Hello DiyDroners,

I recently completed the implementation of a new feature for ArduPlane & ArduCopter. I have to thank Jan Scherrer for the idea and especially thank Andrew Tridgell for pushing me to improve the original implementation. The new feature is automatic…

I just finished a long debugging session with Andrew Tridgell and he has discovered the cause of my yaw (and attitude) issues. In case you don't know Andrew Tridgell, he is the genius developer who made the the latest release fly so well with his DCM improvements.

I think the majority of…

Note: This video is available in 1080p. Use it!

I finally have an update on the object tracking software I started back in these two posts:…

Hi again all, Two blog posts in two days... i'm on a roll. I just finished the next set of revisions to my autotuning code. I have shifted from tuning the stab gains to tuning the rate gains. This is more dangerous but also more rewarding.

Here are…

Good Morning DIYDrones,

I am pleased to introduce a drone platform that I have been working on for some time. I have not finalized my marketing materials, but I thought this community would like to see an early peek. Please see the included rough-edit promo video as well as my website. Questions/Comments are encouraged.

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DISCLAIMER: This could be dangerous and might crash your copter.

OK! I made some new changes to the autotuning algorithm and I have tested it again in the simulator. I think this is ready for some real world testing from some VERY BRAVE users, or some simulation testing. Unfortunately I do not own a quad and my octo is out of commission until Tuesday, or I would be testing this right now outside.

 …

Hello all,

First, THIS IS EXPERIMENTAL FOR SIMULATION ONLY. Video coming shortly of me using it in the simulator.

I have a functional first attempt at automatic P gain tuning. I'm calling it Pretty Good Gains (pun intended). There is definitely room for improvement, but here is how it works:

PID controllers usually end up with an output graph that looks something like this (from…

A few days ago I posted some videos of my object tracking algorithm, and some folks were curious how well it would perform if the object left the frame. Since posting I have hit kind of a breakthrough in the algorithm and it is working much better than I had ever expected. I am still fine tuning some of the sensitivities, but I added some neat…

I am currently working on integrating an object tracking algorithm of my own making into the Mission Planner. The algorithm combines Lucas-Kanade and SURF and attempts to learn negative and positive reinforcement values as it runs. Right now it is in the early stages of development, but I hope to have something fully functional within a few…

After some painstaking PID tuning and some near crashes, I decided to take out my octocopter and see what kind of thrust it was able to generate. After hovering for a moment, I gunned the throttle and the machine disappeared into the sky. It was beautiful. The only problem was that I had forgotten my Xbee receiver and thus had no telemetry data. My glee quickly turned into panic as I tried to judge which way the octo was facing and how to get it back. As it drifted further and further with…