After many months of working and planning within ArduPilot marketing team, we are finally pleased to announce our own ArduPilot organization swag / merchandise store.

The official store address is: https://shop.ardupilot.org

What is this shop all about? It is for all types of ArduPilot branded swag/fun merchandise. Many people have been asking a lot of different type products like coffee mugs, stickers, polo shirts and so on: Here is your official destination now to get all those. And every purchase you make from this shop will support ArduPilot development.

New products coming to the SWAG shop will constantly appear. If you think that something nice and important is missing, please post your idea on our marketing threads, we will then look at what can be done.

ArduPilot is a Non-Profit organization, but it does not mean that everything is free. Organization have many expenses to be covered. There are repository costs, servers around the world serving firmwares for all users, exhibitions, development projects, and so on.

Funding to operate is coming mainly from our partners, individual users and now also from the swag store.

If you think that you have a great idea that would help improve ArduPilot, please take a look at our Proposals area here on the ArduPilot Discuss forum. And join us on the development efforts.

So now go and get your swag: https://shop.ardupilot.org and help us make the whole world know about ArduPilot.

Great day for ArduPilot and CEO of jDrones Mr. Jani Hirvinen.

On last Saturday 24th Jun 2017 on Drone World Congress ArduPilot and Jani was awarded: “In recognition of outstanding contribution to Global UAV Industry” in Shenzhen/China. This is extremely big recognition for the work that we have done under ArduPilot operations in past 7 years.

It was extremely great day for me in many ways. One is that 24th June is a Jani name celebration day in Finnish calendar and then receiving this award. Second is that finally the work we have done as a ArduPilot group and also me personally in Shenzhen area got official recognition.

It all started here many many years ago when we started ArduPilot development and especially ArduCopter project in DIYDrones community. Now ArduPilot runs on it’s own organization and is leading the way in global unmanned development. There are no words to express the gratitude and loyalty we have gotten from our users.

On October when I was Leading whole ArduCopter development, we released our first official Alpha version. A lot has changed since that ingroup and intechnology vice. While I do other roles in ArduPilot organization, Randy is nowadays running ArduCopter development and he's been doing a great job.

In total there was 5 people who got awarded, me and 4 others. It has been a great journey and we still continue strong. I am the last one of the original ArduPilot team and still continue strong.

People who got awarded are from left to right:

• Mr. Tom Verbruggen, CEO of IDRONECT

• Mr. Lan Yubin, Professor of South China Agricultural University

• Mr. Jani Hirvinen, CEO of jDrones / ArduPilot Co-Founder

• Mr. Brian Wynne, President and CEO of AUVSI

• Mr. Paul Xu, Vice President of DJI

Award gala dinner had around 2000 people from 40 countries. And as it was a unmanned event, awards was delivered by humanoidish robot servant.

As side note, Keynote speakers earlier on day talked about robots and that they don’t have their own mind, well this robot had a bit. First she didn’t want to move and then later she didn’t want to stop so our host had to “educate” it slightly via control panel.

Mr. Richard Chase from Global Security Industry Alliance (GSIA) congratulates all award winners and gives that crazy size flower bouquet. (and laughing, have fun with it.. It’s Biiiig). It was really big and beautiful.

Whole even happened at Shenzhen International Exhibition center along with Shenzhen UAV show. On show they had from small to really big Drones, that will be on another post later. But WOW there was some really big multicopters and others.

Biggest quad that I saw was most likely 5 meters from motor to motor.

Organizers SZUAVIA placed all key people on ShenzhenAir International Hotel which is themed fully around aviation. Their lobby bar was named after the famous Wright brothers as Wright Bar.

Wright Bar, where Old meets the New:

Shenzhen UAV Industry Association (SZUAVIA) is few year old association that promotes and helps UAV industry in many ways on Shenzhen area. They have really good contacts on the industry and we will be hearing a lot more in coming years from them.

There are big initiatives to make Shenzhen as a center of global UAV industry.

My deepest gratitude for Mr. Jincai Yang (with mic) who is a President of SZUAVIA. He has been doing great work in rather small period of time and I personally hope all the best for his future plans. They just have one amazing team who organized whole 3 day event with big amount of interesting local and global speakers. I was honored to be one of those speakers on their event.

jDrones

ArduPilot Team

Meet the developers Jani Hirvinen

Unboxing Beta/Developer ArduCopter Set

First Official ArduCopter 1.0 Alpha release in 2010

Go ArduPilot Go….

Regards,

Jani, CEO of jDrones

ArduPilot.ORG HW/Infra Lead

Do you think that you got what we are looking for?? 

Do you want to make ArduPilot even greater that we are now?!? If you do, read more:

ArduPilot.ORG is looking great minds and great designs for our upcoming fun merchandise. T-Shirts, Keychains, Mugs, Jumpers and so on.. Take out our your sketch books and let the ideas flow..

What would you like to carry with you to your flying field?!? Post it on our merch topic and your idea could end on peoples hands around the world. 

Check out more at:

http://discuss.ardupilot.org/t/ardupilot-t-shirts-keyc…/9750

Many of you have been wondering the future of the ArduPilot project (RE: A New Chapter) The wait is finally over and we are happy to release our shiny new services for you all.

Wait is finally over :)

Most of developers have been really quiet last weeks. This is because there have been a great amount of work being done behind the scenes to make sure everything continues working as smooth as possible. Work like restructuring of the whole document site, new servers being set up, auto testers and firmware repositories have been moved along with whole firmware repositories and finally tens of thousands of posts and thousands of users from old the forums to a new discourse discussion servers and many more things. Sure there are still things to do but the major work is finished now and this is a great new beginning for the future ArduPilot development.

I am happy to invite all new and old members to come and join us on our new website: ArduPilot.org

Site changes are as follows:

- The ArduPilot groups and support forums have been combined and are now located at http://discuss.ardupilot.org

- The old support forums are archived at forums.ardupilot.org

- The wiki is located at http://ardupilot.org/ardupilot/index.html

As for the continuity, Tridge has already mentioned on his post here, new entities have been created and there are already several financial entities supporting this project and more are coming. After all admin work is done there will be more details about that.

I would like to offer my deepest gratitude for Bill, Buzz, Craig, Gary, Hamish, Tom and many others from ArduPilot team for the help to get all the work done.

With best regards,

The ArduPilot Dev Team

Dronecode Project to advance development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles; 3D Robotics, Baidu, Box, DroneDeploy, Intel, jDrones, Laser Navigation (Virtualrobotix), Qualcomm Technologies, SkyWard, Squadrone System, Walkera and Yuneec among founding members.

Read more at Linux Foundation

The ModeSwitch saga continues, I am happy to announce our new OLED ModeSwitch project for all. 

Several days we published LED based Flight ModeSwitch project here and I promised to show this OLED project too so here goes. 

This is more advanced compared to our upcoming LED ModeSwitch. Both of the projects we would like to have comments from our community here so please start posting those hard questions and we try to answer the call.

Basic details of the OLED ModeSwitch:

- Size: 45 x 90mm

- Display: OLED 0.96" 

- 6 Buttons for all 6 different flight modes

- +5V, and 6 - 18V input, polarity protected

- 3.5mm Jack for PPM Output (to your RC Radio trainer port)

- 3.5mm Jack for PPM Input (from for example your head-tracker)

Main software features:

- Internal menu system to configure various functions

- Supports 18 different flight mode texts, more will be added when needed

- PPM output has full 8 channels

- PPM input reads 1-8 channels

- PPM input -> output channel rewrites

- Output Mode channel can be what ever from ch1 to ch8

Other:

- after casing issues are solved we will look some mounting brackets for it. 

- cabling, we are looking to have 3.5mm plug cables with futaba, hitec etc adapters (similar to those RC Simulator cables)

- looking several types of buttons and keyboards

Regards,

Jani / jDrones

6 Way mode switch gets life...

Finally after several iterations on PCB and electronics design, first jDrones ModeSwitches are getting to daylight.

First boards are fully operational and we are testing them with several of our test flyers. 

Stefan made original Arduino Sketch for his boards and we started to work from point forward.

There are total of two models of this ModeSwitches coming. One is this as shown on above and another will have even more intelligence in forms of OLED displays and programmable menus. 

Later boards will be installed on nice cases and we are looking now what type of cases to use for these boards. 

Features of the ModeSwitch:

• ArduPilot specific flight modes, 6 modes in total
• Easy to connect to RC radios. Use trainer port, has 3.5mm jack and pin headers
• +5V and +12V operation voltages with polarity protection, DF13 connector and pin headers
• Removable caps on switches for mode texts
• Size 35 x 100mm, yes it's long but also has big easy to access buttons.

Regards,

Jani / jDrones

Ok now I have seen it "all"... For some reason I were not stunned to see that it was Lady GaGa who made this first.. But here we are.

On their video it looks a bit badly tuned but it flies. Unfortunately video cannot be embedded to Ning so everyone need to look it by them selfs. 

At a secret New York event Gaga slipped into the battery-powered couture contraption, called Volantis, and hovered about a foot above the ground thanks to the hexi-copter design by Techhaus Studio XO.

The dress claims to be the world's first flying outfit but, before you tear up your bus tickets, Gaga explains it's more symbolic than transport solution.

Original post in here with video: http://www.news.com.au/technology/design/lady-gaga-wears-worlds-first-flying-dress/story-fnjwubd2-1226757583590

That's one fancy frame I would say. Maybe we need to start making those at jDrones  ;)

Also new jD-IOBoard Configurator is available on download area. New Configurator needs IOBoard firmware to be at least v0.5 to get all new features and configuration options to work.

Main IOBoard firmware fixes/features:

• Voltage/Cell count improved
• Output pins can now be configured
• FrSky telemetry can be enabled/disabled
• Ground speed is working correctly
• LOW Battery alarm introduced
• Request factory reset on reboot added
• Rear light patterns now saves correctly
• Many small optimization and fixes

Configurator features:

• New tab to configure Output pin locations
• Version checks for firmware
• easy issue tracking, download buttons added
• EEPROM saving improved
• Accidental saves without parameters is now impossible
• Low battery alarm threshold added
• IOBoard pin orders added

Issue tracker for IOBoard firmware in Github here

Issue tracker for Configurator in Github here

Please use issue trackers for enhancement/bug reports/comments

Time to start build next version of antenna trackers. As antennas are getting bigger and bigger we planned to make one heavyduty antenna tracker that can turn 2kg antenna clusters. 

Basic tech:

• 360 yaw with 1 degree accuracy
• -5 - 90 degree tilt control 
• Accelerometer measurement for X/Y and Z axis
• Compass for accurate "heading" measurement
• LCD display and control keyboards for generic configuration
• DC motor control for both Yaw and Tilt axis 
• Standalone battery supply, with 3-4S battery

Initial plan is to make one tracker with strong DC motors, future versions might have stepping motors. Main difference between stepping and DC motors is that steppers needs to have constant current running on their coils to keep it not moving and when you run from batteries that can be a problematic. So DC motor with gearboxes were chosen to the task.

Also to speed up development belt/pulley system was chosen to turn things

Tilt axis will have small IMU to measure tilt axis angles. Later it can be used to measure level of whole antenna tracker system. Yaw will be measured with small compass board. 

Software to run motors and IMU is already working and how we are doing mechatronics for whole system.

Base electronics will be based on ArduStation mega and jD-IOBoard.

Tracker listens MAVLink data and calculates from that it's yaw heading and antenna tilt angles. 

Do we have support for Mission Planner type connection has not yet been decided but allowing direct telemetry modem and/or USB connection would not be bad idea either. 

Regards,

Jani / jDrones

China Hobby EXPO is growing. Normally they have Hobby EXPO in Beijing and Shanghai, this year there were new Hobby EXPO started at Shenzhen where most of electronics comes for whole world.

As this year we were too busy to visit Beijing expo, jDrones only visited Shenzhen EXPO to check out latest happenings.

Shenzhen Hobby EXPO was a lot smaller than normal Hobby EXPOs at Beijing. There were around 60 companies presenting their products. A lot of RC toy helicopters/cars/planes, servos and all other material for RC hobby needs.

Compared to last year Beijing EXPO that jDrones went, this expo did not have so much multicopters. There were several companies selling those.

Zero Tech had most advanced systems and also biggest booth. Their copters looks similar to DJI but are not. Autopilots that they seem to use is either Feijy or their own creations.

One of their Monster OCTO copters. It had camera gimbal really similar to ZenMUSE. Also they had 2 GPS installed on their system, why?? They say that it is for redundancy.

Some really nice looking airplanes. Finish of planes is getting better and better on China factories.

We also met John from Asia Tech Drones who makes those really nice looking Cyclops UAV airplane frames. Their composite plane looks really good. We already started to plan deeper Co-Working between ATC and jDrones so stay tuned for that. And I hope to get my hands on those planes as soon as possible.

A lot of new Carbon Fiber products has emerged in last 1 year. On 2012 there were only few companies providing CF products but now more and more are coming. Also some really interesting color choices are available like these CAMO CF sheets on the shelfs.

And when selling good looking CAMO/CF materials... Girls are also pretty and they insisted to have picture with handsome western man :)

Let's see what they have to offer on next EXPO. Till then.. fly hard and be safe

Jani / jDrones

Royal Thai Airforce, Aerial Vehicle Challenge 2013

On this year 2013 Royal Thai AirForce Academy is celebrating their 60 years celebration, to honor this celebration, the first UAV Contest was set-up by RTAFA here in Thailand.

It was a thrilling 3 days at Royal Thai AirForce base September this year. Thailands first UAV Contest was finally real. As it was initiated by AirForce Academy and aimed for other Academies, commercial operators and manufacturers like jDrones were not allowed to participate on the challenge it self but jDrones were one of the supporters of this happening along with Royal Thai AirForce.

There were total 8 applicants, only 6 teams were ready to fight over the 2013 UAV Challenge trophies when 3-day competition started. On first two days consisted mainly of final build, presentations to the military officials and test flights on competition area. Last way was day of competition.

2 of the teams were from local AirForce Academy and 4 other teams came from universities surrounding Bangkok area. Local teams used their own autopilot and software. Outside universities all had APM platform in various ways and installations.

Jani from jDrones and Royal Thai AIrForce Generals discussed long about the current development status on UAVs and also the UAVs on participating contest. Some of officials we met during contest have already seen how well jDrones UAVs work and they were really thrilled to see and compare how Academic driven systems can compete against commercial systems and commercial developers.  jDrones is here to stay.

In overall message from military is clear, military is seeking easy to use and expandable UAVs for their every day needs.

The Mission:

Flight mission had 3 main tasks:

• Fly 100m circle at 60meters altitude, 2 laps (O)
• Take photos from 6 waypoint locations (1-6)
• Drop small 50gr payload as close as possible of the target (T)

Flying area was rather small and challenging for this type UAV Contests but small makes it even more interesting. And also when planes can handle small tight turns, bigger turns is generally a lot easier.

Flying area was around 500 x 500m box (Red box) and pilots were not allowed to cross that border. If you did, you get points penalty from every second outside of the box.

Missions had 5 sections that every operator had to do on same order

1. Takeoff, fully automatic or manually. fully automatic gave more points
2. Fly 2 laps of 100m circle around O waypoint
3. Fly all 6 waypoint cordinates in order and have pictures on waypoint locations
4. Drop small bag full of Maizen flour to target (T)
5. Landing, automatic landing gives extra points

You had to repeat mission in 5 minutes after first run was done.

All UAV Operators were able to plan their own missions as long as you fulfilled main 5 sections in correct order. Some of the mission that we saw had close to 40 waypoints. Why? We are still wondering that. Hopefully on later recap with university people we will find out from them why they choose to have so many waypoints on their missions.

Both RTAFA teams had their own electronics and software running. Rest of the teams had various APM installations.

This year University teams tried to be on their own while RTAFA had several consultants helping them on making their planes finely tuned. This boost was clearly seen on challenge outcome.

Another thing we noticed during competition was overall readiness of the teams. RTAFA planes were really nice build. No loose wires or electronics, everything were installed properly and in nice manner. Other University teams still have some path ahead to learn how to install their flight electronics as most of them used fiberglass tape and similar "not so good" ways.

In overall this UAV contest was really good starting ground and I am sure that next year level will be more even between teams and now all teams have base-level to compare.

Till next challenging event....

Jani / jDrones

Custom made APM2.5+, APM2.6 specific external compass module

We made easy to use external compass module for APM2.X Flight controllers. If you need to have external compass and you don't want to change your GPSes yet. Here is your best and easiest choice for it.

This module fits directly to your APM2.X boards. If you have APM2.5 board, just disconnect internal compass by disconnecting jumper and add this board. 

As board is a standalone board, you can mount it easily places that have least of magnetic interference. 

Board comes with connecting cable and it fits directly to external I2C port on APM2.X boards.

Orientation:

If you put components down, connector forward it is same as in 3DR GPS (Manual: Roll 180)

if you put components up, connector forward it is same as standard APM (Manual: None)

Get your from jDrones store: http://store.jdrones.com/APM2_6_Compass_p/jdmagneto02.htm

Price 14.99 USD

Regards,

Jani

IOBoard Let's make it better... We need testers...

Awhile ago we made first translating program for IOBoard and since that people have been using it as it was and/or modifying its open software. Now that we have more and more devices supporting FrSky telemetry, converting becomes more fun.

So let's make it. Current roadmap for IOBoard is:

- Have full support for MAVLink/FrSky conversion

- LED driver with configurable patterns

- OpenTX, er9X support

- TLD-02 display support

- Updated Configurator

Currently tested features on Taranis radio:

Heading, Temperature 1, Temperature 2 (shows satellites/fix type), Armed/Disarmed and Throttle values,

Lat/Lon, Altitude, Voltage, Cell volt (avg), Speed

jD-IOBoard can be found from jDrones store

Latest MAVLink/FrSky software is IOBoard_FrSkyMAVLink.v03a 

software can also be found from arducodes repository at google code

Let us know how it works and if you have ideas, post it on..

ArduCopter / ArduRover / ArduPlane specific GPS devices with uBlox NEO6 modules are here...

Finally they are here. We have been testing and developing these GPS devices over 4 months and now they are available on jDrones store. These modules are optimized for ArduCopter and ArduPlane use and we have been having great success  with these modules. Accuracy on jDrones Quad/Hexa copters is amazing when using these modules. Position accuracy is close to 1 meter and 3D lock times are counted in seconds. 

There are two models available.

Get them from jDrones Store: 

ArduCopter / MultiCopter uBlox module - 49.95

ArduPlane / ArduRover uBlox kit - 59.95

Availability: NOW

Model One: is specially made for ArduCopter / Multicopter use and it has detachable high patch antenna with 10cm cable so if you want you can always detach antenna from main module and put it on big groundplane.  

Top side of ArduCopter / Multicopter GPS

Bottom side of GPS with antenna detached:

Technical detail:

• PCB size 38 x 38 mm
• Mounting holes 32 x 32 mm, M3
• EM406 style connector
• 28 x 28mm detachable high gain antenna
• Battery backup
• I2C bakcup memory

Model Two: is using same electronics as Multicopter GPS does but it has smaller size PCB for easier "inside" mounting and fully waterproof high gain outdoor antenna with strong 3M 2-Side tape. This way you can mount your antenna outside of your vehicle and no need to be worried about rain or anything else while your sensitive electronics is safely inside of your vehicle. 

jDrones ArduPlane / ArduRover GPS Kit

There are 3 main parts on this kit: uBlox NEO6 electornics, High Gain antenna unit and IPEX cable

Technical details:

• PCB size 32 x 30 mm
• Mounting holes 37mm corner to corner, M3
• EM406 style connector
• 40 x 45mm High gain waterproof GPS antenna, 30cm cable
• IPEX connector cable 70mm
• Battery backup
• I2C bakcup memory

It is amazing how these small things can change your mission operations. We have been really happy with them and I hope that everyone else will be as happy as we are.

Regards,

Jani / jDrones 

Happy New Year 2013 from jDrones to all and everyone. 

See you guys/gals next year ( i mean this ).

Jani / jDrones

New machines are arriving to jDrones office. 

What is it, we will se in following weeks. But as a hint there are some details that we can share now for it:

- It's 3.000 Kg heavy

- It's 2.7m tall, 1 meter wide and 2.8 meters long

- It uses electricity (and a lot)

- It's rather silent

With the machine we can really change many of our products to be better and better. It won't get tired on new parts.

Let's start guessing what it might be. 

There are few people that already know what it is and we do not accept guesses from those, you all know who i mean :)

So who will be first one to guess what is our new mystery machine???

Jani / jDrones

Our ArduStation MEGA boards arrived today and I am truly excited to see how they work. Now starts small assembly job for them and then we can start doing testing for those. 

Big thanks for Colin for his original ASM work, it's great to see what great minds can create. 

New boards looks just awesome. Few connectors are missing but those are quickly soldered. These boards are from the first batch and we have them now small qty in stock. If there are any changes that needs to be made, we will do it and then first production batch will come.

Technical specs:

• MCU: Atmel 2560 with Atmel 8u2 USB "adapter"
• XBee footprint for telemetry with external pins
• IO: Buzzer, Analog, I2C, GPS
• SDCard holder for storage needs
• 128 x 64 pixel Graphics LCD
• 3 x TTL Serial output pins
• 2 x Servo outputs with internal/external power feed
• Encoder port for menus etc use
• Connection for I2C Keyboard 
• 4 x LEDs for showing different statues

Jani / jDrones

If your barometric sensor exposed on APM2.5?? Or you have tape/foam hack to cover it. Here is more elegant way to cover your baro nicely. On older APM2.0 baro sensor was covered with another PCB so it was not so exposed to wind blows and you got better altitude hold with it. On new APM2.5 board upper daughter board has been removed and barometric sensor is now fully exposed so it needs to be covered to avoid erroneous altitude readings.

We made custom APM2.5 Filter PCB for this purpose. It connects on both ISP pins on APM2.5 and foam on middle covers baro. There are additional +5V input provided on this board if you want to boost +5V system on your flight controller.

Ardupilot-Mega Wiki page has guide how to cover your baro but we were thinking that there has to be better ways than using tape and foam. Yes there are. 

Which one you prefer?

Filter PCB's are now available on jDrones store, 4.5 USD each. So grab one during your next order and you will get a lot more accurate altitude response from your APM2.5 boards. 

Jani / jDrones

We have been working lately with Jason.J and few other people to create first real Open Source ESC that is based on STM32 RISC processors. Just moment a go courier delivered first PCBs to my desk here at jDrones and we are thrilled to see how they start perform after assembly has done for these. 

OpenESC pcbs are 35 x 25mm and 4 layers PCBs. Power range will be around 20-30 Amps depending on MosFETs in use. 

Software development has already started for these boards and first flights tests are planned to be in about 1 month or so.

Later these PCB boards will be placed on sale for people want to assemble their own ESCs, we will also have component sets for those or you can buy parts from your local stores. Yes, we will also provide these ESCs as fully assembled for people who are not so good with soldering. 

Speaking of soldering. It's time to take your magnifying glasses and start to assemble first boards.

Jani / jDrones