The Flyaway Club site launch & submission contest!
Paging Dr. Flyaway! http://www.flyawayclub.com (be sure to turn up your audio for a testimonial!)
Well folks the day has finally come Zen[1] and DroneSavant[2] of DIYDroneSafety[3] would like to present the community with The Flyaway Club. The "fly-away" phenomenon is not specific to any particular community. In fact some of the earliest reports can be attributed to Parrot A.R.Drone owners experiencing an issue with the ultrasound sensor[4]. The constant in all communities is that there is not enough data on hand to help understand what causes them.
To an end user a "fly-away" can be embarrassing, scary, and eye opening all at the same time. As a first hand witness to one I can also attest to the fact that there is a certain helplessness felt as you watch a bird liberate itself to the heavens. In that split second, your heart sinks, your copters life flashes before your eyes and you go into instant panic mode wondering where it will land. Zen and I wish that feeling upon no one and as such we want to help get a handle on what causes these events.
One thing that we noticed is that there seemed to be no community neutral ground for reporting "fly-away" occurrences. In various forums users that have lost control of their gear are often ridiculed by their RC peers or encouraged to remove what they share for the good of the community. Oddly enough often "safety" is cited as a reason to temper this type of post. We really feel that this behavior is in general counterproductive to the community at large. If we as a community do not collect data on the common causes of "fly-away" gear there is no way we will ever get to the point of understanding them.
As a result of this we would like to present The Flyaway Club. The goal is go begin collecting some empirical data on the subject of "fly-away" drones and RC craft. We plan to create a public interface to our data collection in the coming months so that we may share the information with everyone. In the few days that the site has been up even before release we have received several excellent submissions! We've seen everything from pilot error to autopilot lockup on everything from Attopilot to WooKong. We are really excited to share what you guys are sharing with us. Keep an eye out for our reporting interface, it should be available soon.
Now this is where things get fun for everyone. To help encourage submissions we will be giving away two prizes to a few lucky folks in our first 100 submissions. After the first 50 submissions we will be doing a drawing for the original mythical unicorn board aka the OpenPilot CC3D[5]. Out of the next batch of 50 submitters we will be giving away a Millswood Failsafe device[6]. To us these devices represent quality and safety, two things that this community needs a lot more of. A chance to win the Millswood is in and of itself is WELL worth posting a submission since it remains one of few devices that offer real flight termination options to help save "fly-away" craft. The CC3D's reputation precedes itself so comment is not necessary, the quality is simply understood. Between the two we hope that one will encourage you to submit what you know about your own fly-away occurrence so it can be shared with the rest of the community.
Best of probability, luck, and randomness to you all!
1. http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/my-4-day-experience-w-ardu-3dr-ki...
2. http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/housekeeping-note-kevin-finisterre
3. http://www.diydronesafety.com
4. http://www.diydronesafety.com/topic/69-articlefly-away-little-birdi...
5. http://store.openpilot.org/openpilot-hardware/1-coptercontrol.html (not a Drotek.fr clone)
6. http://www.millswoodeng.com.au/failsafe_device.html
Full Disclosure: DiyDroneSafety is helping design a variant of the Millswood Engineering Failsafe Device that is targeted specifically to the DIY Drone making community rather than the original Australian UAV Outback Challenge audience. As such this could be considered a "marketing stunt" on the part of DIYDroneSafety.
Note: We are aware of a few issues with mobile based browsers and certain Windows browsers. We are working diligently to rectify them, in the mean time the site is best viewed in Firefox or Chrome (if you are experiencing issues).
The Flyaway Club would like to welcome you! Stop by and see us to secure your chance to win a Millswood Failsafe or OpenPilot CC3D!
-
Comment by Crasher on March 8, 2013 at 9:51am -
I really think this is a vital next step in our hobby. Correlating results and identifying potential trends has important safety implications! Great idea!
-
Distributor Comment by Dany Thivierge on March 8, 2013 at 10:14am -
Love the artwork and the clean website! :)
Also the separate failsafe device between all our gear interfacing with the servos (in our case motors) is a very nice idea.
If it could be made as a redundancy unit capable to "bring back to home" our multi copters that would be a very nice thing. It can have a very basic "on board" flight controller that could know how to come back "home" (when set properly) and land... anyhow, this is the right direction!
-
Comment by Andreas on March 8, 2013 at 10:17am -
Submitted my "landing" in the bay. Every incident has some lesson.
-
Comment by Drone Savant on March 8, 2013 at 10:21am -
"Every incident has some lesson" - We agree Andreas! Thank you kindly for your submission. We've had a blast going through and reading them. We plan on sharing as soon as we can.
-
Moderator Comment by Gary Mortimer on March 8, 2013 at 10:34am -
This really is a great idea very much like CHIRP reporting from full size aviation in the UK. How will the info be disseminated?
Let's hope lots of people contribute. Keeping the reports confidential is important though.
-
Comment by Drone Savant on March 8, 2013 at 10:53am
-
"How will the info be disseminated" - I'll see if we can't get a formalized "data collection & use" policy section up soon. I'll be sure to add an element to the form that says "Can we share your story?" and perhaps "May we identify you when sharing?". Thanks for pointing that oversight out Gary.
At this point we are busy sorting through the legit posts vs. folks obviously messing with us. Once we get a better handle on that we plan on literally giving it all back to the community. We plan to drop the info perhaps in .csv format, raw tab delimited text, Excel XLS worksheet and SQLite Database format.The initial plan is to allow for free form searches across the dataset via an interface on the website.
We have offered a few folks access to the datasets in private already as we work with it and help things take shape. Obviously the info may be directly relevant to certain individuals and their place in the industry, this offer is extended to anyone that wishes to contact us for more detail.
-
Comment by Peter Meister on March 8, 2013 at 10:53am -
Drone,
Well done, I like it. It will serve well for making our hobby better I believe.
-
Developer Comment by R_Lefebvre on March 8, 2013 at 10:55am -
Nice work! I've submitted mine.
"Sunlight is the best disinfectant." Doesn't help anything if people hide this stuff.
Had a few questions...
"How far did it go?" Vertical? Lateral? Both?
"Damage to property (yours)". You mean excluding the dead Octo?
"What transmitter?" The box (Futaba), or the Tx module (FrSky)?
I'll be interested to see results, but it will be difficult to get meaning out of it. You might see that "60% of Flyaways are Brand X", which looks pretty bad, but if Brand X has 80% of the market share, then it's not bad, actually pretty good. And of course, you'll never get number of units shipped out of anybody.
-
Comment by Arizona FPV on March 8, 2013 at 11:01am -
Ive reported my issues. thank you Drone.
-
Comment by Drone Savant on March 8, 2013 at 11:04am
-
I'll also be adding a spot to upload telemetry logs shortly.
Social Networking
Top Content
Contests
Season Two of the Trust Time Trial (T3) Contest has now begun. The fourth round is an accuracy round for multicopters, which requires contestants to fly a cube. The deadline is April 14th.A list of all T3 contests is here.
Groups
-
Moderators
24 members
-
ArduCopter User Group
1298 members
-
Melbourne
47 members
-
ArduCopter Italian Group
87 members
-
Andropilot Users Group
183 members
Advertisement
© 2013 Created by Chris Anderson.
Powered by
You need to be a member of DIY Drones to add comments!
Join DIY Drones