Multiplatform Project

Project Summary

The current project is an ongoing, multiplatform project.  The purpose is to collect and analyze data from agricultural areas (farms) using simple, inexpensive technology.  It is a project that connects together a website, a mobile device, a database, and some hardware lead by an Arduino.  The Arduino-led hardware is a quadcopter (Figure 1.1), the mobile device is my Android device, the site is an ASP.NET site (C#), and MS SQL 2008 for the database.  

Figure 1.1

I like to keep things as simple as possible. The quadcopter goes to predetermined lat/long coordinates without direction, but can accept commands in-flight.  The Android device is on-board the quadcopter.  It has two purposes.  The first is to pass commands to the quadcopter via SMS and data.   The second is to get sensor data and images back to the ASP.NET website.  The ASP.NET site has three purposes.  It will process data, analyze it (if needed), and send it to the database.  The website is also the place where information is presented.  Lastly, it's the only place to control the quadcopter.  The idea can visually be summed up in Figure 2.1.

Progress

• The quadcopter is put together (Figure 1.1).   Creating an image library for the site is rough around the edges but done.  Image library information (mapping) is stored in a database.  Broadcast Receiver for SMS on Android is kinda stock-ish code but works.
• The quadcopter was built in a weekend and broke in the next.  The longest time with the quadcopter has been spent getting board, props, motors, speed control stuff set correctly.  Other than the RC Car project, I don't have any prior experience with RC stuff..  not a big deal though.  Best flight was about five feet for a few seconds at a little over 1.5Kg under 50% throttle.  Very sturdy but a prop broke (Figure 3.1).