Introduction: TableTennis Drone

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About: I am an electronics engineering who fell in love with drones when i did my final year project on it. Now i love to tinker with drones and imagine new things that can be done using drones.

Learning becomes easier when we add a little bit of fun to it. Here
using the idea of obstacle detection, rather than just implementing simple obstacle avoidance in the drones path, I thought of playing a game with it.

Step 1: Details

To understand basic ideas of IR sensors and detection, I thought of
building a game based on this using a drone. In this game of table tennis we can replace the ball with a drone.There will be 2 IR sensors on either sides which will detect a TT racket in its range and will move in the opposite direction thus 2 players can easily play this game.

For this we require the RC roll to be OFF and for it to roll in the opposite direction by itself as given in the code. I have used PlutoX controller which has its own open source Cygnus IDE on which i implemented my code.

To open drone experimentation to the world, Drona Aviation are
crowdfunding for PlutoX on Indiegogo. Support us and help us bring it to life: https://igg.me/at/flyplutox/tinkerers

Step 2: FINALIZING COMPONENTS REQUIRED

  • PlutoX
  • PrimusX board
  • 2 IR sensors(V53LOX)
  • Breakout board
  • 600 mAh batteries

Step 3: GETTING THE HARDWARE READY

  • The IR sensor that i have integrated consists of 5 connections namely VCC,GND,RESET,I2C pins SCL,SDAVcc is connected to BAT pin
  • The breakout board provides I2c connections
  • Pin 6 to SDA
  • Pin 7 to SCL
  • Pins 13 & 15 are the default pins for getting range from IR sensors using Xshield API which is connected to pinX on sensor module.

Step 4: GETTING THE SOFTWARE READY

  • Breakout board gives the range from IR sensors
  • If an obstacles is encountered within 150mm, the drone moves in the opposite direction
  • Using IR sensors on both sides a drone can be used to play Table tennis
  • GETHUB LINK