From another group (populated mainly by photographers interested in aerial photography), here's a link to B & H Photo, selling a GoPro and Phantom in one package.
B & H is one of the largest resellers of photo and video equipment in the US, so it's quite a milestone to see them list a quadcopter there. And encouraging that they identify it as a quadcopter and not a drone?
Here's some notes on fiddling with MAVLink. Andreas and I started at the bottom of the stack (the byte stream) and are working our way up. Along the way I filled in a few possible holes in the documentation.
http://eastbay-rc.blogspot.com/2013/04/mavlink-protocol-notes-packet-decoding.html
There's a demo of one process receiving an APM MAVLink stream, decoding packets, and multicasting the packets to other processes, sort of an on-the-cheap message bus. There's a link to the sample code.
Here's a relatively good summary of the privacy issues raised in the recent Alameda County (Oakland, CA) public protection committee meeting where the issue of a drone purchase was discussed.
For a long time, drones - unmanned aircraft - were used only by the military. Now local law enforcement wants them for police work such as surveillance and search-and-rescue missions. That in turn has sparked a fierce debate over the balance between cutting-edge law enforcement technology and the privacy rights of citizens.
In February, Reason TV covered an Alameda County, California public protection committee meeting in which Sheriff Gregory Ahern announced that he planned on using a laptop-sized drone (he prefers to call it an "unmanned aerial system") for search and rescue. “It’s mission specific to search areas for lost children or elderly or Alzheimer’s patients to search an area that it would be very difficult for our personnel to get to,” said Sheriff Ahern.
http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/04/04/cops-with-drones-technology-vs-privacy
Earlier this year there was some discussion of the AllwaysInnovating Mecam. Here's some more details, which make the unit very interesting.
The MeCam is based on the Always Innovating Cortex-A9 SoC Module which can run from 1.0GHz to 1.5GHz depending on the configuration. It's the world smallest module available on the market that offers GHz Arm-based CPU, 1GB RAM, SD card, 2.4GHz/5GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity.
It's amazing to see the compute power getting ever cheaper and ever smaller!
I just received a note from Lee Felsenstein that he will be speaking today as detailed below. (note: Pacific time). For those not familar, Lee was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club and designer of the Osborne I and many other ground-breaking products.
It should be an interesting talk.
Date: 12 Feb 2013 03:16:43 -0800
From: Lee Felsenstein <lee@fonlyinstitute.com>
Subject: EE380 talk Wednesday 4:15PM - Makers, Hackers and the Personal computer Revolution
I will be giving the EE380 colloquium lecture Wednesday (2/13) at 4:15 PM, on the parallels and divergences between the maker movement and the early personal computer industry (when it, too was still a "movement", propelled by passion and not riches). With about 36 hours to put the slides and the outline together it will be interesting to see the results. They will be streamed live and available for replay later - see http://EE380.Stanford.edu . For more shameless self-promotion I offer my new website www.leefelsenstein.com . I really must put up a notice of the 380 event there...
Why I Quit my Job as Editor of Wired Magazine Chapter 1 of 5
The Opportunity to Make Military Drone Technology Available at Toy Prices - Chapter 2 of 5
The Open Source Web Innovation Model Applied to Manufacturing - Chapter 3 of 5
What We Learned from Creating DIY Drones and 3D Robotics - Chapter 4 of 5
The Bottom-Up Approach for Creating Personal Drones - Chapter 5 of 5
Interesting legislative activity in the Lone Star State:
A drone, no bigger than a toy airplane, hovered north of the Texas Capitol, floating over the heads of lawmakers who were momentarily distracted from their morning meetings. Several of them gathered beneath it, faces tilted skyward, marveling over a pair of goggles that allowed them to watch live video of the craft’s panoramic bird’s-eye view.
But when the conversation turned to the reason for the demonstration, the tone shifted. Representative Lance Gooden, Republican of Terrell, said he was sponsoring legislation to prevent this futuristic technology — increasingly used by everyone from aviation hobbyists to law enforcement authorities — from capturing “indiscriminate surveillance.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/us/lawmakers-aim-to-limit-drones-and-safeguard-privacy.html?_r=0
http://radio.woai.com/cc-common/mainheadlines3.html?feed=119078&article=10784277
Of particular interest to our community:
“It will be a greater burden on the hobbyists, but I think that’s O.K.,” Mr. Gooden said. “If you’re asking me to choose between my right to privacy and a hobbyist’s right to take pictures from the sky, my privacy comes first.”
and a counterpoint:
“If I’m using it to continuously monitor somebody, I think we could make a law that would forbid such a thing,” Dr. Humphreys said. “But if I’m up there doing some other benign research and happen to capture your picture inadvertently, I don’t think ought to be outlawed.”
And as an administrative note, Chris has created a forum for talking about government drone regulations.
http://diydrones.com/forum/categories/regulation/listForCategory
Gene Robinson's work with RP Search Services has been covered here before, but there's a nice news story with write-up here. Gene emphasizes the positive use of "unmanned aircraft" (as he prefers to call them), and how he hopes that flight permission will be easier to come by.
http://www.myfoxaustin.com/story/21079431/drones-saving-lives-thanks-to-central-texas-non-profit
If you feel you want to take it up a notch :P
(moderator's note: originally posted by Kevin Hester, restoring after inadvertent deletion)
Forwarded to me by a friend... no other details. If you know anything about this, follow up in the comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SFvEiOP6Zm4
Sean brought an updated Aerotestra Hugo by. Improvements include:
more here:
http://eastbay-rc.blogspot.com/2013/01/aerotestra-hugo-new-features.html
http://startingelectronics.com/articles/radio-controlled-watermelon/
Sean Headrick of aerotestra.com brought over the latest revision of his thin-shell Hugo quad. He claimed it was fine to fly in the rain, which was convenient because it was raining like crazy! I took some photos and videos of this interesting unit. He gave me a body, which I'll assemble and test out myself this week.
I think it looks very nice, and it flew perfectly in the rain, with no leaks to the interior.
Chris Anderson just left his post as Editor in Chief of Wiredmagazine to focus on his cutting edge UAV manufacturing company, 3D Robotics. Chris will be speaking about his role in leading the development of low cost UAVs using the extraordinary advances in smartphone based sensor, imaging, wireless communication and open source processing technology. He will share where the movement is going for small, non-commercial UAVs currently being operated under FAA’s recreational unmanned aircraft guidelines found in AC 91-57. Chris has authored three books including his just released book, Makers: The New Industrial Revolution.
January 11-13, 2013
Ontario, CA <-- "CA" means "California"
When I first got started with RC, one of my main learning resources was the excellent weekly podcast "All Things That Fly." Two years ago they had some guy on with the crazy idea that the planes could fly themselves, and had a website that talked about open source hardware and software that could make such a thing happen called diydrones.com.
This week Chris reprises his appearance, talking about "drones, stabilization, geofencing, obstacle avoidance, 3D printing, CNC milling, and more." Co-host (and commercially licensed pilot) Lucien Miller gives about the best summary of potential drone pilot licensing issues I've heard.
While you're there, be sure and subscribe to ATTF if you're not already a regular listener. It should be interesting and informative to all diydrone.com regulars.
http://allthingsthatfly.com (show #250, Dec. 4, 2012)
"Measuring Distance and Speed with a thumbtack-sized Radar Sensor
The SUCCESS consortium has developed and implemented a fully integrated 122 GHz Radar sensor. The surface-mountable package has a size of 8 mm x 8 mm. It includes a mixed-signal Silicon Germanium (SiGe) chip and two antennas for transmitting and receiving. The prototype is a breakthrough towards a miniaturized, low-cost and high-resolution millimeter-wave sensor for distance and speed measurements."
The press release indicates that the cost will be less than 1 euro. No information on productization timeframe or effective distance.
http://www.success-project.eu/pages/news/press-release---september-7-2012.php
Andreas and I will be at the Drone Olympics this Saturday. We received our loaner ar.drone and started fiddling with it. Chris of course is judging, but is anybody else going to be there? We can wear the diydrones colors to identify ourselves!
I've started some notes here. There's some good information for getting node.js, ardrone, etc libraries set up.
Here's an image captured off of the ar.drone front camera, sent to node.js, with facial recognition courtesy of Open CV. I think it's Andreas!
I'm trying to get it to recognize image highlights so that it can follow a light source. Andreas is working on a node.js PID package. Embarrassingly, when I test with my webcam nothing shines more brightly than my forehead!
Wired editor Chris Anderson is leaving the magazine after 11 years as its editor-in-chief to run a robotics company he founded, 3D Robotics.
http://amablog.modelaircraft.org/blog/2012/11/01/ama-revising-fpv-policy/
The AMA is excited to announce the completion of revisions to its policies for R/C model aircraft operations utilizing First Person View (FPV) systems (AMA document # 550) and Failsafe, Stabilization and Autopilot Systems (AMA document #560).
The AMA Advanced Flight Systems Committee (AFSC) in a collaborative effort with leading members of the hobby industry and FPV community developed comprehensive guidelines to enable AMA members to utilize these systems within the parameters of AMA’s and FAA’s operational requirements. The AFSC Guidelines for these systems were presented, reviewed and adopted by the Executive Council during the October 20, 2012 council meeting.
Click on the above document images to view the complete AMA Advanced Flight Systems Report or the individual operational documents for FPV Systems #550 or Failsafe, Stabilization & Autopilot Systems #560.
Here's some good news for people with a Turnigy 9X radio that are still using the default FlySky module.
HobbyKing has released a Spektrum DSM2/DSMX compatible module. It has a working failsafe mode (the absence of which is a much-discussed topic), supports the popular ParkZone ARFS such as the Champ and Night Vapor, and uses the popular "Orange" line of DSM2 and DSMX receivers.
I've got mine on order and started a writeup here:
http://eastbay-rc.blogspot.com/2012/10/dsm2dsmx-jr-module.html
For some reason it's not showing a buddy code, but when/if it does I'll post that as well.
