Our new direct-drive brushless gimbal, coming soon to a copter near you!
Our new direct-drive brushless gimbal, coming soon to a copter near you!
All your PIDs are belong to us!
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Chad Amonn, one of our mechanical engineers, has been busy designing some new products. He created this package to hold electronics designed by: Craig Elder, Sam Kelley, Kevin Bretney, and Jeff Wurzbach.
Any ideas on what this thing does?
(Edit)
Our friends at Instructables have announced a contest looking for the best step-by-step Instructable for building a project involving airborne autonomous and radio controlled vehicles!
You can find all the details here: http://www.instructables.com/contest/drones2013/?show=ENTER
I can't imagine a more perfect group of participants than the DIY Drone community. There are a lot of sweet prizes to be won. You have until July 8, 2013.
Let's represent!
Every business office needs one of these.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/210417487/bench-model-plastic-injection-machine
This blimp floated through every now and then, it was very peacful.
Moving out of the near IR from the last post, we go into the far infrared. This is footage shot with a 40g, uncooled, 8-14um spectral band camera. Half the size of a GoPro and perfect for mounting on a small flying machine!
Excerpts from the Telegraph
May 27, 2013:
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The small, lightweight, battery-powered Falcon drones can be launched by hand in minutes and fly over a range of five miles for up to 90 minutes. Fitted with high-resolution infrared cameras, they can pick out elephants, rhinos and lions as well as anyone that might be tracking them.
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When the Falcon drone's creator Chris Miser arrived at Olifants West conservancy at the foot of the Klein Drakensberg mountains of Limpopo last weekend, he planned to run some simple test flights to get used to the bushy terrain.
These were abandoned when a call came through on Saturday afternoon from a neighbouring reserve that two of their rangers had been shot at by suspected poachers – one taking a bullet in his hand-held radio.
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Full story here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/10082727/Drones-join-war-on-rhino-poachers-in-South-Africa.html
3D Robotics is one of the five manufacturing companies in CNBC's Disrupter50 list; along with Makerbot, Quirky, Shapeways, and Rethink Robotics.
John modified a point-and-shoot camera to capture near infrared images. This is half the puzzle in building NDVI images for analyzing crop health.
Information on the conversion can be found here: http://www.lifepixel.com/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2017062404/b-go-beyond
Another cool Kickstarter project. It looks like it works well on the ground, the video doesn't show very much of the flight performance. It does appear to be quite robust at least. Thanks to Ramon for pointing this project out.
Here's an excerpt:
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http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/23/drones-the-future-of-disaster-response/?hpt=hp_bn5
I had a couple of requests for a still shot of the 12-rotor beast that Joe and Justin cooked up, so here it is.
R2 gangs roamed the halls!
A few snap-shots of the action around our booth at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013. There are many more photos to sort through, but I wanted to share some now. The light was actually very poor inside the hall, not the best for photography.
From the top:
Brandon answers tough questions from a discerning customer; Brandon, Joe, and Justin; as a rule, kids asked the best questions and kept us on our toes; Andy was able to bring his family on Saturday, including his eight-year-old daughter who is a huge fan of flying robots; Carmen; John; Edna
My dream has come true: a GoPro with interchangeable mounts.
Thanks to Radiant Images and View Factor Studios, this now exists!
I was talking to the Drone Dudes at Maker Faire and saw this camera amongst all their other awesome gear. It is a sweet little piece of kit.
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The groundbreaking Novo digital cinema camera, available exclusively at Radiant Images, is the ideal solution for cinematographers who are enamored by the capabilities of the GoPro Hero3 but held back by the Hero3’s cinematic limitations.
The Novo, developed and engineered by View Factor Studio in collaboration with Radiant Images, is a completely re-engineered GoPro Hero3 making it a much smaller and more robust cinema camera with the flexibility to allow more creative choices.
Key new enhancements include a C-mount lens system with adjustable back-focus which allows for extreme macro shooting. As well as exposure control capabilities that open up a wide-range of artistic possibilities for cinematographers and camera operators. An internal CPU interfaced to the camera permits users to disable the auto exposure feature and then adjust the aperture manually via the lens. This feature gives a cinematographer the control to set a desired exposure and stops.
The lightweight aluminum housing itself is 20% thinner than the GoPro Hero3 and includes three 1/4-20 and two 10-32 mounting points. Also, four buttons on the front (REC, PWR, WiFi & AUX) are assignable to several functions depending on the application. The Aux button turns the auto exposure on/off, but in the near future will also be utilized for other functions, such as digital zoom, a tool to check critical focus.
The Novo offers more robust features while retaining all of the key functionality and accessories of the GoPro Hero3, such as the LCD touch screen, power backpack and WiFi connectivity for wireless camera control.
The Novo addresses the needs of cinematographers without compromising the power and versatility of the most advanced GoPro ever.
Like the GoPro Hero3: Black Edition, the Novo is capable of capturing cinema-quality video at 2x the resolution frame rate of previous models while delivering twice the performance in low light. – 1440p 48fps, 1080p 60 fps and 720p 120 fps video and 12MP photos at a rate of 30 photos per second, plus the ultra-high resolution 2.7KP-30 fps and 4KP-15 fps video modes.
Radiant Images offers rental packages that include the Novo, custom geared C-Mount lenses and all the required accessories.
Joe and Justin give the Maker Faire 2013 crowd a demo of their new heavy-lift 12-rotor creation -- including an example of flying with only six motors operational. The downwash from this monster could be used for clearing leaves off the lawn or removing snow from the driveway, in addition to keeping a large camera aloft.
Testing out how the new Y6 responds to an in-flight motor failure. Not bad!
Now standard on the 850Kv AC2830 motors, or as replacement kit.
Bill Bonney recently made a blog post about these -- including a how-to on replacing the shaft.
I just checked the runout on a couple of these and found no more than .004"
Please note that the prop should go on first so that it fits down over the unthreaded shoulder of the shaft. This provides a slop-free fit on the shaft. The spacer goes on top of the prop, followed by the cap nut.
Alan and I were talking this over today, and realized that the spacers are not needed at all. The prop nuts have enough internal depth to seat on the prop directly without bottoming out on the top of the shaft (NOTE: if your prop hubs are thinner than the 6.5mm APCs then you may need the spacer). One less part to fiddle with and a little less rotating weight!
After Brandon (3DR's Applications Engineer) rescued "Fozzie" from an undisclosed lab at UC Berkeley, the getaway car proved to be barely sufficient. We kept the angle of attack well into zero-lift angles, and the little Mazda stayed on the ground.