First off who I am:
My name Eugene Lawson
I have always had an affinity for things that fly. As a young child my uncle wanted to fly military (he went Navy AOCS). And showed me Iron Eagle (yeah that movie) I was hooked. But my grades were poor in high school and I didn't know that I had to earn a commision to fly. So I went to the #2 thing that I loved Computers
I am a Software engineer with Crestron Electronics. (7 mos). I have been programming for about 18 years.
Within that time frame I have worked out at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) as a defense contractor working with DFCS (Drone Formation Control Systems). Basically, code moves drone (aerial or ground based) targets, and the military test its weapon systems on them. Apparently you can't fire weapons at them if people are in and controlling them (go figure). seems like a perfect job for death row inmates but hey.. that's just me.
Since then I made 3 commercial video games for the ps3 and xbox360 and pc. This got me very interested in Artificial Intelligence and Finite State Machines.
Being at Crestron there is a lot of hardware here. So I joined up with former co-worker or current co-worker actually (it's complicated). And we started a small Quadcopter project.
Our current skill set:
Programming 40 years combined programming experinece
5 years Drone experience. (mine)
6 years Game programming experience.(mine)
10+ years electronic experience (his)
We know NOTHING about quadcopters, flight physics, ect. We are banking on our ability to read, current experience and knowledge to get this working.
There is definitely something to be said about learning from previous mistakes and accomplishments of others, but on this project, I feel that more can be learned by independently building this machine. We also feel that maybe by working independently we might find new ways of handling things. Probably for the worse, but could be for the better. That being said, if you view our videos, post, ect. Look at them as a... "look at what these idiots are doing now!" and not as a "How to" posts. Because more likely than not, we will be doing it completely bass ackwards.
As of right now I have already shorted one 3S Lipo 25C 5Ah. I cut the leads off the battery AT THE SAME TIME! (yeah I know right?!) I couldn't have just read in the forum.
I do suspect we'll gather a lot of data. So feel free to look at that and gather what you will from it. Oppose to what we say we are getting from the data.
We are very excited about this project. Our first test is scheduled for this weekend (weather permitting). Provided we don't throw a prop into our chests, I will post our vids, findings, and data.
Talk to you all soon (I hope?)
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