Happy New Year to everyone!

I found this articles while searching methods for effective PID tuning:

http://www.icrobotics.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=3D_Printed_Quadrocopter#Tuning_the_PID_loops

The method is described here:…

Put together a quick series of my favorite clips of MyGeekShow over this last year, and quickly discussed 2011's goal and how it was acomplished with the Nova.

Was able to go from building simple gliders to building the Nova - an airplane completely designed, built and flown by me, a huge success as I can now create an airplane to specifically meet the needs of any objective.…

Didn't intend to take any pics (the hat portion of ye olde hatcam being misplaced), but things went so well I was able to fly one-handed and hold the iphone in the other hand.  Beautiful!!

From the air.  I hadn't planned on doing this either, but things were so…

An oscilloscope turned out to be a pretty handy debugging tool when trying to troubleshoot my APM2 ESC problem.  Here's a shakycam showing how I used mine to verify the problem was with the ESC and not with the APM2.

I got everything together last night and couldn't wait until the morning to go out, so I took a quick flight in the basement.  Stability was pretty good.  I made a quick video of simple mode too.

Both Andreas and I had the same problem... fortunately he had it before I did, and had figured out a workaround.

Problem: when powering up, not all motors will spin.

Workaround:  apply power to the APM2 before attaching the main battery.  You can do this either via USB or by attaching a spare battery/ESC to one of the output lines.  As soon as the board boots up, hook up the main battery and remove the second battery.…

This is my second flight with the GU-INS in GPS Hold mode

Standard setup

ArduCopter in action: Testing the QuadCopter (HIL mode) on X-Plane v9

Here a video a the ArduMega board (2560 or 1280) with the firmware ArduCopter v2.1.1b (JLN update for X-Plane) connected on the X-Plane simulator throught the APM Planner in HIL mode. The QuadCopter QRO has been modelized for X-Plane v9.0 (or greater) so as get a closest replication of a true QuadCopter UAV.

This is a very good method for testing all the features of the ArduCopter…

An interesting discussion of the risks and benefits of automation for air and other forms travel.

Click the link below to go to the webpage and listen:…

Quad-copter equipped with the advanced AS3X by Blade (Horizon Hobby)

Ahhh the holidays.

I'd never have the time for an indulgence like this little project any other time of year.

At least not at the rate it's progressing. So far I've managed to get everything that I have assembled into what looks like a nearly complete Tricopter. I really like the double…

Very interesting video from VectorNav showing what high frequency noise and magnetic fields actually do to an imu.

Nice visual representation!

Also this vectornav unit seems to be quite the…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16354430

Another good article from IEEE Spectrum. I'm particularly interested in the disposable glider drone at the bottom, which is basically just a PCB with…

A video of one of my test flights, pushing it hard.

Finally got the time to finish my quad and (attempt to) fly it!  It's my first quad. and I went a little different with the setup (see specs below) to try and see if I could push the propulsive efficiency up a bit and have more power on tap for heavier payloads down the line.   My static tests indicated that this is the case, but we'll see if it was worth the effort after some more flying :)

Setup:

APM 2.0

3DR Frame

DT750kv motors

Turnigy 25amp…

Great list of trends to watch in 2012 from Make Magazine. The full list:

• Drone Journalism
• Wearables
• 3D Printing
• Internet of Things
• Arduino hits 1 million units
• World "Kinect'd"
• Crowdfunding
• Libraries becoming…

These flying thresher designs show up every now and then. They supposedly have some sort of aerodynamic advantages, but it's not clear what they are since they never seem to make it out of the lab. Here's the latest, from the University of Maryland. 

From the video…

Inspired by avh's Thingverse 3D files for a replacement ArduCopter frame (shown above), the MakerBot blog has offered…