This week in aerospace

AUTONOMOUS MARCY 2, OCEAN VIEWS, AIPTEK HELL






Back over the golf course to test yet another camera mount.











Unfortunately, we've done everything possible with the Aiptek & it still
warps.







AUTONOMOUS MARCY 2

Marcy 2's roll gyro failed, but before the gyro failure & crash She
finally hovered Herself long enough in sonar to get some shots.
Definitely the hardest vehicle ever because of the number of things
built from scratch.















There's the broken gyro.



The answer is yes. Pads on $11 chips can fall off. Fortunately had 1
spare gyro. This is the last of the analog gyros. All future gyros use
high speed I2C, which means either mounting on the main board & facing temperature instability or using an off board microcontroller to convert the I2C to something useful.



& there She is hovering in sonar.







The radio still won't initialize on the golf course, so we're limited to
1 battery. Would be so much easier to use off the shelf parts. Sonar
hasn't been precise enough to get the tight hovering we need. Overall
very dissapointing.





Next, the tethered ground station cables are 25 years old & if they go, it's siyonora in 60 nanoseconds.

OCEAN VIEWS




Have some aerial shots over Half Moon Bay. The weather was spectacular,
the aircraft was perfect, & the view from 400ft was stupendous.
Surprised the weather was perfect. It's never sunny here. Limited the
altitude because it was very crowded & a human airport was nearby.
Can't fly any closer to the humans.






















Next, we have the videos.


Didn't shoot for timelapses but decided to throw it in the editor & see what happened. 1st impression is the taxpayers are going to have some killer flooding damage to pay for.

1st impression is the taxpayers are going to have some killer flooding damage to pay for.

The complete video flight.
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Comments

  • Jack, your video stabilization software is amazing. How much is the original screen size reduced ? Are picture from the video ? Very nice the video and the picture too.

    Best regards,

    Ric
  • Developer
    Beautiful shots and it's always amazing to see what you've done.
  • Admin
    Aerial shots are one of the best if not vividly color full too that i have seen any where. Are these taken using Aiptek ? if yes then , why is it Hell !!!? Jack
  • Admin
    Position hold using sonar , interesting concept !! , Jack , some writeups on that please when you can. thanks
  • You do great work. Also live in a really nice area of the world. Very nice photos.
  • Moderator
    Half moon perhaps
  • If the laptop and cardboard weren't in a couple of pictures I think the pictures could pass for a moon landing !

    Yea, crop the picture (& there She is hovering in sonar.) top to bottom and send it to Obama. You can claim the first private enterprise moon landing.

    Earl
This reply was deleted.