Dragino website features a small SoC running OpenWrt, separated from the rest of the Arduino board with a serial connection. The Linux side of the stack features a 400MHz AR9331 (the same processor as the Yun), 16 MB of Flash, and 64 MB of RAM for running a built-in web server and sending all the sensor data an Arduino can gather up to the cloud (Yun, by the way, means cloud).

All the hardware files are available on the Yun shield repo, with the Dragino HE module being the most difficult part to source.

Today we released the upgraded version of the OpenWrt-Yun image on the Arduino Yún.
This version includes all the latest and greatest from stable OpenWrt, the latest (Python) Bridge (with a php contribution and fixes to the file module), we also added Mailbox support to REST api and other fixes to some open issues.

The new image contains also the fix to the well known Heartbleed bug, a big security issue that impacted on almost all websites of the world.

If you own an Arduino Yún we suggest you to follow the link and read the procedure to update the board.
You’ll need to download the zip file from the download page. Remember that updating the OpenWrt-Yun image will cause the loss of all files and configurations you previously saved on the flash memory of the Yún.
Enjoy!