innkeeper77

Hello! I am interested in designing and building a tricopter, using ultrasonic sensors for indoor distance mesurement and 3 axis position hold. Is this feasible? I need steady position hold indoors, but a 20 foot range is enough. I have listed what my thoughts are, and I would appriciate guidance on either the project, or where to ask for help. Thanks!

I would be using Ardupilot Mega or something similar, but for budget reasons I would prefer cheaper sensors. I have seen Matbotix sensors used, with great performance, but I would rather not spend $40 per sensor! (I would be very open to using one nice sensor for altitude hold though, and cheaper ones for X and Y- I was thinking two per axis, in opposite directions) - the cheaper sensors seem to be unfortunately slow, so I was thinking that perhaps a second arduino board could be used asyncronously, with the flight control board simply checking its output for those distances and reacting appropriately. I was thinking a US-020 sensor could be good for its great range (700 cm / 22 ft) or an HC-SR04 (14 feet should be ok) - Am I crazy for wanting to use these basic sensors?

Ideally I would have a stable system, with these sensors just helping to correct drift. Eventually I will use this setup for aerial photography and videography, but there is another application where using it indoors and keeping it as steady as possible will be advantageous.

I do not have experience with multicopters, but I have extensive ground RC experience through my robotics team, and I have done some electric flight in the past. I have purchased a Hubsan X4 and have been using that as a trainer. Aside from that, I have little experience, but I am willing to invest the time to learn.

Thanks for your help!