This is just a good journalistic summary by …

Hope one didn't get away from Sparkfun HQ!…

As a huge follower of Fabio and his excellent FreeIMU I thought it time to post an update. I am looking forward to playing with the final release. For those who don't already know Fabio, he is a pioneer and well worth following.

Extract from the blog...…

The video from our recent experiments with state estimation in GPS-Denied environments. 

The vehicle is localizing against a known map using a MEMs IMU and a 2D lidar scanner.

There are more details in our paper:…

Getting ready for the start of our next live podcast in a couple of hours time (you can download it later) 10:00 PST about 17:00 GMT I think (could very well be wrong)

The show link here…

Whilst not a aerial drone.. it still must be one of the coolest!

The links are below:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1205/10rovertest/…

This is a simulation I'm working on to improve the Loiter control laws and discover optimal gains. I have identical code from Arducopter running in Flash as OO Javascript so I can ensure the behavior is the same as the real thing. I tested the MTEK GPS to find the actual latency and accuracy and then modeled it in code.…

Ok, I can honestly say, that I would never even attempt this with Arducopter.

Check out the AeroQuad website, if you're interested in learning more.

I finally got all the parts together and I am ready to  assemble the one piece wing  the aluminum piece in the center of the photo  Joins both wings together ,reinforces the leading and trailing edge of the wing, is a servo tray for the ailerons and flaps . sets the dihedral angle of the wings and a means of attaching the wing to the plane…

The Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition is on June 16th, just a month away! Once again the DIY Drones teams will be well represented, with at least 15 people from the APM team alone coming and competing. There will be the usual barbecue at Doug…

Hello everyone:

I don't know where to begin! This last 4 months has been amazing and very challenging. :) I couldn't have made it this far without the help the beta testers, Pteryx UAV (Krzysztof Bosak), Jeff Taylor, Irvin Stafford, Michael Oborne, Martin R and others. Thank you guys. As of now, we have a full feature set for the launch of the site around June 1st (maybe sooner). I don't have GCP support yet, but that is coming when I can get some additional…

This is a schematic of my wiring of the ArduIMU v3. I hope to be able to use this soon as my own personal and custom RTH and 'stabilized mode' solution with some extra benefits highlighted below. One extra analog pin will be used in the future to read out the RSSI level from the attached RC receiver.

This setup demonstrates how far you can push this remarkable board. The W5100 chip provides 30Hz telemetry over wifi to the ground (just make sure to use the sparkfun…

I don't know how many of you guys have seen this yet, but this is HUGE NEWS for us. No COA needed for drones up to 25 pounds, as long as it's being operated by a U.S. safety agency.

Check out the article that came out 2 hours ago on Bloomberg. …

From Hackaday:

Check out this video footage of this LED-adorned RC helicopter flying on a dark night. But this isn’t an art project. Analyzing the long-exposure photography…

Jordi is one of MIT Tech Review's top ten innovators under 35 in Mexico! From the award annoucement: 

A 21-year old Mexican immigrant faces another day of tedious confinement in his apartment in…

The Dev Team has now pushed a maintenance update to both ArduCopter (2.5.5) and ArduPlane (2.34) that all APM 2 users should upgrade to (it also includes some nice improvements for APM 1).  It fixes both the APM 2 reset issue (you sometimes need to press the reset button to start the board under battery power) and an issue…

Spent some time in the Alps with a friend. Lots of hiking and lots of flying.

Nice design by hardik allows you to use regular aluminum or carbon fiber tubes. Just 3D print the motor mounts and center plate clamps. All files on Thingiverse …

So my buddy Shad and I headed out to my flying spot to fly the Skywalker.

This time around I used my new roof-top antenna mount, with VTR and Planner PC mounted inside the SUV in the back seat.  I found a mount designed for an iPad which worked to hold the ASUS tablet behind the passenger seat headrest. …

Ed…