Blogs

ArduCopter Factory update: December

Again it’s been really really exhausting time here at jDrones in past 6 months. Earlier this year we moved to our new location at BangNa area in Bangkok. When we moved to our current location there were only 3 people working and now we have total of 5 full time people and also 3 part time. It looks like that we will have 1-3 more in next 3 months.

Also we are planning to move our current office location to another building close by on current one as walls are getting too small for us.

Top picture is from gates gate at jDrones and just like Chris have been introducing 3DR staff, it will be our time now to introduce jDrones staff. 

From left to right there are: Gap, Thee, Yao, Jani and Nin. This picture still misses Penny who is our latest enforcement for customer relations (some of you have already talked with her). And with help of her we finally try to get all email traffic in order.

As a small introduction of who is doing and what: Gap is the main man on assembling our kits and doing electronics, Thee runs some of our in-house CNC production along with packing issues, Yao is the lady who keeps things running at our office along with the packing. Jani (do I even need to explain my role…) the beast that kicks everyone and tries to keep things in order, Nin is our 2^ndin command and takes care of shipping and all daily operations.

Location, location and location…

Our current area we have nice flying area close by where we can test all our equipment and even have nice evening dinner at our “AirPort Café” as we call it in here.  Could it be better, yeah it could like to have own electric jDrones Office-Airport shuttle service (I wish)

Our office is rather easy to find, just take SkyTrain to Udom Suk Station and taxi to our office (5 minutes).

So if you and/or your friend are ever coming to this corner of the world, please do stop by and we can go to our flying field to do some test flying and others. You never know, if you are lucky enough you might see even Airport Café on it’s full evening glory.

Flying field size is about 300 x 200 meters and no high-rise buildings close by. So air is smooth but hot as out average temperatures in here are around +32 C all year around.

So come’on and come to fly with us.

Man him self and doing/testing video installations for heavy lift jD hexa

I wish I could still have enough time to play with all those nice little thingies but like Nathan from SparkFUN said earlier, after hobby becomes your professions it’s all about hard work and long days. How right we was on that…

Snapshots from daily life at jDrones

Gap, running one of our motor testing rigs. As many of you know, we are constantly working several many motor factories and always trying to improve the motors what we are using. Just as an example on November 2011 it self we tested different motors and motor/propeller combinations worth more than 2.000 running hours. Results of these tests allows us to better modify our motors what we are using here at jDrones and this way all our users will benefit from our findings.

Currently we are testing all motors with 3S and 4S batteries, propellers are starting from 6 inch all the way to 16 inch carbon propellers.

Test rig is custom build for our use along with all the electronics that runs it and software.

From the test rig we can see idle, full load amperages, used milliamps, vibrations, thrust values with different propellers/motors/batteries, rpms of the motors, temperatures of used ESCs and motors.

And as safety is our main concern, operator is always sitting behind blue safety net and having goggles when motors are running. We have been even having some propellers breaking while running them at full speed.

Usually final test of the motors is to see how much they can actually take punishment so we run them as long as they start to smoke out. Poor motors... It's not easy to be in here.

Highest light what we have ever been getting out from our test motors is close to 3kg. Naturally those motors needs huge batteries and big ESCs so they are not really suitable for multirotor use.

Nin at her desk doing bookkeeping and handling all shipping related issues. She is in charge of our daily operations here at jDrones, it’s not always so easy task to do as you might imagine but we all here are giving our best. Looks like it’s been a quiet day today according the amount of the paper at her desk. (I wish my desk would be so clean too).

Assembly area, Thee, Yao and Gap in action. Checking packet contents and doing packing. One of our most common daily routine is to do packing. Some of the products we pack in-house and some of them are packet at our nextdoor company area. There are currently several hundred products that we are packing here starting from the smallest screws and nuts all the way to fully assembled and tested kits.

Just small portion of our daily stocks from where all those boxes are filled up that we are shipping:

That's quick peak on daily life at jDrones main office. If you are visiting Bangkok, please send a message to us and we can give better tour to our office and to let you know what all other things we are doing in here. But before you come, let us know in advance when you are arriving so I can make sure that I will be here to guide you around.

As the New year is closes there are still many things to do before we can go on our Christmas vacation and beginning of next year we have a lot of nice updates coming to all of our users around the world.

jDrones will be closed 22nd Dec - 3rd Jan. Shipping continues on 4th. Packets still ordered before 20th will be delivered before 24th with our 3 day DHL express delivery. Last packets will leave on 22nd but before Christmas delivery is not guaranteed.

Stay tuned, fly safe and we wish Merry Christmas and Happy New year to you all.

Jani / jDrones