I'm working on a project called HivePort and would love your feedback.
What is HivePort?
HivePorts (or Hives for short) are little airports for drones where you can safely land your drone. You can either request a battery recharge or simply come and fetch your drone. Ultimately, you could deliver stuff to a Hive.
Why?
I want to fly my drone further. One can fly to the Golden Gate Bridge do some video shooting without worrying about whether or not there will be enough battery to return home safely.
How it works?
Each Hive is operated by a trusted member of the community. Before flying your drone to a Hive you can see...
- It’s coordinates.
- 360 degree photos of the Hive
- Hive owner / operator and reviews about their Hive operation.
- Hours of Operation.
- Services provided (battery recharge by make and model)
Is there anything else you would want to know about the Hive before flying there?
How does one become a Hive?
-Is there anything else you would want to know about the Hive before flying there?
Quick questions for you...
- Would you use the Hives if they were around your area?
- What would you use them for?
- Would you consider becoming a Hive keeper?
Replies
Hello.
I have replied to some posts where the originator has not been in the forums for a long time, so I want to wait and see what you think about what I have said so far. If you like, I have some more ideas for your proposal that might help.
Great idea!
First, I am offended at the lack of response you had received. You posted this months ago, at time of my typing it has had 199 views, and what, 4 or 5 comments?!? This sort of thing is a running problem here and in the community as well.
I have some input for you.
If you go serious with this, it would require land, due to space requirements, but as the drone movement grows (too slowly as far as I am concerned) The options and unterest in this will likely expand, so definitely don't give up!
Along this line, I think you might be able to find people who could build some klind of a light and simple structure that would be multi-purpose, as in a car port or a backyard shade structure that could also on to be your hive-port. It could also be something mounted on top of the roof of a house.
Auto-charging would be a challenge, but definitely not impossible. There is a post that I participated in where we discussed using cell towers to fly cross-country, and also might be able to use the towers to perch and recharge via "magnetic induction" - something you might be able to use.
One alternate Idea I came up with as soon as I saw the title was what to do out in the mountains/forest...
I pictured using some kind of tarp or fabric that would be mostly temporary, and that drones might even be able to put up.
It could be tied/strapped between 3 or 4 trees, as a weigh point to a further destination, like if you needed to somehow use this to help a drone reach someone stuck mountain climbing in an emergency, maybe to bring them medicine or a cell phone in a rescue effort. One benefit of this being essentially hung like a hammock, but hopefully a fairly flat and straight surface, would be that you could make a "Hard Landing" on it with little risk of damage, as the sheet of fabric would give considerably with a drone coming down on it. In some way this might even apply to your actual idea of a hive port.
This 'sheet port' is something that a drone could carry with it, and that two drones (with two pilots) might be able to quickly rig-up, as I have seen where people have actually used drones to do simple building of things, especially using cord or small diameter rope. Velcro would be very handy possibly.
Back to your Hive Port, LED lights would be ideal, for locating the Hive Port from a long distance, for landing indicators, to give direction to which (empty) individual space or port a drone should go to, and for light to see what is going on from a Hive Port camera, either run by the individual where the port is located, or streamed live over the internet.
As I think about this, I may come up with a couple dozen more ideas for you, lol...
A couple of friends and I are trying to starta group specifically for advanced drone designs and concepts, and we would love to collaborate with you in that and on this. I personally have also tried to push for the community to start setting our own standards before bureaucrats do it for us, to our likely regret, such as designing what a landing pad/zone should look like, especially paint markings to discriminate so it would never be mistaken for a Heli-port for helicopters, lol.
I would appreciate it if you could join with me in this effort, as it would eventually benefit the whole community.
Feel free to message me.
I had also considered an induction-based charge method but saw issues with the amount of current required as well as the balancing ability.
A trickle charge application would be ideal for this, how would you charge and balance a 6S 10amp battery over induction?
Hmmm. Magnetic induction charging is a good idea.... I'll have to look in to it. The LEDs would probably have to flash in a specific pattern to be usable for fog and rain.
I don't have mobile application skills, sorry.
I can definitely build auto-charging stations, though.
Yes, I am interested in pitching in (I don't have much money, however).
I was thinking of some kind of docking adapter for the drones to charge, that you would land on and would start your charge automatically. This could be a few sheets of aluminum foil that you land on, and the aluminum transfers the current to two contacts on your multirotor, thus charging it without hive-keeper intervention.
Were you thinking of fixed wing UAVs having the ability to land?
I found a lipo charger shield for arduino that could be of some use for this auto-charging, and I do have some skill with microcontrollers and electronics.
http://hackaday.com/2014/11/19/programmable-lithium-charger-shield-...
For now the focus is on just quadcopters. Perhaps at some point also do fixed wing...but that's a long way down the road.
Currently we are actively working on the software (connective tissue) to bring together the people who want to use the Hives with the Hivekeepers.
- Creating your Hive
- Scheduling / Discussing flights to/from the Hive
We have the core of it working on Android and will release shortly.
Once we have the network of people we'll provide additional tools to Hivekeepers to provide faster / auto-recharging.
Do have software skills?
Awesome idea!
I would definitely use them if they were in my area, mainly for battery recharging.
I would also consider being a hive keeper.
Hi Declan! Good to meet you.
Glad you liked it. We are working on the project. Any interest in pitching in?