Scott James's Posts

VOLO - Tiny bright LED's for your Multirotor

Posted by Scott James on June 12, 2015 at 7:55pm

Check out these tiny little LED's, they look great for orientation or FPV carpark flying.They are only 21mm x 7mm and come in White, Blue, Red and Green.

From the VOLO website...

Unlike any other LED, the VOLO LEDs were specifically designed for multirotors. They offer a bright, tight cluster of LEDs and are available in a range of colours. They are so small you can mount them almost anywhere on your frame, and they attach easily with the incredibly strong supplied die cut 3M VHB double sided tape. VOLO was the first company to produce this concept and nothing rivals our quality and performance.

More info here

FPV Multirotor Racing :)

Posted by Scott James on January 3, 2013 at 11:00pm

Hey Guys, This is a little off topic but it's awesome fun!

I have created a website dedicated to this new sport! (If you can call it that) :)

www.FPVMultirotorRacing.com

To give you an idea of what it's all about I have attached some videos from our first race season.

Events are now starting to pop up around the world so log in and get involved!

Enjoy...

Race 1 (above)

Race 2

Race 3

Race 4

Melbourne UAV is out of the Outback Challenge

Posted by Scott James on August 15, 2012 at 5:30am

Hi Guys,

Unfortunately down here in Melbourne Australia we have had a very wet winter, which has made it virtually impossible for us to fly our X8 UAV in preparation for the 2012 Outback UAV Challenge. We fly on a private farm about an hour from Melbourne which for months has had either had water laying on the ground or been too muddy to get our cars in.

What this means for us is we didn't get enough Autonomous hours logged for our Deliverable 3 to stay in the competition. It's disappointing because we were pretty confident that this was going to be the year! :) (Third time lucky and all)

The main purpose of this post was to say a big thanks to all our sponsors and people that have helped us along the way.

And a special big thanks to FPVFlying.com for their greatly appreciated support with the

Awesome X8 airframe. Please have a look at the link as it is a great airframe for UAV / FPV use!

We would also like to thank all the people that took the time to tweet and leave messages through

our website.

It's always amazed me how so many people have taken an interest in a few mates having fun just entering a competition.

Best of luck to all the teams that have put in the hard work to get there on the day and I'm guessing the ground will be littered with bottles around Joe this year! It's shaping up to be a great event!

Cheers,

Scott

The Devil Ray

Posted by Scott James on March 7, 2011 at 11:00pm

Hi Guys!

If you have not seen this yet check it out!

It is the Devil Ray 2.4M flying wing made by Chris McNair.

We asked him to make one for us to use in the Australian Outback UAV Challenge. And before you ask we have an ATTO IMU onboard!

The Devil Ray has the option of 3 different wing sets 1.8m, 2.4m and a 3.6m. (We have the 2.4m)
With all the extra gear needed for the OBC, PTZ camera, 500ml water bottle, failsafe systems, transmitters, modems etc..
We loaded it up to 6.75Kg total weight. With all this extra crap on board it still had a easy take off and climbed nicely.
I still remember being impressed that even in manual mode (just over half throttle) it was doing 90-100Kph and was only pulling 15 amps.
(This is better in Autonomous!) We have a 6S 10,000mAh pack on board.
It has a very large speed envelope and handles great in the air.
The marked CG point was perfect and there is heaps of room inside which made it easy to balance. Landing speed is a crawl and has proved to be easier than the 12’ Telemaster to land.
I have an attached a couple of photos below.
I know Chris has refined the design (since making ours) and is now selling them with multiple options ranging from marine application that is water proof to a retract landing gear option for clean smooth flight.
The fixed landing gear option is nice but does add a bit more weight due to the very large wheels for our flying fields.
The Devil Ray is definitely worth having a look at if you are in the market for a high efficiency flying wing with a very large payload bay.
It also brakes down into a nice size carrying case or box.

If you like what you see you can contact Chris at chris@attopilotinternational.com as they are now available.

Cheers

Scott (Melbourne UAV)

www.melbourneuav.com

www.twitter.com/melbourneuav

Around the world with no fuel!

Posted by Scott James on July 4, 2010 at 6:39am

Hi Guy's,

Way off topic but.... How cool is this!

These guys have built a solar plane that has the potential to stay up for ever with no fuel!!

The will attempt to fly it through the night in the next week or so.

Here is a little video from their YouTube channel. Cheers!

Drive your car with your iPhone!

Posted by Scott James on November 2, 2009 at 10:00pm

How's this!Just when you are running out of apps for your iPhone.Could be good to drop the Wife off to work while I watch TV in bed! :)Check out the story here.CheersScott

www.twitter.com/MelbourneUAV.

Ready made camera mount

Posted by Scott James on September 20, 2008 at 4:30am

I found this camera mount, it could make life easy!Here is a link to the website. Cheers!

Well it has taken me about a month but I think I finally have a plan!

Posted by Scott James on February 23, 2008 at 9:00pm

Well it has taken me about a month but I think I finally have a plan for a UAV.Please excuse my childlike MS Paint style diagrams! This is what I would like it to be able to do. It is using in the BASIC Stamp and this GPS receiver.1. Have waypoints that include altitude.2. Be able to take Digital Photos3. Have a lost plane alarm after landing (or crashing!) in long grass etc… This could be turned on via Aux channel on the receiver. Alternatively this could turn on landing lights for night or dusk landings.4. Control of the autopilot from the Gear channel that totally bypasses the Basic stamp in manual control mode in case of Basic Stamp Problems.5. 2X16 LCD (optional) to display maximum altitude reached or maximum speed reached, waypoint info etc.. (I haven’t really thought about this bit yet).6. After all that was working…. (and if the thing can still get off the ground from all the extra weight!!) another thing that I was thinking about was having a voltage sensor (Lipo alarm) on the main battery. (I have one of these on my Trex 450 SE V2 Helicopter) It would monitor the main battery voltage, when the voltage dropped (if it was a 11.1 V Lipo) to say 10.5V the battery would be almost 80% depleted. (after 80% the battery will be damaged)The voltage sensor would then trigger a relay that would switch to a smaller backup battery and also trigger the BASIC Stamp to return to home. The home co-ordinates would be obtained when the autopilot was engaged.Here is a circuit I found for a RC Switch, I have not tried this yet. This is the relay I think I will use. (I had to because of the name!) [UPDATE 2/3/8] I am going to use this instead to save space and weight.The other idea I had was for altitude control. If the Basic Stamp is controlling the elevator for altitude I can see that it might be easy for the UAV to get into trouble as it does not know the angle it is climbing or descending. It could be resolved by adding more sensors but I thought this might be easier and less programming.I am going to mount the FMA Co-pilot onto a see saw mount that is controlled by a servo. The Basic Stamp would then just control that servo. If you wanted the UAV to climb at an angle of 10 degrees, just move the FMA servo by 10 degrees.The FMA Co pilot would then control the elevator to keep the FMA co pilot level, which means the UAV would be climbing by 10 degrees. (I think)

Also in the altitude subroutines I was planning to turn off or turn down the throttle channel when the UAV is descending to save power. And then switch it back to where it was when it reached the desired altitude. Maybe even add a bit more power for climbing. After a few tests I should be able to work out what percentage the throttle channel would need to be at to hold altitude.This is the Plane I am planning to use for this project, There seems to be more room inside for electronics that a foamy.If anyone has any better ideas or reason why they think this wont work too well please let me know. As I start building I will post some pictures.Thanks!