Recently myself and some of my colleagues were interviewed for the online news outlet Quartz, regarding the RC multicopters that I have been building. Beyond the fun of building and flying the rigs on my own time, we have been experimenting with it in gathering video footage as well as photographs for work. Here is the link to the full article on the Quartz site: http://qz.com/168197/how-drones-democratize-videography-and-help-sell-real-estate/

It is nice to know that there are some people who understand that there are beneficial uses of this technology, and that not everyone is looking to spy in someones window or arm them with a weapon.

For those of you who may not have seen it yet, Circuits.io and Autodesk released an online tool to design and test circuits.

It allows you to create a virtual environment using breadboards, Arduinos, and plenty more. Then you can simulate the project right in your browser window. You can even work on the coding collaboratively like you would with Google Docs.

The service is free for open-source designs (read you can't keep them private), but you'll need to pay a monthly fee to keep those designs private.  I started using it to test some circuits I am trying to build to handle power distribution and other things for my multicopters.

Give it a try here: http://123d.circuits.io/circuits

In my last post, I mentioned that I was working on replacing the square aluminum arms with round carbon fiber ones.  I am back to say that it works!

I was having a little trouble with the PDB, but I finally figured out how to get all of the cabling into the body without leaving cable spilling out everywhere.

Here she is sitting atop her regular landing gear.  I just went out and made a few short test flights to check that everything was okay.  Now, it might be my imagination, but I feel that the HEX is more stable with the increased arm length and maybe eve a little less noisy?

And now I am going to get to work on making this camera rig that just arrived fit.

After reading another conversation here about adding round tube arms to an Arducopter, it got me thinking: first, can I non-destructively accomplish this, and second what would be the impact to its weight and flight abilities.

I began by finding some round arms and mounts that might work, and went with a set from a Talon HEX.  I got the arms, the arm mounts, the motor mounts, and the all of the necessary hardware.  An added bonus, or perhaps a problem, is that these arms are longer than the square tube arms that came with the Arducopter kit.

Getting the arms to mount to the existing frame wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, while keeping the frame intact enough that I could revert the square arms if I wanted/needed to.

I am now in the stages of trying to get all of the ESC wires and the PDB settled into the center.  One thing I did not take into account is that I lost a little bit of lip room under the top mounting place due to the arm mount.  I am going to need to work the PDB in there very carefully.

I will post more pics once I get the power system in, and then hopefully some info about how it flies once I get it back into the air.