February 2009 Blog Posts (67)

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I'm still confuzed on the power for the board

Hey guys I've fried 2 boards already, first one dunno why. The second time was a stupid impatient error of judgment. Anyways, unlike most of you I have a Nitro engine so no ESC. I'm tired of shorting my board so I want to make sure I understand 100% where my power can come from. I got my board in the mail yesterday, but the back is stamped 1-12-09. It looks like the new ones. I'm not a newbie to electronics, I'm just paranoid now. Thanks

Added by Bill Raymond on February 12, 2009 at 11:04pm — 6 Comments

DIY Drones Post Processing..

Does anyone have any information/experience on post processing imagery taken from a drone for useful humanitarian purpose? Say figuring out ground moisture levels or head counting crowd sizes?

Added by Jesse Krembs on February 12, 2009 at 8:57pm — 5 Comments

Light at the end of the regulatory tunnel?




It sounds overly optimistic to me, but it's the best news I've heard in a while.



For the cut and paste crowd

http://www.shephard.co.uk/news/1725/us-lawmakers-propose-commercial-uas-access-to-national-airspace-by-30-september-2013/

Added by Patrick Egan on February 12, 2009 at 5:00pm — 1 Comment


3D Robotics ArduPilot back in stock--100 on hand



Thanks to Sparkfun's new pick and place machine, they're able to make new ArduPilots quickly to keep up with demand. Another 100 are back in stock.



They ran out of the EM406… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on February 12, 2009 at 5:00pm — No Comments


3D Robotics Fred Smith: FedEx wants UAVs

FedEx founder Fred Smith came by the Wired offices yesterday for a chat on a range of things, but I'll focus here on the bit relevant to this site. He says that they'd like to switch their fleet to UAVs as soon as possible but that this will have to wait for the FAA, which… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on February 12, 2009 at 1:09pm — 10 Comments


3D Robotics Tiny 5MP camera coming out

Autofocus, image stabalization, etc. Seems perfect for UAV use. From robots.net

"Advasense has announced what they claim is the world's smallest 5MP autofocus camera module. The module, which was developed with the help… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on February 12, 2009 at 12:45pm — No Comments

Retrofitting production helicopters with what's learned here:

I thought the DIY community here would find this pretty interesting:



http://www.satnews.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?number=1312146799



Take some pretty low-tech French helicopter designs, add some microUAV command/control, sprinkle some magic video transmission fairy dust, and...



This is "allegedly" unmanned, but I'm sure it's "man-assisted"...



Now, this brings up a question -- in you folks' opinion, how much experimentation in the amateur community has been… Continue

Added by Opticalflow on February 12, 2009 at 12:22am — No Comments

Interesting as UAV controller/OSD: TechFX Motion OSD (with IMU)

I have just recently gotten one of these from http://thesiliconhorizon.com/





And I was basically planning on using it as the hardware platform for my own integrated UAV controller.



The specs TechFX Motion OSD IMU:

* small 2"x2.5" size

* fast dsPIC 40 MIPS 80 Mhz MCU

* 3 axis accelerometer MMA7260Q with G selectable

* 3 axis Gyroscope of IDG300's

* MAX 7456 On screen display video overlay NTSC and PAL… Continue

Added by Noth666 on February 10, 2009 at 11:00am — 3 Comments


3D Robotics Note on ArduPilot's FTDI port and why you can't power the board with it

Some people have had questions about ArduPilot's FTDI port. Basically, it's a standard FTDI port but we don't use the power pin. That means that you can't power the board from the FTDI cable, and every time you're using the FTDI cable it must be powered by another source, such as your ESC, battery or whatever else you'd normally use. The reason we don't use the FTDI's power is to avoid power conflict with the board when you're using the FTDI cable as a serial monitor during regular ArduPilot… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on February 10, 2009 at 10:40am — 15 Comments

My UAV

Hey all I finally took some pictures, nothing really different about my UAV. It will have a police scanner in it though....here is whats in it.



Video Tx (25 miles)....slight overkill for the moment

O.S LA 40 Engine

12v Battery Pack

4.8v Battery Pack



ArduPilot (on the way first board went toast)

XBee (On the way)



Ground Side



Endurance RC Tx (Computer joystick to Radio TX)

Video Receiver

GE Telemetry (On the… Continue

Added by Bill Raymond on February 9, 2009 at 11:30pm — 5 Comments


3D Robotics How ArduPilots get made at Sparkfun



In this live video feed you can get an interesting glimpse inside the production facility at Sparkfun. Ardupilot is priority item #25 on this production schedule (they're making another…

Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on February 9, 2009 at 5:00pm — 5 Comments

Help checking the status of IMU and Kalman Filter

Hello everyone, I've been visiting the website for a while and have enjoyed reading the discussions here, but this is my first official post. I am working on hovering my co-axial helicopter and decided to do this using the Propeller chip, and specifically using the Sparkfun 5 DOF IMU and Jason Wood's code which we all appreciate. To make a long story short, I downloaded the code successfully to the development board with the IMU and ADC soldered according to the circuit in the code, but I am… Continue

Added by Victor Maldonado on February 8, 2009 at 9:03pm — 2 Comments


3D Robotics Arduino v13 is out!

The new version of Arduino is now out. Improvements included fixing PulseIn() to wait for a transition to start timing (i.e. ignoring any pulse that had already started when the function was called) and, importantly, supporting the ATMega328 natively!



That last one is a biggie, since the 328 has twice as much memory as the 168 we're currently using (32KB of flash, 2KB of RAM, and 1KB of EEPROM). Eventually, we'll migrate ArduPilot… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on February 8, 2009 at 9:00pm — 2 Comments

UAV_Eins Traveled several hundret kilometers in 4months!!!!!

As i postet here, i lost my UAV_Eins (one) due to "environmental effects".



As i christmas wonder, i got a message that it has be spotet in a bush a couple of kilometers away from the airfield it was lost...



Today (about 5months later!) i got it back!!



The fuselage and wing is in 99% perfekt condition!!! No structural damage... :)



Only the balsa wood is gone, due to the rain… Continue

Added by HugePanic on February 8, 2009 at 2:30pm — 1 Comment


Moderator Atto pilot installation into Twinstar weekend project.

Have a look at this post over at RC groups

Very exciting me thinks.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=995999

Added by Gary Mortimer on February 8, 2009 at 1:09am — 1 Comment

Documentation for the "GentleNav" RTL firmware for the UAV DevBoard


The documentation for the GentleNav RTL firmware for the UAV Development board is now available.

Added by William Premerlani on February 7, 2009 at 5:53pm — No Comments


3D Robotics ArduPilot MUX issue update: CKDIV8 fuse

We have now fully diagnosed the ArduPilot MUX firmware problem, and it turns out there were two problems, not one. The early boards were flashed with the wrong firmware, which was fixed on 1/26, but the boards after that until 2/5 continued to have a second problem, which is that the CKDIV8 fuse in the Attiny45 chip wasn't cleared at the factory, as it was supposed to be. What does the CKDIV8 fuse do? It divides the internal 8Mhz clock speed by 8, so the Attinys ship from the manufacturer with… Continue

Added by Chris Anderson on February 7, 2009 at 12:29am — 10 Comments

Underwater flying in Goog Earth

Here's a good one 4 U. Goog Earth 5 supports underwater flying. Now you just have to get Ardupilot to fly underwater to make some underwater paths.

Added by Jack Crossfire on February 7, 2009 at 12:00am — No Comments

Be Careful with your ArduPilots

Hey guys, I was setting up my autopilot system for my senior thesis "Building a UAV for Remote Sensing and Cartographic Applications" when I guess I burnt it out. No power to the board, including direct power, and yes i switched the jumper. :-(.... The whole board seems toast. I ordered two new boards today. I followed the wiring diagram and all. I'm thinking there was a surge somehow. If you guys have any ideas let me know....



P.S. The programers won't even read the board :'-( Take… Continue

Added by Bill Raymond on February 6, 2009 at 11:07am — 22 Comments

Why I'm Here - To Save Firefighter Lives With A Drone Radio Repeater

I'm an amateur radio operator (K7AAY) specializing in emergency services work, seeking a way to loft a repeater for fire fighting support and other emergency services work. We get wildfires and the state rado net has big gaps in canyons and the boonies.



Any design would compete with current state of the art, i.e., a weather balloon, a tank of helium and the tether with a wire carrying 500ma at DC voltage adequate to deliver 8.4VDC to the transceiver (an HT or Handheld Transceiver and… Continue

Added by John Bartley K7AAY on February 6, 2009 at 10:45am — 30 Comments

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