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I just got a Quanum Nova, which is a fantastic APM-powered copter that in many way outperforms the DJI Phantom for less than $300.  Although it's capable of full autonomy, just like any other ArduCopter, the one thing it's missing for easy field mission planning and DroidPlanner compatibility is telemetry. 

In this great tutorial, Jean-Louis Naudin shows how to add that:

Here an explanation for connecting the real time telemetry to the CX-20 or to the Quanum Nova

The telemetry port is located on the I/O board of the APM (the second board at the bottom and pluged to the main CPU board) where all the I/O plug are connected. The telemetry port is fully compatible with all the telemetry transmitter (3DR and all the compatible boards) and also with the Bluetooth boards commonly used with the APM boards.

Below the pinout which shows the telemetry port I/O (back to the I/O board).

Note from the comments: depending on which radio you're using, you may have to reverse the TX and RX lines. Dmitry in the comments reports: "You must connect RX from the radio to TX on the APM! And vice versa for Radio TX. So I've changed green and yellow wires and it works!"

 

sold 4 cables on the telemetry ports then protect the connections with hot glue 

Check the functioning 

The 4 pins telemetry plug is installed on the back of the fuselage 

Check the connection (at 57600 baud) with the mission planner or the Droid Planner 2 

Then, you may enjoy to use the telemetry... 

NEXT CHAPTER: Full autonomous mission with the Cheerson CX 20

 

For a few dollars you can buy replacement lenses without IR cut filter for popular FPV cameras and also IR passthrough filters from eBay. Additionally, many digital cameras can be modified for IR recording by simply removing the IR cut filter from the sensor. As a result you get very pinkish footage.

I have written about the postprocessing of IR photos already earlier (s. here). This video just quickly shows a few possibilities to edit the footage to make it more useful for analysis.

The postprocessing is done with KDEnlive for Linux.

This might be dull as dishwater for some but if commercial use in the USA is your end game then you will need to know about insurance.

Hi everyone, 

Although it is less of an issue for the DIY/hobby end of things (we all seem able to use the word 'drone' without thinking of hellfire missiles), but I've been getting pretty tired of the argument in wider circles and dancing around trying not to use the 'D-word' when dealing with the media.

So... I wanted to write my thoughts down in one place so I can refer back to them whenever this comes up, and I thought I'd share it here in case you guys find yourself repeatedly having the same debate too:

http://www.skymount.com/its-okay-to-call-them-drones/

Keen to hear if you agree or disagree!

I am designing this TX mod to use Droidplanner with big phones or tablets. I am planning to use for photogrametry with multicopters and planes.

I use mavlink telemetry through gitsly/openLRSng (https://github.com/gitsly/openLRSng)
I think it is a great solution because it is only one antenna for controls and telemetry, very simple and clean solution.

Telemetry stream through openLRSng is slow (19200bps maximum) than I've tried it works perfectly except because droidplanner failed to load the parameter list probably due a timeout, All the rest seems to work perfectly.

I connect my Note with 20cm OTG cable, i have build a custom module cover to fit into a FTDI adapter:

Droidplanner seems well made software, very quick, very intuitive.
My sincere congratulations to droidplanner team

Hope you like!!!

jlcortex

quaternium.es/

Hey guys!

With your help we have successfully funded the Navio campaign and reached three stretch goals. Everyone who pledged for Navio or Navio Raw board on Indiegogo will additionally get:

• GPS\GLONASS antenna

• Pack of DF13 wires

• Onboard FRAM chip

We also plan to develop and release a special case for Navio that can be 3D printed and used to protect it.

Navio campaign is still active and you can get one for yourself on our Indiegogo page.

Navio was primarily designed to be used with Raspberry Pi, but there are a couple of alternative boards that duplicate the form-factor or Raspberry Pi and should also be compatible with Navio. These boards are:

Banana Pi

Created by Lemaker.org, the Banana Pi duplicates the layout and footprint of the Raspberry Pi and packs more power and connectivity. One of the downsides is that 26-pin header was moved closer to the RCA connector and to fit Navio properly you will have to desolder it. Actually, we remove RCA connector from Raspberries anyway to reduce the size.

SOC: Allwinner A20 Cortex-A7 Dual-Core clocked to 1GHz

GPU: ARM Mali400MP2

RAM: 1GB

Ports: 1000Ethernet, SATA, HDMI, LVDS, CSI, 2xUSB host, 3.5 audio

Features: IR-receiver, CAN, OTG connector, Microphone, Power switch

HummingBoard

Developed by Solid-Run, the creator of the CuBox product line with which the HummingBoard is similar in features. Design and layout are also the same as in Raspberry Pi, but even more powerful with quad-core processor and 2GB of memory.

SOC: Quad-core Cortex-A9 Freescale i.MX6 clocked to 1GHz

GPU: Vivante GC2000

RAM: 2GB

Ports: 1000Ethernet, mSATA, HDMI, LVDS, CSI, mini-PCI-E, 2xUSB host, 3.5 audio

Features: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, FlexCAN, Real-time clock, IR-receiver, SPDIF out

We are awaiting arrival of these boards and will post more information as soon as we test them.

More:

Navio on Indiegogo

Emlid blog

Banana Pi

HummingBoard

It's customary and traditional that we celebrate the addition of every 1,000 new members here and share the traffic stats. This time it's 54,000!!!!

There were approximately 1.8 million page views in the last month! (we now get around 63,000 page views a day on average). It took us just 25 days to add these latest 1,000 members--we're averaging one new member every 35 minutes!

Thanks as always to all the community members who make this growth possible, and especially to the administrators and moderators who approve new members, blog posts and otherwise respond to questions and keep the website running smoothly.

A reminder from our friends at Sparkfun. And don't forget that DroneCon will be the day before (Friday the 20th) just a few minutes away at CU Boulder.  Looking forward to seeing you all at both of these!

Hello AVC Fans! As you know, the SparkFun Autonomous Vehicle Competition 2014 - or AVC 2014 - is quickly approaching. It’s next Saturday, the 21st, at Boulder Reservoir, here in sunny (hopefully!) Colorado.

We wanted to remind you that this is a free event that is open to the public and we’d love to have to you! If you’d like to join us, please register at our spectator registration page here.

AVC will open to the public at 9 a.m. but teams are welcome to arrive as early as 7 a.m.. There will be three food trucks on site and two of them will be serving breakfast, so don’t worry about eating, just come on over to the res! We’ll have Bon Appetite Mobile Bistro, Bodacious Eats and Gotta’ Rub It BBQ on site all day serving up fresh grub to keep you strong while you watch the robot-mayhem. These food trucks serve SparkFun lunch every week and they are the best of the best in Colorado!

Atmel will also have their Tech on Tour Mobile Training Center, a 75-foot electronic wonderland on wheels at AVC. They will have cool demos and some impromptu training and seminars given by Atmel’s microcontroller experts. The demos will include some of the latest development boards from Atmel along with some cool wireless and touch technology.

Atmel’s visit to SparkFun has been long overdue and we want to make sure everyone gets a chance to interact directly with some of the experts from Atmel’s microcontroller group!

We will also have LulZBot (Aleph Objects) on site demoing the Taz 4! Aleph Objects are a local (to SparkFun) 3D Printer manufacturer and so much more! They believe in the philosophy of “Libre Innovation,” which means the hardware and software they create is free to be copied, modified and converted by all users. They are doing some really great stuff with 3D printing and software that you’ll have to check out at AVC! The will be in the Community Village, a spot where all the other cool companies and clubs in our community will be hanging too, directly to the west of the Ground Course.

If you’re a competitor looking for details on trial runs and heat schedules, we’ll be sending an email out soon with all of these details!

AVC 2014 promises to be the biggest, nuttiest, fastest and most techy robotics competition ever. Come on out to the Boulder Reservoir for a day of fun geekery and flying robots!

If you're looking for a powerful yet econo camera for your near-infrared photographic adventures, consider the new Infragram Point & Shoot Plant Cam now availabe for pre-order from the Public Lab store.HooperFly provided the lifting body used to acquire some of the promotional images used in the Public Lab site. Once again, thanks to the Public Lab folks for including us in on the fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV4Y40fs4is

A first hand hand account, by our 17 year old High School Student: Gustavo De Leon-

Interesting news item on the The Guardian UK newspaper

Unmanned aircraft, or 'drones' have attracted controversy for their military use, but they are now taking off everywhere. The mass adoption of this new technology is gathering pace – and it raises big questions around their use, potential misuse, privacy, and the safety of our skies and streets. Charles Arthur investigates ... and attempts to pilot one himself

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/video/2014/jun/05/drones-unmanned-aircraft-video

From TechCrunch:

While there are a few hardware-only funds and many funds will invest in drones if backed into a corner, Drone.VC looks to be the first fund that caters specifically to the robo set. Created by founder of Hacker Dojo, David Weekly, the fund is looking for backers to its syndicate on Angel List.

Weekly is already looking at some nice startups in Mexico, Singapore, and California and is heading to DroneCon in Boulder, Colo. to look for more.

He got hooked on drones when he ran his first autonomous mission with his own 3DRobotics IRIS quadcopter.

“I noticed a number of my friends starting to tinker with drones in the past few months – actually a lot of people who were web 2.0 entrepreneurs have gotten drones and started playing with them, so I was curious what all the fuss was all about,” he said. “The hairs on my arms tingled when we sent the drone on its first fully autonomous mission. Watching this thing I had just wirelessly commanded take off and perform a mission while streaming realtime telemetry to my laptop was really a 21st century moment, like seeing a self-driving car on the freeway.”

Weekly sees the drone market as unique in that it is up-and-coming and very focused. Rather than looking at all robotics, he has focused on one of the most popular spaces in the market right now, commercial and personal flying drones.

BI estimates that commercial drone sales will rise to $12 billion over the next decade, a slow and steady rise that should continue as more and more users understand why they want a flying camera platform.

“This space is going to be enormous in just a few years as applications in agriculture, real estate, small-object delivery (especially in developing markets), videography, and construction abound,” he said. “I can’t wait to be surprised by the industries these things are useful for.”

Weekly said the fund wouldn’t invest in military or armored drones, an interesting distinction considering that, until very recently, the only drones available were military grade. It’s clear that the consumerization of robots has just begun.

This is Part 2 in a two-part series that summarizes my views on why video/film/cinema – not agriculture and farming — will be the largest driver of sUAS commercial businesses. In Part 1, I explore thoughts on the market for video/film/cinema, and below I outline why I believe agriculture will lag in market uptake.

The March 2013 market study produced by the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) titled “The Economic Impact of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in the United States,” says precision agriculture and public safety will make up more than 90% of the market growth for unmanned aerial systems. The report confidently states, “…the commercial agriculture market is by far the largest segment, dwarfing all others.”

I don’t buy it, and here’s why:

Let’s start with the AUVSI forecast.  Read to what one commenter said in my last post;

“There is a basic problem with the AUVSI study methodology – it took the total arable land area of Japan and divided it by the number of registered UAS performing agricultural roles in that country to provide a demand factor. It then divided the total amount of arable land in the United States by that same demand factor and used this to forecast its prospective future demand for the agricultural sector as a whole. The problem is, the Japanese agricultural land areas do not correlate in size, capacity, or type of agriculture as performed in the United States. In fact the Japanese usage is largely restricted to spraying of rice paddies on small allotments as a replacement for labor which has shifted to the cities. The only possible comparison that the Japanese land area to UAS numbers ratio that could have potential validity is to compare the Japanese ratio with the total amount of land used in rice cultivation in the United States. That is a very different equation than that used by the AUVSI study and can be predicted to give a very different set of economic figures as a result. AUVSI has used very bad modelling to build its argument on, and its figures should be used very, very, very cautiously.”

He’s right.  So how do we get a proper forecast?  That will take some time to work out and look for material from me on that later. For now let’s look how modern agriculture has historically adopted and used technology, because the devil’s in the detail.

Read more here:http://droneanalyst.com/2014/06/11/film-or-farm-which-is-the-bigger-drone-market-part-2/

I think a nice goggle set for beginners, the Quanum DIY FPV goggle set with monitor. Not with dual glasses, but a single display that shows the live feed from your video/transmitter set (not included). The resolution is 480p (640x480 pixels) and you can use it with one of the 3 lenses it comes it, whichever fits you best. The goggles can be switched between 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratios. The molded housing is made from EPP foam allowing you to carve and adjust the fit just right to your face and finishing it off with foam strips for a light tight seal.

Specifications:

Monitor screen: NON-Blue screen custom TFT LCD
Screen size: 4.3in (6:9 or 4:3 switchable)
Format: PAL/NTSC supported
Supply voltage: 7~13V
Resolution: 480p
Fresnel lens: 3X and 4X included
Size: 140x95x120mm
Weight: 195g

Please note that a battery to power the goggles is not included and you have to use your own video transmitter/receiver set.

Available for US$ 29.99, available from Hobbyking here: http://hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=53706&aff=5361

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration today announced that it has given approval for the first commercial drone flights over land. Energy corporation BP and unmanned aircraft systems manufacturer AeroVironment will now be able to legally fly a drone for aerial surveys over BP’s Prudhoe Bay oil field on Alaska’s North Slope.

Here is the rest of the news: http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/10/faa-approves-first-commercial-drone-flights-over-land/

The Verge reports:

Fatdoor's plan is to allow neighbors with drones to synchronize their flight paths and even set landing locations outside their homes, making deliveries easy. Those deliveries will have to stay fairly light though: the Skyteboard will only hold around a pound of cargo, but that should at least let you borrow a cup of sugar. Fatdoor also recommends mounting a GoPro camera onto the Skyteboard. The drone already has one camera built in, and Fatdoor thinks that a two-camera system will make it perfect for neighbors who want to record their kids' soccer games with drones flying overhead — however strange a sight that might be.

Fatdoor's goal is to have its network and drones facilitate interaction throughout local communities, restoring the lost communication from a more innocent time in the world. It even thinks that a squad of drones might be able to fly a banner around a neighborhood advertising an event, getting everyone up and out of their homes for a block party. Most neighbors might call that a nuisance, but Fatdoor is hoping that believers in its dream of a connected neighborhood will get together to raise $300,000 to make it happen. Drones are being offered as rewards for $1,099 a piece.

From the Kickstarter listing:

light weight AP plane. first tested flying with some skysurfers As chase plane an update from the old PX34 which has a good glide ratio for such size.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmGs-a7KW5k

Having spent far too much time pondering just how to create an effective connection between our Vulture 2 spaceplane's rocket motor heater and its external LiPo and thermostat, we're obliged to the inspired Reg reader who came up with a classic KISS solution.

The problem was to have a hook-up which wouldn't disconnect as the aircraft made its way to altitude, but which also wouldn't impede the plane's launch.

We'd considered magnets, induction coils, microwave/laser links, etc, etc, but here's the garden shed solution: some lengths of 2mm copper tube with wires shoved into them:

So, the wires are firmly connected pre-launch, and then just fly out when the Vulture blasts off. There's more on this extremely cunning plan here.

My latest build. TBS Discovery, Taranis, 3D Robotics Pixhawk, ImmersionRC 5.8Ghz vtx, 3DR GPS, Telemetry Radio, T-Motor 900kv, 30amp ESC, APC 10x4.8, 4S 3300, GoPro 3+ Silver. About 10 min flight time @ 1468 grams.