http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

The name 3DR, 3D Robotics, and ArduPilot are trademarks of 3D Robotics.  

The design is Open Source and licensed under the Creative Commons and GPL v3 license.

A misconception is out there that cloning the Ardupilot is not liked.

This is not right, there are a few companies that make Ardupilot gear, and who give back to the community, either in support of developers, or simply adding improvements and Publishing the results for all to see.

What are not appreciated are those who take, but do not give. Who either simply take the Schematics and PCB drawings, directly use these, make equipment, and do not offer support channels or worse, those who make derivatives, and do not feed back to the community.

Recently Hobby king released the HKPilot mini, a welcome derivative to the APM series of boards, this is great news, but there is a catch.  Hobby King did not want to release the drawings.

Here is an email exchange that I have had with them regarding this issue.(please note I have been corrected, the copyright is owned by 3DRobotics)

Me Mar 11 11:47:

Where are the design files for this product? it is Open Hardware, you must publish your design files. This product is copyrighted to DIYDRONES*, and is licensed under the Open hardware licence. This requires you to publish the Eagle drawings.
Under the licence, any derived product MUST be published with the SAME open hardware licence.

Howard T., Mar 14 10:39:

Hello Philip,

Thank you for raising this matter to our attention. For us to help you with your inquiry, we will escalate this matter to our Product Specialist for further assistance. Rest assured that your concern will be addressed shortly. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Regards,

Howard
HobbyKing Support Team

Ian, Mar 14 18:20:

Hi philip , 
Thanks for contacting the HobbyKing Support Team.

You may contact DIYDRONES for the design schematics. We are not the owner therefore we cannot supply you with the design

Thanks for emailing support. 
If you have any other questions, please let me know. 
Best Regards. 
Ian 
HobbyKing Product Specialist 

 After other exchanges, including posts on the product page they posted the following.

Which was great…. Except they did not post the files.

After another day of many people sending support requests, finally they sent an Altium file (Just PCB, and with exploded polygons).  This File was a modification of the Altium file I had posted on DIY Drones of an early 2.5 revision (mistakes included J ) which does appear to be the board that they have built.

But the problem? According to the licence, they MUST abide by the licence.

• ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, andindicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

So that means that Altium is OK, as that is what they used. But they MUST include the FULL design file. That is Schematic, Lib files, everything needed for others to go straight into production with this file, and it should have this license clearly marked, and it should show it is a derived work.

* The name 3DR, 3D Robotics, and ArduPilot are Trademarks of 3D Robotics.  

The design is Open Source and licensed under the Creative Commons and GPL v3 license.

The Pixhawk / PX-4 has the open Hardware licence, please see the link below for details...

http://www.oshwa.org/definition/

1. Documentation

The hardware must be released with documentation including design files, and must allow modification and distribution of the design files. Where documentation is not furnished with the physical product, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining this documentation for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably downloading via the Internet without charge. The documentation must include design files in the preferred format for making changes, for example the native file format of a CAD program. Deliberately obfuscated design files are not allowed. Intermediate forms analogous to compiled computer code — such as printer-ready copper artwork from a CAD program — are not allowed as substitutes. The license may require that the design files are provided in fully-documented, open format(s).

ARSOV RC HAS RELEASED THEIR DRAWINGS. CHECKOUT THEIR GITHUB :)

If you do not wish to release your drawings, then you must start with a clean slate, the reality is, if it is compatible with APM/PX4/Pixhawk, it is most likely a derivative. (Exceptions would be TauLabs/OpenPilot; APM code will run on their boards, but only after significant modification to the code)

Why is this important?

DIYDrones is a community where people with a common interest share their ideas, and inventiveness. It is important that the work done by those in the Development process is recognized for its worth. When someone comes along and taps into that knowledge, makes a gain from that, and does not return to the community, it takes away from why we are all here.

I have heard people say “I do not want to open source my product based on APM, because people will copy it…..” the reality is, without the open nature of the project, this person would be unable to economically design their project in the first place, so feeding back to the community is a small price to pay.

For those interested, have a look at the git-hub repositories, there are a number of hardware suppliers supported by the code base, and the development team, these manufacturers get direct support from the whole team, because they are OPEN with their code additions, and also with their hardware.

When purchasing hardware, consider this,

1. does the company you are purchasing from directly support the product?
2. does the company seek to improve on the product, and release this information for the community to use?
3. do profits from the sale of the product go towards creating better outcomes for the community in the longer term?
4. does the company have quality control?
5. does the company have engineering on hand to help with your log analysis?

This Blog will be moderated. All posts will require approval. 

Posted on behalf of Victorian UAS Training.

Victorian UAS Training -Commercial partners _____________________________________

Victorian UAS Training is proud to announce that after months of hard work we now ready to introduce ourselves to the industry.

The UAV industry in Australia suffers from a chronic shortage of training facilities; this means that people who want to get into the industry can’t and those that are already operating in the industry have only a small pool of potential clients.

With some of the best UAV regulations in the world there is infinite scope for the market to grow and to become a world leader in UAS technology.

This is where we hope to help by providing training to those who want to get into the industry and link them to appropriate Australian made and certified UAS technology that meets and exceeds the standards set out by CASA. This will help grow the industry by creating more customers for developers and providing them with a training solution for their current clients. We will also be able to help UAV developers produce CASA ready aircraft documentation for their platforms allowing them to give their clients a clear path through the certification process taking out all the guesswork.

Our CASA documentation is now ready to submit and we aim to be operational for training in February/March.

We are currently offering initial developer packages which feature exclusive use of our training and testing facility, a controller certificate for a member of staff and access to our referral network.

You can also reserve your spot in our courses and be one of the first to hold the new RPA level one certificate.

For more information on developer packages or to reserve your spot on one of our courses please visit: www.victorianuastraining.com.au  or email us at:info@victorianuastraining.com.au

Mathew Herbert

Director

Victorian UAS Training

You will need 2 B model Raspberry Pi's and 1 Pi Camera. (Element 14, or RS components)

Preparing your Raspberry Pi for first boot…

Follow the instructions at http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/quick-start-guide-v2_1.pdf

Install the prepared SD card in the Pi and boot.

Setting up your Pi

Connect the Pi to your router with a network cable.

On Start-up it will resize the FAT partition and present you with a menu.

Set your language, and keyboard layout.

Select Raspbian… then click install.

After this has extracted (will take a while….) it will reboot into the configuration screen (again will take a while for this first boot.)

The important things to change here are

1. Enable the camera
2. In advance options…..
   1. Set the host name (camera, for the camera end, receiver, for the viewing end)
   2. Memory split, set the memory for the GPU to 256
   3. Enable SSH ( will come in handy later, as you may need to talk to the Pi in the air.....

Then finish and reboot.

First login

Username: pi

Password: raspberry

Setting up the required programs for video streaming

Install the dependencies by running the following in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install mplayer netcat

cd /opt/vc/src/hello_pi

make –C libs/ilclient

make –C libs/vgfont

cd /opt/vc/src/hello_pi/hello_video

make

cd ~

Now repeat this for the other Pi….

Streaming…

First set up the receiver….

Ensure the receiver is connected to your network and run

ifconfig

after you press enter, you can find your ip Address.  Note this down.

Then run the following.

mkfifo buffer

nc -p 5001 -l > buffer | /opt/vc/src/hello_pi/hello_video/hello_video.bin buffer

the Pi will now wait for the feed.

On the Camera Pi

Ensure camera is connected to the Pi

Ensure Pi is connected to the network (you can confirm this with ifconfig)

(see instructions at http://www.raspberrypi.org/camera for how to connect the camera)

In the following command, replace the ip address with the one you just noted down.

raspivid -t 0 -fps 15 -o - | nc 192.168.1.85 5001

if all goes well you should be streaming 1080P video at 15fps with less than 0.5seconds of delay..

now add your wireless bridge between the two, and away you go J

This information has come from the Raspberry Pi foundation website, and other sources, tested and proven by myself..

Hi all
We have had the privilege here in having the Avalon airshow every second year, this year, we had a few highlights that are of importance to this group.

1. which has been mentioned, CASA, (our FAA) have made lots of noise on helping us get Airborne, and

2. Bask industries had a stand, with the APM2.5 at Center stage. People were crowding around the stand, amazed at the product, able to play with the Mission Planner, and in general see how good Ardupilot is. 

I was amazed at the fact that there were a lot of UAV platforms at the Airshow, including multiple Multirotors. Yet Bask had the most people at their stand.

Hi All

I have just finished moving the design of the APM2.5v2 PCB to Altium AD13 and have attached it here. This will only work with the latest version of Altium (version 13)

the parts have been made into a library as well.

Please use the original EAGLE files as you primary reference, as I cannot be sure that I transferred everything correctly.