Heres a summary of Aerial Round 1:

The aerial heats started off with a blast as Team Lawn Dart one crashed into turn one's (familiar) tree shortly after an amazing auto-takeoff.

Team DIY- Drones equiped with Ardupilot  Mega auto had a great run with an auto-take off but unfortunately did not finish the run (hawk sky pic below).

Team Arducopter was the first entry and had a smooth and dramatic run, making  the first three corners well. Almost surely, the copter was going to make it home, only to be caught by an aggressive tree (!!). Too bad, it was well on its way to the finish line (qaud pic below).

 

Defending champion Antonio flew his zagi around the course with speed and grace.He will be a tough beat this year with his custom autopilot.

Arducopter pilot and principal Arducopter Mega coder, Jason Short, had the most dramatic aerial flight thus far. He started very well, clearing spectators and three corners, at times just barely. On approach, the arducopter took off to a high altitude and due to the winds, drifted and then descendsed behind the gov't contractor Northrop Grumman building. After the crowd gasped, surely expecting the worst, the quadcopter reappeared , came back and to the happiness of all, landed safely.Way to go Jason! 

The team completed the course in 2:04 with a 30 sec time reduction for driving through the hoop!

Way to go team Autocrusher!

Boulder, CO

Cold weather and light snow hasnt deterred dedicated competitors and spectators from showing up at the 2011 Sparkfun AVC.Attached is the morning schedule. The first heat had several large ground vehicles, including a wheel chair equipped Dinosaur of the sorts, which almost immediately headed for the trees. Stay tuned for blow by blow updates.Go teams!

As you all probably know, the Ardupilot/ArduIMU uses ADC  oversampling to achieve greater than 10 bit resolution of the internal ADC. I beleive they achieved alomost 12 bit resolution- not bad, I'd say.When I discovered this, I started using that approach to increase the resolution of cheap ADC's at my work, saving but loads of $ in the process.

Anyway to any curious parties interested, here is a good article that decribes how its done and why.

improveADCbyOverSAmpling.pdf

If you are familiar with the FIRST organization, you know that its filled with great students, mentors and of course robots. I have infact read rumors of DIY drones working with FIRST to develop a quad competition (awesome!). Lots of events around the country are happening this weekend, and I will be attending the three day competition, in Davis, Ca, running from March 16-18th. The schedule is posted here and a description of the challenge is described here.

If you are up to it, you may still be able to volunteer, which is a great way to show off the skills and knowledge you have gained on this website and elsewhere and to network with professionals and industry. Parallax is always there in great force, given its headquarters arent far from the event.Hope to see you there!Shoot me a PM if you would like to meet on Friday.