Hand Launch Sequence Lua Script

[RCdiy]

Hand Launch Sequence Lua Script
http://rcdiy.ca/hand-launch-sequence/

A viewer requested a script to help hand launch a plane equipped with an APM flight controller running ArduPilot.

ArduPilot has an automatic take off feature which takes care of throttle, elevator and stability.
http://ardupilot.org/plane/docs/automatic-takeoff.html

The pilot starts the script which puts the flight controller in stabilize mode. The Tx is put down and the plane is picked up and checked to ensure stabilize mode works and it is ready for a hand launch. The script announces the beginning, count down seconds and the end of the sequence. At the end of the sequence the pilot hand launches the plane, the flight controller is put into automatic takeoff mode which increases the throttle, stabilizes the plane hand takes it to a configured altitude.

The script has been generalized to work with any flight controller and with one of more channels. If the flight controller is only able to handle aircraft stabilization then the script can be used to set initial and final values for throttle and elevator.

For safety the script can be disabled and sequence interrupted at any time using a switch. Once interrupted the sequence may be started again from the beginning.

Please check out the blog post and like the video.

 

[rockyboy]

That's very cool! Open source for the win!

 

[bitogre]

Very cool but I would not use such a script. I can imagine too many things that can go wrong after you launch and before you can pickup the radio. I have had a few cases of my own close calls that happened in the process of hand launching. I always keep the radio in one hand. If the plane is too big to launch single handed and cannot take off from the ground, I get a friend to launch it or I would look into using a catapult system for hand free launching.

However, I can see some safe and good uses for the the basic ideas and principals use in the script.

 

[RCdiy]

Very cool but I would not use such a script. I can imagine too many things that can go wrong after you launch and before you can pickup the radio. I have had a few cases of my own close calls that happened in the process of hand launching. I always keep the radio in one hand. If the plane is too big to launch single handed and cannot take off from the ground, I get a friend to launch it or I would look into using a catapult system for hand free launching.

However, I can see some safe and good uses for the the basic ideas and principals use in the script.

Yup
I thought about this and decided to go ahead and make it as safe as possible.
Example - A logical switch could be used as the trigger.
True when say SA down and ELE is zero and AIL is zero.
I've seen people hand launch using their chins to throttle up.
They may find it more elegant to use this setup. (They could do this without the script as well)

Constructive safety feedback always encouraged and welcome