Finally had some time to continue working with the AeroQuad Quadcopter. Took me a couple of days to have it ready for outdoor flying tests.

The initial setup and tests consisted of:

1. Download and install the Arduino v1.0 SW on a Macintosh.

2. Download the AeroQuad v2.5.1 Sketch and uncomment the right configuration parameters (Arduino Mega with AeroQuad Shield v2.0,  Enable Magnetometer, Barometer and Battery monitoring, setting serial BAUD rate to 115200, etc.).

3. Upload the AeroQuad Sketch to the Arduino Mega.

4. Download and install the AeroQuad Configurator v3.0 Beta 2 for Macintosh.

5. After expending various hours playing with the AeroQuad Configurator for the Mac I decided to try the PC version as I kept getting unexpected results with the Mac version. It would not connect to the AeroQuad most of the times and would only connect after many attempts, it would fail saving the transmitter calibration values to the AeroQuad, it could not display the 3D model properly, etc.

6. Downloaded and installed the AeroQuad Configurator v3.0 Beta 2 for Windows but had the same bad results as with the Mac version.

7. Finally downloaded and installed the AeroQuad Configurator v2.7 for Windows (on a Mac running Parallels). It worked much better and the interface is clearer than v3. With it I was able to complete the AeroQuad configuration but still observed a couple of issues. One being that it will always take a few connecting attempts before the Configurator can connect to the AeroQuad and the other that some times Calibrate Magnetometer would not work.

8. With the configurator completed the following:

9. Initial Setup, Initialize EEPROM

10. Initial Setup, Calibrate Transmitter

11. Initial Setup, Calibrate ESC’s

12. Initial Setup, Calibrate Sensors

13. Then make sure the Flight Data, Artificial Horizon, Sensor Data, Transmitter Data and Motor Commands worked fine.

14. Finally tied the AeroQuad to a mattress and did some basic testing (see video bellow).

15. Next is to to try some flying outdoors. There is a snow blanket out there to hopefully soften any crash landing.