We are the Dronecoria team, and we believe technology can help to fight the climate crisis.

One of the most effective ways to mitigate climate change and restore the health of our ecosystems is reforestation. To speed up this process we invented Dronecoria; an open source set of tools for large scale, low cost reforestation.

And we just launched a Crowdfunding campaign to improve this objectives, here is the video:

If we raise enough, we will do a pilot test to show the success rate of a reforestation of 30.000 trees in Spain.

Our goal is also to give this drones for free to different environmental organizations around the world: in Australia, Thailand, Brazil, Paraguay, Kenya and Madagascar, to scale up large scale reforestation with drones, and build a community that uses this open technology.

We use Pixhawk 4 as flightboard with Ardupilot/PX4, using the trigger camera settings to open the seed spreading mechanism.

Actually it's a drone designed to have a 8 liters water bottle in the middle as a seed deposit. Is laser-cutted in 5mm plywood, because is cheap, lightweight and easy to replicate, you can check their technical caracteristics.

We are evolving this drone to make it smaller with some motors looking up and others looking down, in order to make easy the transportation by car and airplane.

This is the design of Dronecoria V7 that we are creating with the crowdfunding, is smaller and lighter, and has some improvements too, like a lower center of gravity.

With version 6 we achieve 42 minutes of flight time with no payload and 16 Amp batteries, since we can sow an hectare in around 6 minutes, the operations of this drone are quite fast and we will use smaller batteries to improve the efficiency of the operations.

Please help us to fight deforestation with this open source drones, by contribute today or share the campaign.

Thank you!

We spend the last month in Brazil in the University of Rondonopolis to build a drone for large scale restoration.

This is the video of the construction process. It can sow up to 10 kg of coated seeds in 10 minutes in 1 hectare.

Dronecoria was invited by the university to use the technology of drones to face the wildfires and illegal logging that are devastating the region, and investigate how drones could be useful in the seeding tasks.

The pilot project was developed as a workshop in drone building, repairing, and seed coating, to provide to the university with a powerful tool to experiment and investigate with aerial sowing procedures to deploy after the tests in the experimentation site.

The frame is open source, and we use Pixhawk as flight controller.
You can get more info in our site: dronecoria.org or in our social networks: linkedin, instagram, facebook or twitter.

As you probably know, the increasing temperatures as created a generation of wild fires that are destroying the forests of California, Chile, Spain, Asia, and other different dry areas of the world.

With this problem in mind we have created this hexacopter to perform Automatic Aerial Restorations. We used digital fabrication techniques, like laser cutting for the frame and 3D printing for the seed dispenser, and we released everything with a Creative Commons license to allow conservation organizations to replicate it.

This is the electronics that we used:

This configuration allow us to fly 41 minutes without payload, but since the sowing operation takes 10 minutes to empty the seeds, a smaller batteries are recommended. The plywood frame is very cheap to fabricate and only weights 1.8 Kg.

Specifiations:

• Total weight without payload: 9,7Kg.
• Flying time without payload: 41min.
• Maximum payload: 8kg of seeds.
• Autonomy: Can sow in autopilot one hectare in 10 minutes, around 5 seeds by square meter, with a speed of 5 m/s.
• Production cost: 1961,75 US$

We made step by step instructions, shematics, and videos for the Epilog Instructable contest that you can found here:

Dronecoria: Drone for Forest Restoration

Hope you like the project, since is open source, you can contribute too! We want to organize the community around in the Wikifactory page of the project.

You can read more info also in our site:

dronecoria.org

Dear Drone Community,

As you probably know, our wildlife and nature is in danger, only last year millons of hectares was devastated by wildfire in California, Europe, and Asia. If we don't do anything, the recuperation of this areas will take long time to recover.

Some years ago we published in this community our first experiments with Dronecoria : a drone for automated forest restoration.

You can see our improvements in the above video:

We believe in the power of Open Source and Digital fabrication to achieve the goal of a massive industrial land-scale restoration. We would like to share the methodology and drone design to encourage groups around the world to do it.

During this time we even experimented with the 3DR Y6 hexacopter for a early proof of concept:

As you see, now the prototype is very simple, a laser cut wooden frame designed to carry a 8 litters plastic bottle with a 3D printed seed dispenser (already working and available at shapeways).

We would like to drop coated seeds, with microbiology and nutrients protected from sun and predators. The first mission is to stop erosion throw green-cover for recover the soil for the next generation of trees.

We would like to keep the total weight below 25 kg for legal purposes. The estimated payload will be around 8-10 kg.

The normal operation will be to fly as fast as possible 1km away, drop the 10 kg of seeds in the designated area and come back. So the battery can be reduced to achieve maximum payload, the flights can de short as 5 min.

And now, we need your help:

Can you recommend us a combination of motors/ propeller / battery?

Thank you!

Lot Amorós from aeracoop.net

After the release of the new Amazon prototype of drone delivery, looks like everyone is happy to have Amazon drones in our skies. But some people are concerned about open the door of privatization of our public airspace. Companies and individuals should have the same rights to skyline access. We should understand airspace as an immaterial common good.

Airspace is Public Space. We launch an Open Airspace Manifesto for keep the neutrality and openness of airspace, with some ideas inherited from Internet principles, because Airspace is the new Internet.

airspaceispublicspace.io

With this in mind we create a international call for drone-based projects, for use airspace as a common good. After three years showing and improving our Open Source Quadcopter Flone, we create a cheap, modular, easy-to-learn, easy-to-build and easy-to-repair laser-cut quadcopter, we will offer three Drone Starting Kit to the best projects that use airspace as a common good.

Deadline of projects is 20 January, 0.00h.

(English)

http://airspaceispublicspace.io

(Spanish)

http://airspaceispublicspace.io/es.html

These are my lasts experiments in body interaction with drones.

The quadcopter flies without battery, connected directly to a power supply.
All strings that hold the drone pass by its center of gravity for keep it balanced.

The drone is a multiwii-based flone controlled by gyro/accel of the smartphone with the Flone Remote app.

Maybe I'm a better programmer than a dancer, I use contact improvisation techniques for the interaction with the drone. The most interesting thing about this, is that at some point, is like dancing with algorithms.

Body intervention of the artistic installation "Degrees of freedom", at the 10'Artistic Residency Red Bull Station, São Paulo, June 2015.

+ info

Hi DIY Community,

I would like to share this video with some of the things we've done in one year of development of the project flone.

Flone is a platform that makes smartphones able to fly... and much more.

You can select english subtitles for the few spanish sentences in the video.

Hi all
I'm glad to present you a video of an artistic project that I made one year ago:

Dronecoria (dronechory): an aerial platform for seed dispersal via nendo dango seed balls, for one-click reforestation.

Agro-hacking brazilian rainforest dispersing local seeds with drones.

A DIY drone seeding platform:

When bees are threatened of extinguished, GMOs sterile crops are everywhere in the world, who is gonna pollinate our local seeds?

Here goes a tutorial of an alternative: Seeding drones, that can seed freedom anywhere in the world.

WARNING: use only local seeds that can not harm the environment.

For more information about the freedom of the local seeds, check seedfreedom.in

We would like to present you our first artistic video about how to build a flone for flying a smartphone:

 
Sorry, there is only one sentence in the video and is in spanish, but don't worry finally the drone knows what to do ;)

We are developing Flone: a interface that allows smartphones to fly.

Right now we are starting with the project, so first we design the airframe, it's a H quadcopter with space for electronics and free field of view for the camera of smartphone.

We would like to keep the design "mini" and easy to build.

At the moment we are using a Multiwii as flight board and a standard camera app in the smartphone.

Our plans is to develop an app than allows to fly with the onboard sensors and telemetry of the smartphone.

We plan to release the hardware with Creative Commons ShareAlike and the source code with GPL, so we would like to have the feedback of the diydrones community.

We published the airframe in Thingiverse, so you can already cut-it with a laser cutter, and we made a Instructables with all the instructions to build one yourself ;)

You can get updated about the project in our webpage: http://flone.cc ( In spanish )

One more thing... we would like to take advantage of this post to remember you that the last day to vote in Drones contest is coming, so if you like our project please vote us in Instructables ;)

Hi all,

I just want to share with the DIYdrones community my project GuerrillaDrone. It's a Y6 copter with a onboard beamer for video projections in the public space.

As you know in Spain we have a strong crisis with a massive injection of money to the banks meanwhile thousands of people are evicted frome their houses, so the helicopter beam activist messages against the banks and corruption of politics in Spain.

You can read more info about the project here:
http://guerrilladrone.feenelcaos.org/blog/

Hi all,

I just want to know your opinion about this page:
http://uniteddrones.com/products/aether-aero/

It says that their quadcopter can fly for 4-8 hours thanks to their propietary technology.

Anyone knows something about this? It it's possible?

The webpage of owni.eu have published a excellent article with a lot of details about non common uses of drones.

Drones maked by hackers are taking the skyes for multiple porpouses: Wireless Aerial Surveillance Platforms, Occucopters, 3d printed drones, Journalism labs, eco-drones & drones for peace.

Hi all,
I created a new group for spanish speakers in DIYdrones, some times in Spanish the terminology is quite different, or we can not explain very well technical things in English and we need some space for discussions...

So, Spanish speakers, Welcome!

http://diydrones.com/group/spanish-arducopter-users

Information taked from the webpage of dutch ministry of defense.

It basically says that only aircrafts that carry people (regular air traffic), people inside are allowed to make pictures,
and also military aircrafts are excepted from the rule. Any other type of aircraft  (including a drone) needs to have
permit to be able to make pictures or record videos over Dutch territories from the sky.

Washington DC, April 28-29, 2012

The peace group CODEPINK and the legal advocacy organizations Reprieve, and the Center for Constitutional Rights are hosting the first international drone summit.

On Saturday, April 28, we are bringing together human rights advocates, robotics technology experts, lawyers, journalists and activists for a summit to inform the American public about the widespread and rapidly expanding deployment of both lethal and surveillance drones, including drone use in the United States. Participants will also have the opportunity to listen to the personal stories of Pakistani drone-strike victims.

• Time: 9:00am-6:30pm
  
  
• Location: Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20001
  
  
• Register here!

On Sunday, April 29 we will have a strategy session to network, discuss and plan advocacy efforts focused on various aspects of drones, including surveillance and targeted killings.

• Time: 10:00am-4:00pm
• Location: United Methodist Building, 100 Maryland Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20001

Sunday’s session is for representatives of organizations and individuals who want to be actively involved in this work. If you are interested in attending Sunday’s session, please email Ramah Kudaimi at rkudaimi@gmail.com.

Details:

Topics will include:

• the impact of drones on human lives and prospects for peace
• the lack of transparency and accountability for drone operations, including targeted killings
• disputed legality of drone warfare
• compensation for victims
• the future of domestic drone surveillance
• development of autonomous drones
• drone use along U.S. borders.

Speakers will include:

• Clive Stafford Smith, director of UK legal group Reprieve that represents drone victims
• Medea Benjamin, author of forthcoming book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control
• Pardiss Kebriaei, attorney with Center for Constitutional Rights
• Shahzad Akbar, attorney with Pakistani Foundation for Fundamental Fights
• Rafia Zakaria, Amnesty International-USA Board of Directors
• Sarah Holewinski, director of Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
• Hina Shamsi, ACLU national security expert
• Jay Stanley, ACLU privacy expert
• Tom Barry, drone border expert with Center for International Policy
• David Glazier, law professor who served 21 years as a US Navy surface warfare officer
• Amie Stepanovich, legal counsel at Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
• Peter Asaro and Noel Sharkey from the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC).