Hangar 18 had a very successful first flight of the new F2 prototype on 14 May.  …

Delta Wing Mixing 101

As a lot of newbies to delta wings often ask the question "Why is the mission planner not doing the necessary mixing for my servos to just work?" well for the stabilize the mission planner will work…

I'm very grateful to be in community that supports a laser-equipped Fab Lab. Lately I've been designing and fabricating custom components for my unmanned aircraft, especially components that are easily integrated into existing systems.

Above is a photo of one of my latest creations: a solution that houses a five or six-cell LiPo, an APM 2.5 autopilot…

I finally got around to the X-8 maiden flight.  Nice day, gentle breeze, batteries charged and ready to go.  Things went as well as they could for a first flight.  The plan was to take off in manual, trim things out, then try stabilize and maybe even RTL.  Unfortunately when I switched to Stabilize the plane leveled then seemed unresponsive to my control…

See what happens if two APM powered quads get too close to each other.

The innocent ArcticCoper was in loiter, the TBS Discovery was in stabilized trying to get close up. Slow motion footage shows how one motor of the AcrticCopter completely stops after hitting the TBS Discovery quad. The damaged propeller then drags one arm down of the TBS…

New ArduCopter, ArduPlane and ArduRover Wikis are Operational (provisionally)

The old existing Wiki(s) are no longer getting updated on a continuous basis so you need to start using the new Wiki(s).

During this transition you will need to use both of them (although for the PX4, the new…

Tecscorp ­™ launch today its gyro stabilized gimbal Cyclop­™, with roll axis…

Bottom of Rover

1. Left Rear Motor
2. Left Rear Motor Power Extension
3. Right Rear Motor Power…

Link to the Brookstone Rover

I hope you folks enjoyed my overview of the Brookstone 2.0 Rover.  In my next blog (Part 1) I'm…

Concept Overview

Concept Drawing/Rough Draft Sketch…

3D Robotics had a great weekend at the First Annual MultiRotor Challenge. We were there both Saturday and Sunday and competed in most of the events, including a fully autonomous demo mission with a Stock 3DR Hexacopter. In the Auto-Land Competition, APM powered Multi's got 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place! We also won…

Step by step process to load firmware to your APM. Actually not too difficult, finding the COM port is probably the hardest step.

Over the next few weeks/months I'll be doing a large set of videos like this one, see the full complete series here: …

A quick overview of the mission planner. When you consider what you're getting for FREE it's pretty impressive. Michael Oborne and team has done very well...

I'll be making a few dozen or so videos like this one to help others get started with DIYD stuff, hopefully someone finds it helpful! Here is a link to the complete video series: …

The next video for How-To APM that I'll be doing. Of course I'll move on to more advanced features over the next few days & weeks, but this should help someone who is totally new to DIYD get started.

Nothing too complex here, simply how to download and install the mission planner. Hopefully someone down the road who is totally lost will find this video via search and find what they are looking for.

Here is a link to…

Is this a project you would like to tackle as a community and is this a project you would like to see become more serious?!  As a community would you like me to build a discussion or group around this project?! Let me know what you think.…

The PX4 is here and soon it will have a fully supported version of ArduCopter:

From what I have been able to glean, Chris and Company are now in the process of revising this controller for better use by our group including an enclosure.

I Do not know for sure if they are planning on modifying the…

    The last post was almost laughable as ArduCutter barley got off the ground and certainly didn't do much in the way of entertaining. Well, it still isn't ready for Vegas however I've been feeling pretty good about the progress especially since the project was started with a strategy of hope. In the past week or so I have successfully put this quad through many of the basic flight modes and everyone walked away with no broken bones and no blood spilled. A…

Hi,

I have measured very good Zaccel vibrations with this mounting system. It consists of a suspended acrylic base plate (3mm thick) on which a silicon pad (6mm thick) is placed. The APM case is placed on it with a little pressure from a velcro band.

The O-rings go through holes on each corner of…

I have done this power layout to ensure power failsafe if something goes wrong.

Hi All, This forum has been so helpful so I thought I would give back and contribute...

I was trying to understand how a previous poster on this forum actually did the 6 Position 2 Pole Rotary Switch Mod with LED Feedback. No where is there a write up on the HOW-TO for the LEDs but…