Blogs

Not quite sure what the advantages are, but it's certainly innovative. From the Festo description:

Flying by turning inside-out
SmartInversion is a helium-filled flying object that moves through the air by turning inside-out. This constant, rhythmically pulsating movement is known as inversion and gives the flight model its name. With the intelligent combination of extreme lightweight construction, electric drive units and control and regulation technology, inversion kinematics can be indefinitely maintained to produce motion through the air.

 

Inversion kinematics:
inspiration for new drive concepts
The shape of this flying object is based on the geometrical band devised by Paul Schatz: its middle section, in the form of an articulated ring of six members, detaches itself from a cube and constantly turns inside-out, taking on different geometrical shapes in the process. 

 

With the geometrical band Schatz discovered that the principle of kinematics, which until then had been based on rotation and translation (linear motion), could be extended by a further mode: inversion. With SmartInversion, the engineers and designers are now investigating where and how geometrical inversion can be put to use in technology.

While we're waiting for this T3 to be judged, I thought I'd do a quick rundown of the entries.  If you haven't seen them already, here you are!  I think everyone did great, I'm seriously impressed by the quality of work which came out of this T3.

The Fallen Blockhouse by Sylvain:

The Mytilene Fortress by James:

Royal Tomb/Celtic Lunar Calendar by Thorsten:

Buisante Chapel by mydrone:

UMBC Campus by Stephen (me):

Three Cliffs Bay by Richard:

If I managed to miss you (I read through the T3 thread and grabbed the entries), just let me know so I can add you!

John Cassano from the University of Colorado has been flying small fixed-wing UAVs in a remote camp in Antarctica. From his blog:

Since it wouldn’t be possible for us to build a 3000 foot tall automatic weather station (AWS) on the Ross Ice Shelf we have turned to using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to study the full depth of the boundary layer. The UAV we used this year is called a SUMO – Small Unmanned Meteorological Observer. It uses the same airframe you could buy in a model airplane store but has been modified to include a small computer, autopilot, and instruments to measure air temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind.

The advantage of the SUMO UAV is that it is easy to operate, inexpensive (only a few thousand dollars), and can measure the boundary layer very accurately. It only requires two people to fly a SUMO. One person has a model airplane remote control for manual control of the plane and the other person operates the autopilot on a laptop computer that is in constant communication with the autopilot on the plane by a simple radio link.

The SUMO can do flights up to 30 minutes in duration and in this time it can spiral up to the top and back down to the bottom of the boundary layer providing two profiles of the atmosphere through the entire boundary layer. It is these profiles that are the basis for all of the research we will do.

Hi,

1. Introduction:

Pixhawk 3DR kit is delivered by default with a 4S maximum power module. For those wanting to use 5S or 6S or higher voltage batteries there is currently, to my best knowledge, no “how-to” guide for the Pixhawk board. I therefore decided to document it for others who might need it too.

For those who would like the same “how-to guide” for APM 2.x , here is a link I wrote a while ago:

http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/powering-your-apm-drone-or-how-not-to-shutdown-apm-like-the-us

Pixhawk comes standard with three (redundant) ways to powered it up:

1-USB : not used to fly obviously; just useful on the ground for connection on a ground station software.

2-The power module port accepting a maximum input voltage of 5.7volts (and will not get destroyed up to 20 Volts input)

3-The RC input pins. Will accept a maximum voltage of 5.7volts also (and is also protected up to 20 Volts)

This guide assumes a use of Pixhawk’s power module port which provides not only a way to power the board but also the pins to measure current and voltage values of the main battery.

This guide assumes a use of a 6S battery in combination with a Attopilot current & Voltage sensor board. This Attopilot “power module” replaces the 3DR 4S limited power module. The Attopilot board comes in three flavors: 45 amps, 90 amps or 180 amps.

The choice of the right Attopilot board (45A, 90A or 180 A) will depend on your motor/props combination: take the Attopilot version that has the smallest amps capacity above your max multicopter current consumption. However we will introduce in this guide a way to use the 90 amps Attopilot board to measure up to 150 amps, still using Pixhawk’s power module port.

2. Attopilot description:

An Attopilot board provides three wire soldering pads to solder : a current measurement wire, a voltage measurement wire and a ground wire. See picture below:

Attopilot 90A support up to 50Volts for a maximum of 90A. However the resistor specifications exceed the 90A limitation which makes it possible to use it for measuring 150 amps (we will take this as a assumed max current as our example for the rest of the explanation).

The datasheet of Attopilot specifies that the Voltage measurement wire outputs an analog voltage of 63,69 milliVolt per Volt. Similarly the current measurement wire outputs an analog voltage of 36,60 milliVolt per Volt.

So for a 6S battery the maximum analog voltage values will be:

-For voltage measurement: [min 0V -  max 1.6V]

-For current measurement: [min 0V – max 3,3 V]

3. Pixhawk power port description (pinout):

Reusing the excellent pixhawk infographics published in the wiki, the image shows circled in yellow where the power port is on the pixhawk board.

The power port is a so-called DF13 connector with 6 pins.

The six pins of this connector are assigned in the following order, starting by the red wire on the leftmost pin:

Power Port Pinout Description:

• 1- Vcc (5V input)
• 2- Vcc (5V input)
• 3- I (Battery current measurement analog voltage input)
• 4- V (Battery voltage measurement analog voltage input)
• 5- Ground
• 6- Ground

4. Wiring Case 1 : to measure up to a maximum of 90 amps

The connections between Attopilot and Pixhawk are shown in the illustration below:

We have added an optional BEC in the illustration that would be connected to the Vcc and Ground wires of the power module. It is optional as Pixhawk could alternatively be powered via the RC inputs.

4. Wiring Case 2 : to measure up to a maximum of 150 amps

The connections between Attopilot and Pixhawk will integrate resistors to be able to measure up to 150 amps.

Indeed the ADC of this power port on Pixhawk has a range of 0-3.3V. This means that for the maximum true current of 150 amps, we want the current analog wire of Attopilot to output maximum 3.3Volts (as it is the case in case1 for 90 amps max without additional resistors).

Note : this part has been updated with a resistor scheme simplification (only one resistor to add in parallel rather than the originally classical R1, R2 resistors divider) thanks to a contribution of Bo, a diydrones member who analyzed in depth the Attopilot circuitry.

So we will build a small resistors divider on wire 3 (current measurement) & wire 5 or 6 (Ground) as follows:

The Attopilot current measurement output masks a circuit that contains an existing output resistor called Rl. According to the Attopilot datasheet, the following equation links to measured current I (called MeasuredCurrent in the equation), the output analog voltage for current measurement Vout, and an existing Rs resistor in Attopilot:

 What we want is to get Vout = 3,3 when Current =150 amps. To do this we will add a new external resisto (Rx) in parallel with the existing Attopilot Rl resistor, so that the new resulting Rl resistor (called Rl’) must be (knowing that Rs = 0.5Mohm as per Attopilot specs):

Therefore we can calculate the Rx resistor value we need to add in parallel as follows:

So, Rx must be ~ 110kohm to have a Vout at 3.3V when the measured current is 150 amps.

You can choose another max amp output (but I would not advise higher than 150 amps with the 90 amps Attopilot, otherwise use the 180 amps version instead) and calculate the resulting Rx resistor

As a result, when the current is 150amps, Vout will have value of 3.3Volts.

5. Mission planner / parameters configuration in battery monitor screen:

In the battery monitor parameters screen, you can manually select which current and voltage sensor you are using. In the present case, you will select the power module and modify the following parameters to make the mission planner voltage and current display match the real values (measured using a wattmeter for example). The explanation below is an extract from the Arducopter parameters list.

Battery monitoring (BATT_MONITOR)

Controls enabling monitoring of the battery’s voltage and current

Battery Voltage sensing pin (BATT_VOLT_PIN)

Setting this to 0 ~ 13 will enable battery current sensing on pins A0 ~ A13. For the 3DR power brick on APM2.5 it should be set to 13. On the PX4 it should be set to 100. On the Pixhawk powered from the PM connector it should be set to 2.

Battery Current sensing pin (BATT_CURR_PIN)

Setting this to 0 ~ 13 will enable battery current sensing on pins A0 ~ A13. For the 3DR power brick on APM2.5 it should be set to 12. On the PX4 it should be set to 101. On the Pixhawk powered from the PM connector it should be set to 3.

Voltage Multiplier (BATT_VOLT_MULT)

Used to convert the voltage of the voltage sensing pin (BATT_VOLT_PIN) to the actual battery’s voltage (pin_voltage * VOLT_MULT). For the 3DR Power brick on APM2 or Pixhawk, this should be set to 10.1. For the Pixhawk with the 3DR 4in1 ESC this should be 12.02. For the PX4 using the PX4IO power supply this should be set to 1.

This is a parameter to adjust to match the real Voltage value with the displayed mission planner value.

Amps per volt (BATT_AMP_PERVOLT)

Number of amps that a 1V reading on the current sensor corresponds to. On the APM2 or Pixhawk using the 3DR Power brick this should be set to 17. For the Pixhawk with the 3DR 4in1 ESC this should be 17. Units: A/V.

This is a parameter to adjust to match the real Voltage value with the displayed mission planner value.

There you go! I hope this will help you configure your pixhawk with higher than 4S batteries.

Cheers,

Hugues

                             IMAV 2014

                  International Micro Air Vehicle

                  Conference and Competition

       August 12 - 15, 2014. Delft, the Netherlands

                        http://www.imav2014.org/

Conference

=========

The conference focuses on research in all areas related to Micro Air Vehicles, with suggested topics including:

- Low-Reynolds and MAV aerodynamics

- Enhanced autonomy and artificial intelligence applied to MAVs

- Sense and Avoid

- MAV swarms, formation flight

- Flapping wings, morphing and bio-inspired MAVs

- Vision-based sensing

- Control theory and state estimation

- Autonomous navigation in GPS-denied environments

- Design methodologies and optimization

- System architecture for MAV operation

- MAV applications and flight testing

Authors may submit two kinds of papers: scientific papers and technical papers (both maximum 8 pages). Scientific papers will be subjected to a single-blind review process of the entire article. All papers will be assigned a DOI and will be available in the TU Delft repository. The authors of the articles nominated for the best paper award will have the opportunity to participate in an expedited review process in the International Journal on Micro Air Vehicles (http://www.multi-science.co.uk/ijmav.htm).

Important dates:

Submission deadline:                May 1, 2014

Notification deadline:              June 15, 2014

Camera ready submission:    June 30, 2014

Competition

=========

The IMAV 2014 will have a single competition, which combines outdoor and indoor elements - and transitions between outdoor and indoor spaces. The competition will simulate a disaster response scenario, in which the teams will have to give an overview of the situation in "Oostdorp", a village constructed by the Ministry of Defense for exercise purposes. The teams have to perform tasks such as indicating which roads are blocked and finding out how many survivors there are inside the houses.  

Teams can borrow Parrot AR drones for participating in the competition. The Parrot AR drone is a stable and easily programmable quad rotor equipped with cameras for potential use by computer vision. Since recently, it can be expanded with a GPS and used with the Paparazzi open source autopilot code for autonomous flight outdoors.

Teams can also receive MATLAB licenses and support from MathWorks for the modelling of their MAVs. Notably, a model of the Parrot AR drone is available for the teams.

A selection round is organized for teams that want to join the competition. Teams that want to participate in the competition will have to submit a team video before June 1, 2014.

For more information, please visit http://www.imavs.org/2014/competition.html

Organization

==========

Micro Air Vehicle laboratory, Delft University of Technology

Main sponsors

===========

Parrot, Mathworks, Royal Netherlands Army

The ETH video demonstrating a new algorithm to save a quadcopter after a single motor or prop failure didn’t reveal the algorithm. It did get me thinking about the quadcopter dynamics after a motor or prop failure.  My analysis starts with the model above, and the equations in “Quadrotor Dynamics and Control” by Randal W. Beard, Brigham Young University, February 19, 2008, available at

http://image.ednchina.com/GROUP/uploadfile/201304/20130429210226589.pdf

The PDF attachment to this blog post shows why spinning up the body axis yaw rate after a motor or prop failure helps with quadcopter controllability, and points to potential new control laws that use controlled body axis yaw rate to allow cross-coupling between pitch and roll control.  My next step is to try to work out a specific, simple motor or prop loss recovery algorithm. I haven't taken it that far yet, but there are a lot of sharp, creative and inventive people in this community. If it looks like this is on the right track, let's see what we can do with it.

I wrote up the analysis in Word 2010 and its useful equation editor. I then discovered that it's not easy to copy and paste those results into my blog! I looked at converting everything over to JPEGs to paste it up as images, but the resolutions on some of the equations suffered. The best way to share the results is  to convert it to a PDF document, the attached file.  I look forward to your peer review - maybe I made a mistake or overlooked something.

Blog%20Quad%20John%20Malley%20%20February%209%202014%20Post%20on%20Spinning%20Quads.pdf

John

SteadiDrone releases new 2014 models including updated versions of the original QU4D and the NEW QU4D X with 60+min flight times, a payload capacity of well over 8kg and $15,000.00 price tag.

2014 SteadiDrone QU4D X from SteadiDrone on Vimeo.

Hello all. As I have stated in here in the past, I have a particular interest in the use of UAS in the field of disaster relief operations. With a background in both emergency services and RC aircraft, I am in a unique position to see, and act from both sides. Last summer, and into the fall, I provided information, demonstrations, advice, and feedback to area emergency response officials. I have also been working with a small group of wildland firefighters in an attempt to develop or source a backpack portable aerial surveillance platform to allow real-time just-over-the-hill data to commanders preparing to move their companies. 

In an effort to help me continue my research and outreach, and to hopefully expand out to more groups, larger areas, and into possible production of systems, I have started a crowd sourced funding campaign. I have used the GoFundMe platform, as it allows ongoing funding of projects as opposed to an all-or-none approach in a limited number of days. The amount I am asking for would allow me to continue working on this project, nearly full-time, for one year. I will continue what I am doing, regardless of whether I am crowd funded or not, but help from you would help me to devote more time and effort into this project.

If you would like to help, please click HERE. Also, feel free to share this if you would like. All help, even just getting more people to see my page, is appreciated!

Looks cool, but sadly all I have is a animated GIF without a source. Anybody recognize it?

Over at RCGroups Sean_M spotted this hexacopter flying at the Winter Olympics.

It would be interesting to know who was flying it and under what arrangement. Can't imagine it's a rogue operation!

(update)

here's a screen shot (literally!) of Sage Kotsenburg's semifinal run showing the unit's shadow.

(reprinted from the EastBay RC blog)

Here's my brief summary and analysis of the Texas "Drone Law".

There's been a lot of odd ("botched") reporting on this, so I'm hoping that this will help clear things up a bit.  Why it's so difficult for reporters to actually read five pages of surprisingly clearly written text is beyond me.  It took me about two hours to go through and type this up.  NY Times, give me a call!

Later I'll do the same for the California bill (much less clearly written!).  As always, leave me some comment or corrections if you've got them!

I've highlighted some important parts of the text concerning civilian or hobbyist use.  Scan down and read those and you'll have a reasonable idea of how the law applies.

tl;dr: If you're flying over public property, private property with permission of the owner, or not intending to surveil a particular person, you're good to fly by this law.

The bill addresses what kind of pictures/video may be captured from an unmanned aerial vehicle.  It adds chapter 423 to the Texas state code.

423.001 -- defining an "image". (basically what you expect: video/pictures, along with all-encompassing catch-alls covering sound, smell, and the entire electromagnetic spectrum.)

423.002 -- Nonapplicability.
                  (this is the important part. anything noted here is not covered by the law.)

(A) It is legal to capture an image by an unmanned aircraft if:

  (1) for University research.
  (2) at a designated test site or test range.
  (3) by the military.
  (4) by a satellite for purposes of mapping.
  (5) by electric or natural gas utility, for:
      (a) facilities maintenance
      (b) facilities inspection
      (c) maintaining clearances on easements
      (d) routing and siting services
  (6) with the consent of the property owner or legal resident.
  (7) pursuant to a search/arrest warrant.
  (8) by law enforcement, for:
      (a) immediate pursuit of a non-misdemeanor criminal suspect
      (b) documenting a non-misdemeanor crime scene
      (c) investing serious accident scenes
      (d) missing person search
      (e) life-threatening tactical operation
      (f) private property generally open to the public and policed.
  (9) by state/local law enforcement, for:
      (a) surveying a potential state of emergency scene
      (b) preserving public safety during a legal state of emergency
      (c) conducting routine air quality sampling
  (10) at the scene or suspected scene of a HazMat spill.
  (11) fire suppression.
  (12) rescuing a person whose life is in danger.
  (13) real estate broker, if there is no identifiable person in image.
  (14) within 25 miles of the U.S. border.
  (15) less than 8 ft altitude, with normal camera.
  (16) on public property, and people on public property.
  (17) inspecting pipelines and related facilities, but not for surveillance.
  (18) oil pipeline safety and rig protection.
  (19) port authority surveillance and protection.

(B) doesn't apply to manufacturing or selling unmanned aircraft.


423.003  OFFENSE: ILLEGAL USE OF UNMANNED AIRCRAFT TO CAPTURE IMAGE

(A) Illegal to  to use unmanned aircraft to capture an image of a person or private property with the intent to conduct surveillance of that person or property.

(B) class C misdemeanor

(C) defense if the person has destroyed the image:
    (1) as soon as the person knows the image was captured in violation, and
    (2) without distributing to image.

(D) "intent" is as per penal code section 6.03

423.004 OFFENSE: USE OF IMAGE

(A) It's an offense if the person:
    (1) captures the image as per 003 above.
    (2) possesses, uses or distributes the image

(B) possession is a class C misdemeanor.  disclosure, etc, class B.

(C) each image is a separate offense.

(D) it's a defense if you destroy an image as soon as you know it's a violation.

(E) it's a defense if you stop disclosing as soon as you know it's a violation.


423.005 ILLEGALLY OR INCIDENTALLY CAPTURED IMAGES NOT SUBJECT TO DISCLOSURE

(A) No illegal image as specified above can be used in court,
(B) except to prove a violation of this law.


423.006 CIVIL ACTION

(A) an owner or tenant of a property can bring a civil action to:
    (1) prevent a violation of 003 or 004.
    (2) recover a civil penalty of
        (a) $5,000 per episode (for all images)
        (b) $10,000 per episode if distributed
    (3) recover actual damages if the person displays with malice.

(B,C,D) details on bringing civil action.
(F) two year time limit to bring civil action.


423.007. RULES FOR USE BY LAW ENFORCEMENT

  DPS shall adopt rules and guidelines for law enforcement use.

423.008 REPORTING BY LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY

  Law enforcement agencies must report unmanned aircraft use, cost, etc.
  Details as to reports.  Details as to when this law takes effect.

This isn't a GPS module, but rather a chip that compliments GPS modules by using dead reckoning to estimate position during GPS drop-outs. APM and Pixhawk do this already in software, but it would be interesting to see if a stand-alone hardware solution is useful for UAV purposes (this first chip is aimed at automotive use).

From Gizmodo:

Swiss company u-blox just devised a chip that keeps you on course when the satellites drop out, using the most old-fashioned of navigation techniques: dead reckoning.

The u-blox 3D Dead Reckoning chip uses a bevy of accelerometers, gyroscopes, and speed sensors to calculate a car's exact location, no GPS signal needed. By measuring the direction, speed and distance the car has traveled since the last GPS check-in, the chip can tell if the car's still on the intended route, or if it's veered off into lost-land. U-blox's demonstration video, narrated by a charming Walter Cronkite imitator, explains in more detail:

The 3D Dead Reckoning chip isn't packed in to any currently-available GPS systems, and it's not really clear whether the company intends to sell these things to equipment manufacturers or directly to consumers—though the press release indicates it shouldn't be too hard to install yourself.

Since my last post I've upgraded this quadcopter. Most important upgrade is the motors and props:

• HK NX-4006 530kv motors
• Graupner 14x8 props

With these, and a 170gr dummy weight on the gimbal, I get these numbers when hovering the quad:

• 5000mAh 4S: 14A current consumption
• 8000mAh 4S: 18A current consumption

It runs arducopter 3.0.1 on an APM2.5. Compassmot shows 12%.

Closeup of the motor mount:

And the crate it sleeps in:

Hello guys,

I am researching the possibility for using a UAV calibrating The runway PAPI. I am not aware of all the methods for PAPI calibration but I am aware that our 2 local airports use full scale aircrafts to calibrate them and the costs rise at about 20-30k EUR per year for both calibrations.   

As you can imagine the costs are massive for such a task compared to the potentials of a UAV platform. At the time being I am not researching whether legislation will or will not allow such a calibration method so i am only focused on the technical and practical difficulties. 

At the moment I don't have any theoritical or practical expirience on calibrating PAPI so i can't really be sure whether a UAV can be up to the task so any input on this would Appreciated. 

Example of VR Drone configuration : Tiger Shark in X8 configuration + VRBrain 4.5 + VR Gimbal + VR Easyshot the camera is an Nex6

An onboard video from Tigershark see the quality of loiter in azimutal video :)  The Flight board is a VRBrain with APM Copter revision 3.1.13

http://www.virtualrobotix.it/index.php/en/prod/vr-brain

These are some video example from our user more available here :

http://vrgimbal.wordpress.com/videos/

After one year of development Gimbal VR has become a stable product.

The latest revision of firmware, we have implemented several functions to make more 'precise and reliable control of brushless gimbal.

http://vrgimbal.wordpress.com/download/vrgimbal-1-13-2/

In addition to improved hardware and firmware have also worked a lot on the mechanics of these two gimbal one dedicated to compact cameras and another for professional cameras.

http://www.virtualrobotix.it/index.php/en/prod/gimbaleasy

The VRGimbal is the only 3-axis  opensource gimbal board. Last update is available here.

http://code.google.com/p/vrgimbal/

If you want help us in development join us :)

The goal of the project is complete integration between the autopilot that use  APM code Copter, Plane and Rover to develop complex functions such as object tracking.

It 'available on the wiki APM is an example of how to integrate VRGimbal with cards based on how VRBrain APM, APM 2.6 or Pixhawke.

Randy join in test and developing of VRGimbal and add this page to APM WIKI :

http://planner.ardupilot.com/wiki/common-vrgimbal/

This is official VR Gimbal wiki page. 

http://vrgimbal.wordpress.com/

Join us to official discussion group :

http://www.virtualrobotix.com/group/vr-gimbal-user-group

The board is available you can buy it at : 

http://www.virtualrobotix.it/index.php/en/shop/gimbal-control-board/vrgimbal-3-axis-detail

Original blog post : 

http://www.virtualrobotix.com/profiles/blogs/vr-gimbal-1-year-of-development-last-update-of-the-project

if you need more info contact us at : info@virtualrobotix.com

Best

Roberto

An exciting update from the Swiftnav team, whose successful Kickstarter project is bringing high-precision (cm-level) RTK GPS to an affordable level (sub $1,000). First up: ArduPilot support!

From today's update:

The complete signal processing chain, from the GPS radio waves that arrive at Piksi's antenna, to the centimeter-accurate relative positions that are the system's output, has now been fully implemented and verified.

Ian says these are the covariance plots of the ambiguity resolution engine, but all I see are some cool circles.

There is still work to be done to port that code to the Piksi hardware. This is a decent chunk of software development, but we're now in the homestretch. Software development timelines are always difficult to estimate, so we want to make sure we avoid pushing the delivery date again by being too optimistic about the schedule. With this in mind, we're promising you a ship-by date of April 15th for the Production RTK Kits.

A sunny San Francisco afternoon, our dual antenna setup taking in the rays

We've added a new member to our team, one Niels Joubert of Stanford's computer science department. He's an amazing software developer and engineer, and we're very lucky to have him making contributions to the product. Some of you will be pleased to hear that his first project is adding support for Piksi to the Ardupilot system. This support is an utmost priority for us, and now we can finally give it the resources it deserves.

Niels Joubert / Piksi / 3DR Pixhawk

We've now finished shipping all the SUPPORT and T SHIRT rewards, so if you haven't received yours yet, it should be arriving soon.

Thank you for your continued support and patience!

Colin and Fergus

Arsov RC Technology is proud to introduce a new vision of the PX4 v2 Autopilot board. The Arsov AUAV X1 is another elegant design from Phillip Kocmoud and Nick Arsov. Our goal was to product a high quality, compact, lightweight and cost effective alternative to the PX4 V2 or PixHawk autopilots. This is our first attempt to join the PX4 community after developing several successful designs for the MatrixPilot community. After we have finalized the design we will release the design files and schematics. The schematics will be released immediately to new owners. Initial supplies are limited and a deposit insures a boards in the first production run.

Availability:
Early March , 2014

Features:
STM32F427VI ARM MCU
STM32F100C8T6 ARM MCU
MEAS MS5611-01BA03 barometer

Memory - 8Mb SPI Flash. Could be expanded on demand up to 1Gb.

microIMU – choose one of the following 5 IMU offerings:
-ST Micro L3GD20H + LSM303D
-ST Micro L3GD20H + LSM303D + MPU6500
-Invensense MPU 6500
-Invensense MPU9250
-Maxim MAX21100
-Connector only for remotely mounted IMU

New power supply based on TPS63061 DC-DC Buck-Boost
The TPS63061 device provides a power supply solution for products powered by either three-cell up to six-cell alkaline, NiCd or NiMH battery, or a one-cell or dual-cell Li-Ion or Li-polymer battery. Output currents can go as high as 2A while using a dual-cell Li-Ion or Li-Polymer Battery, and discharge it down to 5V or lower. So you can connect a 2 cell Li-Po directly to the AUAV X1, and run it completely flat before brownout. Since it's a buck-boost converter, you can also power from a 5V BEC while still in regulation. Additional info about this Buck-Boost regulator could be found here - http://www.ti.com/product/tps63061

Connections:
4 x UARTs - 3 of them have Vcc, Tx, Rx, GND and one has a full set - Vcc, Tx, Rx, RTS, CTS, GND
1 x CAN with MAX3051
1 x I2C
1 x SPI
2 x ADC + 2 x ADC for current and voltage sensing
8 x PWM Receiver Inputs
8 x PWM Servo Outputs
2 x JTAG connection specifically for the TC2030-CTX-NL 6-Pin cable
micro SD card holder
micro USB connector
All inputs and outputs are ESD and EMI protected

Dimensions:
30mm x 43mm

For additional information and availability, please visit our websites https://store.auav.co/ for US or http://arsovtech.com for EU.

Nice upgrade for those flying a Phantom 1, 2 or Vision.  Gives the Phantom a wider stance as well as additional height for camera gimbals.  No more legs in the shot when aggressively flying :)  

You can find them HERE 

Direct link HERE

The Portland (OR) Business Journal “Biz Pulse” blog reports that the Silicon Sky, PDX Drone and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International-Cascade have launched the “Drone Prize” competition, which asks contestants to produce videos demonstrating how UAVs can be used for the “common good.” The contest will be open for submissions in about a month. 

From Drone Prize website:

Use the aerial perspective to serve the greater good. Fly your drone with a civic purpose on a mission to improve society. Share your video with the world to show the difference you made, and enter to win more than $10,000 in prizes. Finalists will be flown to Portland in Summer 2014 to compete for the Grand Prize.

I recently ran a build-your-own-quadcopter workshop in Canberra (Australia), where 9 people learned how to construct, tune and fly quadcopters based on the Pixhawk flight controller.

This workshop is the second one I've run (1st workshop here). There have been several improvements this time around: A stronger frame, pre-soldered connectors and usage of the Pixhawk.

There were of course minor technical difficulties (such as not ordering enough standoffs!) along the way, but we got there in the end and everyone had a great time!

For those that want to run their own workshops, I've published the documentation for this workshop here. It includes a full workshop manual, APM:Copter parameters file, materials list and useful links.