About

About Me:

Hi, I'm a techy scientist looking to hit the air with cutting edge (+ open source ) technology to study earth's dynamic behavior such as volcanic activity, fires and landslides. My heroes are Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla , both crucial characters in the advancement of science and mathematics during this last century. A trained earth scientist and self taught engineer, I'm hoping to join the two disciplines by building an open source flying scientific laboratoy. A main goal of mine is to promote the routine collection of scientific data by young researchers through hands-on technical workshops.


Please tell us a bit about your UAV interest

I want to build ontop of and extend previous autopilots to develop an airborne scientific observatory, aptly named SciFly. Included on this open source platform will be a host of atmospheric and imaging sensors in addition to navigation and communication equipment. Flying I started flying RC helicopters two years ago. My first was the AXE CP which was pretty much garbage but taught me the basics, then for 3D i moved onto the BLADE 400- wow what a dream. I aptly upgrade to CF through, dropped the battery size and with the lessened weight, it sure did come alive. I got into 3D pretty heavily and to this day have never crashed the BLADE 400. Planes however are different story. My first was, appropriately so, the Easy Star w/ brushless hop up package and a CC 45A ESC and 6200 Spektrum RX. One day while testing the Ardupilot, I crashed into a tree and the plane was lost, less the electonics- they were promptly recovered- Thanks SAC FD. The parts were reborn into the FUNJET, which I have upgraded to a 4S, to make up for the low 2000 RPV motor rating. My hope is to swap the 45A for a 100A ICE controller as soon as they are available. Once that is done, I can increase my prop size (7 x 5) to make up for added components and a larger battery pack (3600 mAh). I also plan to use this ESC to power my Ardupilot driven Electristar Trainer, which is equipped with a CANON powershot 8 MP camera, pan tilt video (driven by remote nunchuk) I have recently purchased a ParkZone stinson as a genearl uav testbed with plans o extend to a larger 25% scale stinson. Software Projects Working with good buddy Nicky to develop a web browser driven location project that will act much like Google latitude, except it will be used to link UAVs via onboard, GPS equipped cell phones. These platforms could be used for location, mapping and communication between each other and groundstation and remote servers for track playback and planning. Im also looking into the feasibility of downscaling geophysical sensors (magnetometers, ground penetration radar,LIDAR) for attachment to large but low cost UAvs made of recycle R/C materials for low budget earth science research.


Hometown:

California


Activity Feed

SciFly commented on Janne Mäntyharju's blog post Showing APM telemetry data on Hitec Aurora's screen
"awesome!ive been hoping someone would implement this on APM based on previous hacks.Id be interested in the details as id like to try it with the USB to PC telemetry device."
Nov 22, 2011
SciFly left a comment for RobertMaier
"Welcome....."
Sep 15, 2011
SciFly commented on DaveyWaveyBunsenBurner's blog post Aluminium Arducopter parts - first attempt!
"If you used nylon or PC hardware on most of the parts, then they would act as convenient shear points, saving the more costly and important components. A note about those parts vs the arducopter ones, they lack grooves for arms so the leg screws…"
May 13, 2011
SciFly commented on Ivan's blog post Complete acrylic ArduCopter set on Ponoco, with spare parts
"Any thoughts on Delrin? I assume its heavier, but at least its durable and Ponoko offers that material (3.2mm is closest thickness) ."
May 5, 2011
SciFly commented on Nuno Guedes's blog post Smallest and lightest quadcopter in the World?
Apr 30, 2011
SciFly commented on Nuno Guedes's blog post Smallest and lightest quadcopter in the World?
"Pretty incredible, is that bluetooth?When is Spektrum coming out with one?"
Apr 30, 2011
SciFly commented on Jason Short's blog post ACM at the AVC
"Sadly, all we had was a line on the heading, which was (from memory) 155 degrees. Its amazing how you lose depth perception of a small object like that in the air, theres really no telling how far it was form Sparkfun at the time it went down.=-("
Apr 29, 2011
SciFly posted a discussion
I started with ArducopterNG 1.0 in acro mode with great results. The setup was a breeze when using the LabVIEW Configurator 1.2.2.I've switched to ACM beta available from the trunk in search of the latest features. I hope I didn't miss the asnwer to…
Apr 27, 2011
SciFly replied to ARHEXA's discussion No camera stabilization tuning in CLI !
"Yes, I have noticed the ardupirate CLI to have some bugs and to not support all of the commands.Partly why I have switched to the ACM 2.0 on the trunk."
Apr 27, 2011
SciFly commented on ARHEXA's blog post HEXA frame continues: Anti Vibration Motor Mounts
"Id love to see a spectrum analysis w and w/out the rubber mounts...."
Apr 27, 2011
SciFly commented on Alpo Hassinen's blog post Easy camera roll stabilizer to APM
"@Bart... thats science!!"
Apr 27, 2011
SciFly commented on Jason Short's blog post ACM at the AVC
"@ Jason -
Nicely, done, I have some footage of the copter chase/search and I can share/post if you are interested....."
Apr 26, 2011
SciFly commented on Andrew Tridgell's blog post APM flying a search pattern with a SkyWalker
"Nice job!
What version of MissionPlanner/APM code did you use for this mission??"
Apr 26, 2011
SciFly commented on Zachariah L Hanson's blog post My PROJET MQ-9 Reaper 98" Build
"Nice drawing!.Some folks have commented on that type of aircrafts flight dynamics so do a search on this site and be wary!"
Apr 25, 2011
SciFly commented on SciFly's blog post ACV 2011 Coverage: Dramatic Aerial Runs
"Post Aerial Round 2 Standings :
#1 Death by Pine Tree (Doug Weibul)- Awesome auto launch !
#2 Robota (Antonio) - Zagi - Smooth and fast with some crowd collision scares!
Some very exciting crashes too:
At nearly 100 feet, Team ACM dropped its flight…"
Apr 23, 2011
SciFly posted blog posts
Apr 23, 2011
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