For those of you in the Fort Collins area, we will be having a Launch party on Dec 2nd at the Shop. We go live with our Kickstarter the morning of Dec 1st so figured we would have a small party to celebrate.
More info and RSVP here please.
Coby's Posts (10)
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We have finished up the BBRover, BBCopter and BBPlane. I also created a YouTube channel for BoxBotix. Hope to go live with small Kickstarter next weekend. Yes, yet another drone Kickstarter.
There are plenty of pics/videos of stuff flying so thought we would see how the BBRover does off-road. And it actually surprised me a bit. Does pretty well with the 12in "Big Wheel" mod for not having suspension. We have decide to start with a bit smaller wheels (8in diameter) for the first kits as the little planetary gear motors don't like the big wheels and really hard abuse. The warning about stalling a gear motor and causing gear damage is no lie. Still think we have a good Rover design to start for indoor/outdoor use. We will plan to go full on Monster Truck with larger gear motors a bit down the road. Then need to figure out best way to integrate payload and sensors. But that is why we will open source it all. Hope to start dropping initial files this week.
R,
C
A short video on the basic concepts of the BoxBotix designs. We are making some good progress and should have BBCopter, BBRover and BBPlane 3D files ready for release in the next month. Minimum Viable Product (for you Lean Startup Fans) is a different beast with hardware, since we can't easily roll out bug fixes to a built product like you can with code. So, while BBots may not be feature complete at v1.0, they need to be solid designs.
We have spent the last few weeks tweaking our 3D print settings to find a good combo of strength to weight. Printing in ABS and getting some pretty strong parts. Still heavier than what we can build in EPP foam, but there are also a lot more built in features to the parts. Still need to do more testing with these versions before we can provide any solid data. Leaning towards using the CERN Open Hardware License once we release the files.
Enjoy!
Coby
Just letting folks know what we have been up to over the last year or so. Finally getting close to something we can release. Essentially an all open source hardware modular robotics platform. The short version is it's a BrainBox that can accept several different modules so it can be configured as a plane/copter/rover/whatever.
Figured it was about time the community had a modular frame system to match the different flavors of autopilot code. Still lots to do before we can release anything. I have been involved with a few online communities and open source software projects and know it can turn into a big mess in a hurry. Trying to avoid that if we can. Also need to decide on a proper open hardware license. Feedback welcome.
I run a small shop and stay very busy so might be a bit slow responding.
Had a few people ask how we install the APM in the Nurf, so here's a short video of the install. Could use a bit of tweaking but it works for us. We do not like to put stuff in the wings as we do a bunch of testing and it makes it a bit harder to transfer gear. But there is plenty of room in the wings if you wanted to go there.
Just wanted to let y'all know the Nurf Kit has been released.
Build videos, assembly instructions, and plans are also available here:
https://www.flyingfoam.com/content/nurf
It's even made in the USA.
All,
I just wanted to share a design we have been working on for the FPV/DIY UAV crowd.
Our goal was to design something relatively rugged, easy to build/use and affordable. And since we CNC hot wire cut foam cores for a living it needed to be manufacturable with our current process.
The design is released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
General specs:
- All EPP foam construction with laminating film skin and corroplast tail.
- Span: 78"
- Length: 30"
- Weight: Around 3.5# minus payload
- Payload: Depends on how high you want to load the wing. About 1# is what we had in mind.
- Power: Depends on performance you are after. We like ~75 watts per pound in this class so ~300 watts min.
- Battery: Designed around a 3s 5000 lipo but could carry more.
So far we have built and flown one model. We are working on tweaks to the design to make it easier to assemble etc. Hope to have a at least a short kit ready at flyingfoam.com in Feb.
Enjoy! Nurf%20MarkII%203%20View.pdf
Coby
Here's a short flight after I did a bit of PID tuning. Flying latest ArduPirates code and still need to tune the hover and position hold.
Here's a short video of the maiden flight. I spent some time after this flight tuning the PIDS and am now waiting on the battery charger and the winds.
Hi all. Been lurking around here and the RCGroups site for a long time and finally got around to actually starting a multi-copter build. I built my first Sig Cadet way back in the day, but got caught up doing other things for about 20 years. Back to RC now and loving it. And thanks to all in and around these projects that are making the community tick. Open Source only works if you have kick ass people like Chris and a big team of supporters. Nice job!
The MCopter is built on an RC Carbon frame from RC Hobby Helicopter (Thanks John!) and will be running 4 Hacker 20-22L's with 10 x 3.8 props. Once I get the four motor version running we may bump it to eight in coax config to have more margin. I have ArduPiratesNG on the APM right now so I can test the two axis camera mount with the GoPro Hero. Once we get closer to the first test flight I'll decide which code base we fly.
Here's a few pics from Flickr
UPDATE: 2/16/10
Finally got the first version built and went for a maiden. I am flying the latest ArduPirates code, but I did not do any PID tuning as I was tired of waiting and wanted to see how close it was stock settings. This version is still a bit under-powered so I am going to switch from 10x3.8 to 10x4.7 SF props to see if it will help a bit. I just want to get a feel for the thing before I strap four more motors on. I'll spend much more time PID tuning before the next flight.
I added a few more pics to the Flickr set and am still waiting for the youtube video to show up...
