Hello All,

Hello All,

It is time for yet another diydrones vodcast on google hangouts (diydronestv@gmail.com) and in this episode I am glad to have the leadership team of the UAV challenge that took the world by storm on my next vodcast episode today.

Over 50 teams (http://www.wcuavc.com/teams.html ) has already signed up for this challenge and I believe it is going to be a stiff one.

The hangout will open 15:00 pm UTC Time (11:00 pm New York, 16:00 pm UK time, 17:00 pm Swiss/S. Africa time) where I will start sending out all of the invites and will start at 16:00 pm UTC Time.

The interview will be on our YouTube channel for you to watch over and over.

Hope to see all there.

LEADERSHIP TEAM

Like many of you I do make shift jobs with wiring and creative soldering to move my power around and distribute the correct power to the correct areas.

And like most of you know, the APM cannot really give power to components (it can but it is not advised).

So on the end of the day is you have a lot of cable ties holding a bunch of wiring together and if you need to change something e.g the FPV transmitter you have to disassemble a lot and reassemble.

Now with this board I want to print I am going to eradicate most of the wiring and issues surrounding the connection of apm sensors.

I am thinking of putting a voltage regulator between the 12v and 5v so I can just plug an extra lipo (11.1 1000mah) in the 12 volt and all of my sensor equipment is getting the correct power.

Also what I have done is removed the radio connections power from the apm (one would cut the ground and voltage wire coming from the apm)

So if someone could make a change to this, what would it be and why am I eagerly awaiting your input.   

Hello All,

I have had the pleasure of talking to the guys fro conservationdrones.org and what they had to say is very interesting

Enjoy.

Hello All,

I have the great privilege to have a vodcast tonight at 16:00 pm UTC Time (12:00 pm New York, 17:00 pm UK time, 18:00 pm Swiss/S. Africa time) with two of the founding members of ConservationDrones.org, Lian Pin Koh (Lian Pin is a conservation ecologist) and Serge Wich (Serge is a primate biologist).

So please join our live vodcast today on google hangouts and if you have not added diydronestv@gmail.com to your google circles do it now to assure you get an invite. I will start sending out all of the invites at around 15:30 pm UTC.

The interview will be on our YouTube channel for you to watch over and over.

Hope to see you

Christiaan

Lian Pin Koh

Serge Wich

Simon Wunderlin

Brenden Duffy

There was a blog post a while ago of someone who made his wiring very clean by wrapping it together, so I decided to do the something cause I was very tired of all these random wiring sticking out everywhere. I also decided to move the battery to the bottom of the quad so that the quad is not so out of balance with the battery at the back. 

Hello All,

I have had the great pleasure to talk to the guys from RangeVideo and hear their story regarding the RVJET they have created.

Enjoy.

Frequencies: 8 channels from 5.645 to 5.945 GHz
Channels: CH1 5705 CH2 5685 CH3 5665 CH4 5645 CH5 5885 CH6 5905 CH7 5925 CH8 5945
Power: 2000mW (33dB +-1dB) of certified output power
Input Voltage: 7-24V DC, 2-6 cells battery
Cooling System: whole body heat sink and cooling fan
Channel Switching: channel button and channel display
Antenna: RP-SMA female 50 ohm connector
Size: 62mm x 42mm x 20mm
Weight: 37g

Here is the product

Hello All

Our second episode is going to feature the Swedish design (SFP) team which created the Range Video RVJET Wednesday (17/09/2013) 11AM US Pacific Time.

You can sign into this interview anytime and by adding us (diydronestv@gmail.com)  to your circles in Google plus we can send you an invite for we are going to be streaming live via Google hangouts.

We will be starting the hangouts around 10:30 AM UPT and we will be sending out all the invites by then as well, so please come and join us in this discussion and get to learn about these interesting people and their great designs and technology first hand.

The interview will be on our YouTube channel for you to watch over and over.

Hope to see you

Christiaan

We were invited to Shakawe Game reserve this weekend and the owner allowed me to take aerial videos at his beautiful farm this weekend and allowed us to see his amazing animals from a different angle.

They have from white springbok to black rooibok, as you also can see on the video all of the animals is in such good condition because everything on this farm is controlled to utter perfection, there is not a single area of this 800 hectare farm that is not controlled and managed to deliver the top quality animal walking around on this farm.

Here is their facebook page.

So enjoy.

Hello All,

We have just interviewed Wayne Garris creator of the Techpod and I have made episode one of building the skywalker X8

So enjoy.

Hello All

Our first episode is going to be with Wayne Garris who created the TechPod this up and coming Sunday (25/08/2013) 10AM US Pacific Time.

You can sign into this interview anytime and by adding us (diydronestv@gmail.com)  to your circles in Google plus we can send you an invite for we are going to be streaming live via Google hangouts.

The interview will be on our YouTube channel for you to watch over and over.

Hope to see you

Christiaan

Hello all,

We have done a preview of what we are planning to do the Skywalker X8 build during the course of the show.

Our first person to interview is Wayne Garris from TechPod and we will be hearing his story.

All of this will be done on Google Hangouts so if you would like to be part of the interview and ask them some questions please add diydronestv@gmail.com to your Google circles and we will invite you when the interview starts (This will happen hopefully within the next week or so)

Also subscribe to our channel here

HobbyKing released a launcher for $23 which is nice and cheap.

Its a bit small for something like a Skywalker X8 but I recon if you buy two and make a big one, one can launch a Skywalker X8.

You can see it here

I want to let the APM trigger my camera and the camera I had did not have a port for a remote shutter trigger so I had to remove the button on the camera and solder the 4 points and connected them to a relay switch.

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 but not for manual and that is where the problem comes in because you need to lift of in manual and if your remote is not configured correctly your plane will just crash.

Lesson 1 : Never think inverting channels will fix anything.

If you mix your channels correctly life will brighten up, for delta wing mixing you have the following:

You will notice that you have CH1 and CH2 and there is 100%'s and +'s and -'s and its all very confusing and it gets more confusing once you notice that each channel has elevator and aileron defined.

ok lets start

1. You have channel 1 and 2 because you insert your servos into channel 1 and 2.
2. You have aileron and elevator because these 2 servos does both its called elevon.
3. The % defines how much the servo goes forward and backwards (in most cases you do not want 100% for that will strip the gears of cheap servos)
4. The 2 plus signs defines that there are two or more additional functionality to the channel
5. And the minus well both % can go positive or negative

Scenario 1 : Elevator and aileron moves up and down together no matter how I move the sticks

Solution :  This because all of the % is either negative or positive only the elevator must be the same.

Scenario 2 :When I move the aileron stick left and right the elevons move independently up and down and when I move the elevator stick up and down the elevons move together up and down, but the when I move the elevator stick down the elevons move down where it should go up.

Solution : If both elevators is in a positive percentage move both elevators to a negative percentage and vise versa.

Scenario 3 : When I move the aileron stick to the left the left elevon down and the right elevon moves up.

Solution : Change the aileron % to the opposite polarity so if CH1 was negative %, change it to positive % and vise versa.

The following 2 points is very IMPORTANT.

1. The elevons needs reinforcement if it is made from epo foam but not too much it needs to be really flexible.
2. When you move the aileron and elevator to their max and the piano wire starts bending, your % on the mix is to much, tune it down till the piano wire does not bend any more. 

Hopes this helps a lot of people.

Here is an interesting quad frame that Hobbyking is selling. I can see this really working.

Nice enclosures for the motors

A lot of space inside to mount a controller and PDB

and what is awesome is the camera mounting area.

The only problem I see with this is, that it is fiberglass and that when you crash (and you will) there is no replacement parts, so this is for a intermediate flyer.

I was browsing hobbyking and saw the advert of the new transmitter

9XR Standard Features:
• 8 Channel PPM/9 Channel PCM
• Full Ball Bearing gimbals
• Adjustable Stick Length
• Digital Trims on all Primary Axis
• 16 Model Memory
• Assignable Switches
• Freely Assignable Channel Mixes
• Graphical Dual Rate and Exponential
• Sub Trim and Travel Adjust
• Flaps and Differential
• Throttle Hold
• Supports Heli/ Aero/ Glider Model Types
• Programming Templates Based on Model Type
• Supports M1, M2, M3, M4 stick modes
• 128 x 64 backlit Liquid Crystal Display
• Built in JR & Futaba Trainer Ports
• PPM & PCM Output
• JR Form Factor RF Modules (Orx Dsm2, Orx Open LRS 433Mhz etc)
• Programmable Timers
• Low Voltage Warning and Buzzer
• Supports 3s Lipo (Required)
• 9XR Firmware Pre-loaded
• AVR ISP Interface
• Internal 2.4GHz Antenna

The ISP interface is going to make this very interesting.

http://www.turnigy9xr.com/

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__31544__Turnigy_9XR_Transmitter_Mode_2_No_Module_.html?gclid=CLqwl8G99bUCFUbKtAodNWoA6A

Building a strong UAV.

I added a cut off switch was fitted, the xt60 at the rear.

I glued a dean plug with e proxy to the wing and with glue sticks glued the airspeed sensor to the dean plug.

I melted the middle bar so I can insert a 3300 mah 11.1v battery and I added the fpv equipment in the middle.

I am please to say that x6 and x7 is coming soon it looks very promising.

http://www.skywalker-model.com/