I'm starting to build my Arducopter and immediately after having gone through the tests I could do with Mission Planner and a USB only I started looking for a solution on how to avoid recharging LiPo batteries every 10 minutes of testing, a especially how to avoid spending money on replacing AA stilo batteries just for testing the radio.

So I came with the idea of using my bench power supply for powering both the Arducopter and the radio. I basically created 2 power cables, one that goes into the battery socket and one that goes into the radio power plug: on one side the respective plugs and sockets (a JST connector for the radio and a XT60 connector for the battery) and on the other side two banana plugs that go into the power supply.

I doubt I'm the first using this approach for testing, but I don't recall seeing it anywhere, so I thought it was worth posting it.

Here more pictures of the setup.

A closeup of the TX power cable

A close up of longer cable plugged into the TX

 A close up of the other cable, plugged into the battery socket

I'm documenting my build process on my Drone and ROV related blog, so if you are interested you can also have a look at it to see how I am progressing.

Life is becoming pretty difficult for drones lover in Belgium: apparently the department of air transports in Belgium has either approved a new law or a new interpretation of an old one, which equiparates drones to any other RC aircraft: under that interpretation, drones can only take off from approved terrains, and can only go maximum 400m from the RC club, and must stay at more than 200m from any building.

That means that basically autonomous drones like Arducopter can do autonomous missions only inside the air space of the RC club, so they cannot even be tested in your own garden. This is even a bigger threat to other "toy drones" like Ar.Drone, because I doubt people that buy such "toys" will ever join a RC club (which might cost a few hundreds euro per year).

The article cites that the main problem is the protection of privacy since all drones are equipped with cameras and might pictures.

Here is the link to article that discusses about that topic: Drones à usage civil en Belgique : interdiction de décoller depuis le jardin (in French, sorry).

On Instructables I found a very nice project of a storage/carrying case of a quadcopter.

It also have the DFX file available, but I the dimensions depend on size of your copter, so might have to be adapted to fit the jDrone or the 3D copter.

Another carrying case I remember is the ArduPirates coffin: probably a safer way to bring the copter around, all wrapped and safe in all that foam, even if a bit less nicely crafted.

Has anyone else built custom cases for bringing their quad around?

As you might have heard, a few days ago a strong earthquake hit the North of Italy, destroyed lots of industrial buildings and caused several deaths. On an Italian news portal there is a video of a RC quad (cannot recognize the model, but maybe someone else can) used to survey collapsed buildings, trying to spot survivors and assess damage.

Unfortunately the embed code from the news site doesn't work here, so if you want to see the video you have to go to the site (from second 42 to 57): http://video.repubblica.it/dossier/terremoto-emilia-20-maggio/il-capannone-a-san-giacomo-roncole-macerie-e-droni-in-azione/96803

Yesterday I received issue 30 of Make Magazine, and on the cover of the magazine there was a big "RC Stunt Plane".

It seems a super-cheap platform on which building a frame for testing arduplane on: the frame is basically extruded polystyrene insulation board with a reinforced area to host all electronics and motor.

For those who haven't received the issue yet, here is the link to the page with the step by step instructions: http://makeprojects.com/Project/-The-Towel-R-C-Stunt-Plane/2042/1

This project has been developed by the The Brooklyn Aerodrome rc plane club, and besides the tutorial on MakeProjects you can look on their site a lot of other video tutorials, and see the updated part list.

Personally, now that I have 2 APM (v1 and v2) I could use the old one to build a plane, and I was wondering if that frame was good enough for using with the ardupilot or was too open for hosting it. 

But I'll try collect some spare parts I have and see if I can make it fly: only big problem is that in Europe house are built "properly" :) , so that kind of polystyrene will be pretty difficult to find around. 

But I'll try and see if I can keep you updated with fitting the APM on this frame.

Tricopter 06 - TriWii NK test 1 from Joël Cordier on Vimeo.

Also look at this video showing how to tune the PID constants on the field, directly from the radio: this guy is a genius

Tricopter 05 - TriWii led & buzzer demo from Joël Cordier on Vimeo.