We were huge fans of the original EasyStar back in the day: it was tough, flew well and had loads of room for electronics. But it was slow to evolve (terrible brushed motor, no ailerons, rudder too small) and our favorite beginners platform shifted to the …

I recently showed an interest in supporting Cheap Drones over Hobby King in this thread, since Cheap Drones is a small company and I'm always glad to support them over big business.  Cheap Drones sent me a…

After coming back from my honeymoon I finally found some time to get some real flights. 3 weeks ago I flew my copter for the first time but it was just a few minutes on a very low altitude in front of my block. Today I went to some open space. Unfortunately, the wind was very strong so learning changed into fighting with the wind. Still managed not to crash the…

Here is my FPV Village Video with my FPV-Raptor

ENJOY GUYS IT'S SUMMER TIME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After reading several blog posts and discussions about folk having startup issues with ESCs, APM2s, etc, I thought it prudent to build a simple servo tester to allow ESC checks sans APM functionality. The new issue of Make Magazine, #31 (I did a discussion post last week after the mailman delivered it) has a…

Here is a short video of poshold (loiter) in strong wind.

During the last two months I was working on the RTH and poshold code for MultiWii, which is finally released some days ago with the 2.1 release. The code is mostly based on the ArduCopter RTH and loiter code, with some optimization and tailoring to fit into an atmega328 controller.

I followed the…

I just got my ArduPilot and put it into a Super Cub. I was running default parameters as a first test. I plotted the flight path in Google earth and did some analysis of the results. I have attached the log file as well. Based on this flight, I need to tweek the PID filters for this plane to avoid overcorrection. The offset from the road where I took off and landed might be from not waiting long enough for GPS lock. Also the takeoff and landing altitudes are above the…

The jetibox profi can display in real time 4 telemetry values. I was thinking it would be great to have some value send by the ardupilot mega 2. I spend some time to understand the new jeti EX protocol (now public by jeti:…

From Matt Waite's Twitter feed:

The now mostly put together Drone Journalism Lab at @Unl_CoJMC ...…

I've just finished the build and will begin early full up integration testing in the next day or so on NTNS-2.  This is a highly modified Stinger 64 with APM2.  There are really 2 airframes.  One is for flight testing, gain tuning, learning a little about APM2.  I have to admit that there have been several issues. …

From Diginfo.tv. Those are the gnarliest motion capture dot-holders I've ever seen. Why out on sticks? A commentor says they're using a motion capture system that's just a fraction of the cost of a Vicon. Anybody know anything about that? (Maybe someone who can read Japanese and can navigate the…

Interesting these folks are able to obtain permission to use a drone for a commercial endeavour, or did they?

This appears to be filmed in the US, so the FAA rules, should be applying to them too, right?

A friend had an accident, how much more you have to tell people to remove the props when uploading a new firmware.

Dude saying it was a "software error" on Multiwii...

and this is the result:

We're within a day or two of releasing ArduCopter 2.6.1 to the public in the Mission Planner. It's the best performing code we've flown and the waypoint accuracy is really impressive. You can check out Marco Robustini's video above to see an long-distance waypoint flight, some tight loiter at 5:30 (holding in a 1m box!) and a fun demo of…

Enjoy. Sound is essential to appreciate this video ;-)

Front

Back:…

Imagery from a multiwii quadcopter. Described by Forbes:

Someone going by the name Tretch5000 has posted a truly haunting FPV (First Person Video) portrait of Detroit that mixes the lush…

A new company called Rotary Robotics is planning a $100 drone, controlled by a smartphone, for aerial photography. They're planning to launch something in the $250-$300 range, with the price falling later. They call  it "Drones for Peace"…

I finally finished the body for the ArduCopter. You can check my previous posts for the details but here are the pictures. 

balsawood frame…