Hi,
Open source autopilots are widely used in the RC toys. I tried 3DR's pixhawk. It seems to be quite okay. There are also other open source autopilots.
The commercial autopilots are always used in commercial unmanned aircraft. They are somehow much more expensive than open source. I’m wondering what are commercial autopilots’ typical advantages compared with the best open source autopilots for conventional fixed wing usage. Could anyone give any hint on that?
Best,
Anna
Replies
Petr,
I use the FX-61 for remote forest point cloud mapping. I also build and sell them to researchers who use them outside the USA for point cloud mapping remote forests.
I build the fx-61 system ( and FX-79 Buffalo and Sky-Hunter to name a few) with a photo-bursting CMOS camera triggered to activate at waypoints. My total cost about $2000. I use the highest quality parts. I produce megapixel point clouds with FREE software and knowledge based on hardcore field experience.
See one of my latest project.
http://www.ents-bbs.org/viewtopic.php?f=235&t=6491
From a single UAV flight, an entire forest is mapped with precision.
Sensefly nor eebe could do this. They are good product but have serious range limitations and are so expesnive.
You do not need to pay big money for this. There are other options. I will sell you a point cloud mapper with powerful infrared CMOS photo-bursting camera(or regular camera). Fully ready to fly with Pelican Hard Case, Spare 5,400 mah battery, tablet with Telemetry to WiFi Bridge, My own home-built Mission Planner written in VBA that has swarming and follow me and other features that you can not get elsewhere. The interface is an Excel spreadsheet environment which you can manipulate etc. You get streaming telemetry data in the spreadsheet and horizon graphics. The code is protected for now but will eventually be open source once I write a C version. The entire package $3000. This includes 12 hours training on the UAV and how to create point clouds and how to use the preloaded software on the tablet for point cloud creation. This includes noise removal, merging with disjointed siblings, alignment with gravity, scaling, color coded height banding, discrete structure volume determination and surface area.
There ARE other choices. I like to empower people with knowledge at a fair market price. Once you finish my training seminar you will have the tools you need to succeed with UAV based point cloud generation and may at that point consider sensefly and eebe to be obsolete.
Would you mind detailing your Skyhunter system here? I've got one that I need to start building soon. Haven't chosen motor, servos, etc. yet.
Also wouldn't mind details on the FX-61 and 79 as well. Just want to see what components you use.
Hi Forest Mapper,
thank you for your neat offer, however I am not in a position to acquire a complete system. Being part of Institute of Aerospace Engineering at our local university, I like to fiddle with the airplanes myself:-)
We are working in the same direction though - one of the applications for our UAVs is mapping of invasive botanical species. So my fingers are crossed for you to proceed with your forest mapping and with entering the survey market as well.
Our experience:
We had commercial AP, threw it out 3 years ago and fly APMs and Pixhawks since then.
We are much happier now. No integration problems, no closed code, no ITAR restrictions, no legal restrictions, better documentation, better modularity. We can buy 25 Pixhawks for the price of our old unit. There is one thing - they had really nice telemetry radios. But in the VLOS environment, it makes no difference.
If everything else is the same and configured correctly: Probably no difference in quality.
Military quality electronics are better but the civilian's is very good anyway. The risk that it will be an electronic quality error that causes an accident is very very very small.
You can say its 100% user error or software error that will cause problems.
Is the software better on a commercial system? Maybe, maybe not. APM receive very quickly many many flight hours and an open diskution about bugs.
A private company may not want to openly discuss errors in a FC.
I'm curious why Anna spends her time spamming every forum known to man asking the same dumb questions. Really Anna, noone actually knows how long the piece of string is!
If you'd invested the same amount of time you spend on forums in learning to operate an APM in a cheap foamie, you'd be waaay ahead of where you are and you'd be asking a whole bunch of different and more focused questions.
Seriously, there isn't an ultimate solution out there. If there is, it'll certainly be a different one next week. 99% of the capability of your autopilot will come from your familiarity with it so get out there, fly and try!
1. Actually it doesn't cost me too much time to write the questions and read the other people's answers. When I ask same questions in different forum, I just copy them. I also asks these questions to my friends but I'd like to hear about more people's opinion. The most time consuming thing is: we choose a wrong direction. Of course, I shouldn't do it to the extreme and waste too much time on picking up the strategy and the way. But to be more cautious, I'd like to have way in front of me to be clearer then I run.
2. By asking questions here, I may know the things that I need to know but don't know I don't know. Avoiding a possible mistake save huge amount of time.
3. You think the answers to these questions are quite clear. Because you are already in this area. But for people who just start to touch this area, they can't hardly find a lot of readings to know this area. They are quite nervous when they decide to invest a lot of time and money to a thing that they don't know very well. They have to grab as much as information to feel safe.
Anna, From my experience as I tried to learn more about this area, enough to build my own drone systems, I found it difficult to find the best mix of information for my intended applications. Like many, I do not have the time to stay constantly aware of the continual blog posts or discussions on diydrones.com and other forums. If you have not already explored the DroneSpeak website, take a look. May save you and your team many hours, some investment cost, and reduce the risk of an incident or accident (on the ground or in the air).
Good morning,
I think the point he was trying to make is that if you put some more effort into real world R&D you might:
1) Find empirical rather than theoretical answers to your questions
2) Be able to better engage with people on the forums through questions based on your experience and through more advanced questions
At some point, you need to go fly rather than talk. I think you are at that point. Get some inexpensive foamies, get some autopilots, and try things out.
-David
David, Check out this link for one of my recent projects using Photosynth for Point Cloud Mapping by UAV.
http://www.ents-bbs.org/viewtopic.php?f=235&t=6491 http://www.ents-bbs.org/viewtopic.php?f=235&t=6491
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