We had good weather on Sat, so we tested four UAV platforms at the Alameda air field near Berkeley. Another successful trial: useful data and no lost planes!





Our mission for the next two weeks is to complete a trial that: A) takes off from the "highway" used in the Matrix 2 (the set was created at the Alameda and parts still remain); B) flies autonomously over water to the Hornet aircraft carrier, which is moored about a mile away (it's the carrier that… Continue

The tragic death of four people in a collision of two news helicopers in Phoenix has prompted much discussion about whether following stolen cars and other TV-ratings fodder is worth the risk. What isn't debated is whether people want to watch that sort of thing, because the answer is so clearly yes. So why not give people what they want without risking human lives, and encourage TV news… Continue

We've already done Lego, an iPaq cellphone and some random chips we had lying around. What other commonly found objects could you make an autopilot, or some component of one, out of?…

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It's been amazing to watch how computer technologies have revolutionized the R/C aircraft world. The combination of high-efficiency brushless electric motors (first developed for DVD drives), lithium-ion batteries (developed for laptops) and spread-spectrum digital radio (popularized with WiFi) have created a class of small, quiet electric planes that are every bit their old noisy gas-powered predecessors. AMA membership is…

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This is significant.



(BTW, I'll be speaking and demoing our UAVs at Google on Aug 4th during the SciFoo event. There's a reason we call our UAVs "GeoCrawlers")



From News.com:



Google has acquired ImageAmerica, a company that builds high-resolution cameras and uses them to take aerial photographs.

The search engine giant announced the move…

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Here at DIY Drones, I've been working with other amateurs to create open technology platforms to make it easier for more people to build their own UAVs (for aerial imagery, high-res Google Maps mashups, contests and other flying robot fun).

The good news is that there are a lot of programmers out there happy to donate their time and talent to helping these project along. The bad news is that each of them has their own favorite programming language, and it's up to the organizer (ie,…

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In my quest for the perfect pan-tilt gimbal assembly for a small UAV, I've made one out of Lego and have some clumsy ones out of aluminum. Most commercial pan-tilt assemblies are made for much larger cameras than the ones we fly, or they're incredibly expensive turrets meant for military and commercial UAVs. But I've hunted around and found three that appear to be within our size, weight and price range. How do…

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In my instructions on how to build a Lego Autopilot, I've neglected to show how you turn the thing on and off remotely. The answer is a servo strapped to a Mindstorms touch sensor inside the front of the plane. This video is pretty self-explanatory.… Continue

Last week I had a great chat with the guys running the US operations of Pict'Earth. The company was originally started by a team in France who created their own UAV and real-time Google Earth integration. To get a sense of how cool that is, check out this video:









That was based on a custom UAV that cost around $10,000. The US team is targeting cheaper applications. First, the… Continue

Here's a semi-scale Predator. Pretty cool, but it's an ARF so I can't do too much bragging. I just modded an inexpensive ($80) Nitro Models kit with a AXI 2208 brushless motor and added some proper landing gear and

an airscoop to cool the motor in the back. (BTW, Nitro sells two Predators. Get

this one, not the similar…

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From Army Times:

WASHINGTON — The use of unmanned aircraft in Iraq has surged by nearly one-third since the buildup of U.S. forces began early this year, and drones are now racking up more than 14,000 hours a month in the battlefield skies.

The increase in unmanned aircraft — from high-altitude Global Hawks to short-range…

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There's nothing like a big project for a crash course in a new technology. After choosing the Basic Stamp platform for the embedded processor version of the autopilot, I've now learned the hard way about the complexities and limitations of embedded processors. They're not insurmountable, but they're important to…

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Great news on the Lego UAV front. Ralph Hempel, who has been helping me on adding GPS waypoints and navigation to my Mindstorms Autopilot, has cracked the tricky bluetooth integration code problem. Just the review the challenge, it appeared that the easiest way to connect the Mindstorms NXT CPU with a GPS

receiver is via its bluetooth interface. But the native NXT bluetooth stack and

API is very limited, and we couldn't find a good way…

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