I`m still on the uptake with 3D mapping etc and found this TED talk very interesting.
Although he uses a light plane packed with 1000kgs of gear I can see practical applications for drone use here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCrVpRBBSvY&feature=em-uploademail
You may have seen the rendered concept video of a life-preserver dropping drone from this Iranian team before. Now they've built a real prototype. From Gizmag:
Over the course of four days in August of this year, the Pars development team visited the Caspian Sea to conduct a battery of tests on its brand new prototype. The location was chosen in part for its proximity to the RTS lab, but also because it's been the site of several tragic drownings in the past few years, including an incident that took the lives of six students this past summer. Among other attributes, the team tested the Pars' stability during flight, the accuracy of the life preserver release mechanism, and the bot's performance in both day and nighttime conditions. According to the researchers at RTS Labs, the prototype bot met their expectations perfectly.
The Pars was able to fly for 10 minutes at a top speed of 10 m/s (22.4 mph) before needing to recharge. This gives it a maximum range of 4.5 km (2.8 miles), making it ideal for emergencies occurring along coastlines and near ships at sea. It also proved to have a distinct advantage over its flesh and blood counterparts, since it can bypass treacherous waters with ease.
When conducting a trial rescue mission, the drone was able to reach a target 75 m (246 ft) away and drop its payload in about 22 seconds, while a human lifeguard took 91 seconds to swim to the same location. During testing at night, the Pars was also able to illuminate targets on the ground and make itself more visible to its controller on land using several bright LEDs.
RTS Lab has pointed out that the drone's fast speed combined with a capacity for several life preservers means it could attend to multiple people in one trip. With its built-in GPS, it can even be programmed to fly to a certain area, dispense life preservers to anyone in danger, and then automatically return to its base. Of course, the aerial bot won't be able to pull anyone to safety just yet, but it could be sent out ahead of rescue crews to provide some initial aid. The researchers are also hoping it could give emergency teams a birds-eye view of the situation and help them plot a safe path to where they need to go.
With such an important job on its shoulders, RTS Lab wants to make sure that the Pars functions as well as possible before attempting to distribute it internationally. The company hopes to refine its current design based on these trials and possibly add some more features, though it is still looking for further funding to make this possible.
Besides increasing its speed and range, the group has considered redesigning the drone so it can land on the water in an emergency and outfitting it with an artificial intelligence that processes images and sound to locate people in trouble. Presumably, if they receive the necessary funding, the designers may also construct an off-shore landing platform for multiple Pars drones, which was outlined in the original concept.
From Hackaday:
Building your own quadcopter is an expensive and delicate ordeal. Only after you navigate a slew of different project builds do you feel confident enough to start buying parts, and the investment may not be worth your effort if your goal is to jump right into some hacking. Fortunately, [Dzl] has a shortcut for us; he reverse engineered the communication protocol for a cheap toy quadcopter to work with an Arduino.
The cheap toy in question is this one from Hobbyking, which you can see flying around intheir product demonstration video. [Dzl] cracked open the accompanying control handset to discover which transceiver it used, then found the relevant datasheet and worked out all the pin configuration involved in the SPI communication. Flying data is transmitted as 8 byte packets sent every 20 mS, controlling the throttle, yaw, pitch and roll.
[Dzl] took the build a step further, writing an Arduino library (direct Dropbox download link) that should catch you up to speed and allow you to skip straight to the fun part: hacking and experimenting! See his quick video after the break, then convince yourself you need a quadcopter by watching this one save its creator, [Paul], the trouble of walking his son to the bus stop.
Great news from the UK tech news site, The Register, which is conducting an ambitious project to create and launch their own space plane, guided by APM. The latest trial, involving dropping the autonomous glider from a balloon at 30,000m (101,000 ft), worked great.
In some highly encouraging news for the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) team, a Texan high-flyer recently used the ArduPilot Mega (APM) 2.6 to guide a glider back to base from a heady 30,780m (101,000ft).
Larry Grater's North Texas Near Space 4 (NTNS 4) aircraft hit around 790km/h in an "extended dive" before levelling out at roughly 16,460m, after which it "hit all waypoints and loitered down over the landing location". Larry then took control and landed the plane manually via First Person View (FPV), as the insert later in this video shows:
Tremendous stuff. AS LOHAN fans know, we've got a 3D Robotics APM 2.6 for ourVulture 2 spaceplane...
..and here it is temporarily bodged into the aircraft for servo testing purposes:
Many of you have cautioned that getting the autopilot working properly is a extremely tricky business, especially since we have a supersonic, rocket-powered phase for our mission.
Agreeably, we were recently contacted by ArduPilot (the fixed-wing APM flavour) lead developer Andrew Tridgell - of Samba and Oz UAV Challenge fame - who put us in touch with Larry.
They didn't specify what type of copter is being used, but from the shadow it looks like a TBS Discovery style. It won't be long before the novelty of getting video from a UAV is not the headline of the story, and the story itself can be the focus.
These guys need to clean the condensation out of the lens, BTW!
Hello,
Are the gimbals limited to drones, handy or those that are close to the ground? I would say no.
This topic, which now I briefly describe, took me about two Months. The most important thing is that our glider pilot Sebastian Kawa, a multiple world champion in gliding, yesterday went with a Team to the Himalayas Mountains to make the world's first glider flight over Mount Everest. The glider has its own drive rotary engine for stand-alone start to a ceiling of 2000 m. The rest of the height he will have to reach by sail and thermal climbing. Project was prepared for couple years, they had a lack of proper camera stabilization, which I’ve designed and handmade. This Gimbal is designed for gliders and difficult high mountains environments:
Gimbal rotates 340 degrees and 170 in Yaw Pitch.
After analyzing all the factors that prevail during the flight at an altitude of about 8000 m reached new criteria:
1 Temperature -60C
2 Jet Stream blowing 200 to 350 km / h
3 Aerodynamics gimbal adapted to such speed
4 Battery disabilities and their resistance to low temperatures
And many others result from the above.
I’ve designed aero dynamical gimbal shape for GoPro 3+ on the board. Gimbal position is adjusted from remote panel equipped with LCD and controll sticks. 2.4Ghz provides Video streaming and 800MHz RC.
Whole devices and GoPro are charged from the main LiJon battery located in the device. There was no question of pulling cables, so everything acts autonomously.
The first tests in the air we did at the beginning of October, we found that Yaw power was too small. After increasing motors power, we could operate with gimbal at 120km/h, after next tests and appending additional gear we reached 150km/h with full operational it’s 20km/h more than average cruise speed.
Batteries, I found LiJon currently working at temperatures from -60 to +60 , 4000mAh . To simplify the process of charging I put protection against overcharge and discharge for each cells below targets. This is not a balancer, but enough not to damage the battery during a long flight when the batteries become depleted below a critical voltage.
All electronic controller components were chosen at a range up to +/-50C . Powered by Yaw I’ve set higher power to treat the coil of the Yaw motor it as a heater. The stabilization temperature lacked the time, but I think that's enough.
All of the structures are made from CF to reduce weight with maximum strength.
Here is a short video of the flight test. Keep your fingers crossed for flight over the Himalayas our most known glider world champion.
What's up DiyDrones.com?! I recently created a page on my website DiyDronesNews.com named "Buy & Sell Drones". Below I am going to provide people with a form to fill out if you want your Ebay page or other online market account featured on the Buy & Sell Page. I know there are a lot of people out there who buy and sell drones on ebay and other online marketplaces. Their is a Buy, Sell, Trade page on Diy Drones somewhere but it's hard to locate and you can't integrate ebay channels into the page. If you like drones you could even consider buying model planes, buying APM 2.5's, and selling RTF UAV Models on ebay. There's a market out there already for things like that! If you're a company or individual who sells R/C Models, autopilots, and/or R/C electronics on an online marketplace feel free to fill out the form and I can integrate your account for whatever website on the Buy & Sell page for as long as you want.
You can contact me via DiyDrones or Email: JoshuaAllenJohnson@gmail.com
(Please send me your Form via DiyDrones or my email!)
(If you use Ebay Fill out the form below)
(If you use a different type of market fill out the form below)
The final installment of the 3DR Y6 Build Fly & Review.
Quick overview of 3D Robotics Y6 build and tips to make your build go smoother.
Main Tips-
1. Route motor cables through side of boom. This keeps the wires protected in case of a crash.
2. Use the APM with side entry pins as the top entry model makes it difficult to route wires under top deck.
3. Play close attention to the orientation of the top and bottom decks when assembling as the holes need to be in the right configuration.
4. Always check your motor/prop direction BEFORE installing props. Failure to do so could lead to personal injury or damage to your aircraft.
Overall this is a fantastic multirotor. With the ability to fly autonomously via tablet, laptop or Phone, redundancy of 6 motors and lower price compared to other like hexacopters.
KIT available here- http://store.3drobotics.com/products/...
Hi Guys,
I have created a number of extra scale models to aid me in the design process. Links to design files (skp) are below for use by all. From left to right:
1. RFD900 (Sample kindly provided by Seppo for modelling purposes - and delivered overnight.. just fantastic)
2. MinimOSD
3. DIY 5.8Ghz VTX (I can post eagle files if anyone wishes to use this)
6. Turnigy 6A ESC (stripped and with 5V linear regulator removed)
7. APM 2.5 (posted previously, available in wiki)
Enjoy!!!
This concept from Sandia National Labs could be used for stealth one-way missions. From Wired:
Thus far, Sandia has built and conducted limited testing on conceptual hardware, designating it a “mature concept.” Next on the list is to secure funding for the prototype and approach industry partners to turn the concept into reality.
Multi-Modal Vehicle does have its limitations. Because it sheds parts and material as it transforms from one mode to another, recovery is almost impossible — making every mission an expensive one-way trip.
Well it's been a year since I built my first quad (selecting APM, naturally), and I've decided to do a bit of an upgrade in the off season, as is the tradition. There were four objectives to the exercise:
- better reliability
- simplify
- reduce weight
- improve performance
1. Better reliability
- added 40A ESC's, giving me 15A overhead (formally 30A on a 25A max draw)
- replaced 5V BEC with a 5.5V, after getting occasion chirp from spektrum telemetry about low volts.
- Re-wired the PDB and the ESC's for better RF
- replaced 1 motor that sounded less than optimal
- ESC's now uprated (if you can "uprate "to HobbyKing...:-)) and outboard for cooling and better security
2. Simplicity
- number of battery circuits reduced from 3 to one. New 5.5V and 12V BEC's used
- Unnecessary LED's dumped. Only retained 4 for orientation on the odd occasion I don't FPV. But they are braincube's and *very* bright! Here is the controller:
- Labelled everything
3. Reduce weight.
- Reduced battery circuits from 3 to 1.
- EzOSD replaced with minimOSD. Also in picture: an FPV camer switcher and the Telemetry junction box.
- LED circuits dumped
- Spektrum telemtry TM1000 dumped
- GPS finder dumped
- Leg components replaced with Carbon Fibre
And did it work? Starting weight: 3.65kg. End weight: 3.62kg. lol. However, if I'd stayed with the quadframe brushless (just refused to tune with a martinez board!) and dumbed the Braincube as well, I would have saved over 200g.
4. Performance
Ok, a big subject...
- Moongel replaced with zeal. Unfortunately vibes actually went up! I now hit the +/-5 "safe" limits in high power flight and maneuvers. However, it does seem to respond to very small commands much better; the zeal is firmer than moongel so I might expect that.
- PID's retuned after 3.0.1, to increase YAW control, and to decrease pitch/roll (only by 7%) to improve video footage. It still handles well, but it's now more "Transit" than "Cosworth" (for our american cousins, this translates to: "it's more light truck than corvette").
- 6S Current sensor added. Means Compassmot can be run in CURRENT not THROTTLE. Flight noticably more accurate, especially in RTL, Loiter.
- Higher GPS pole added. Compassmot reduced from 4% to 1%.
- Quadframe gimbal replaced with RCTimer, and video quality immediately improved. Quadframe brushless gimbal just refused to take a tune, and never performed well.
- Radio diversity added via Orangerx 800 (DSMX) + 2 sats. Each with a 30cm cable. One mounted far out under one arm, one as far down on the leg as possible. It's not perfect, but better than before. Radio now much more reliable regardless of orientation. No more scary moments...
Video TX moved to as far down the legs as possible. Range has improved from 350m to well over 600 with 600mw tx + ibcrazy omni's. Will be pushing out further, as I now have an ibcrazy 5 turn helical to play with as well. Also to come: 1/4 wavelength 433mhz antenna's for long range telemetry. How bad is it? It cuts out before the video does...
Gimbal has had 2 upgrades. I replaced the battery plate with my own design, and I'm happy with that. So happy I'm selling it to anyone who wants one. Also replaced the balls with stiffer ones. I still get a tiny bit of jitter in pitch, but I might need to look at my rx feed into the martinez; it might be noisy.
And finally, dumped the 420 line camera, and went with the 650 line from Security Camera 2000 (the one everyone goes for!). Along with some new low light lenses. Works so much better. Just a pity I can't get minimOSD to overlay on the feed for some reason; works ok on the Gopro feed!
What's everyone else got planned this winter?
Using a FrSKY Taranis X9D, we have been mixing different switches for 7 flight modes. RTL on a ONE-Switch Return Home and 6 other flight modes for Arducopter. Today, we are sharing with you Part 3 of the series of videos we made on how to add the sound files to each flight mode and more. We had several field testers and we use a standard of 10 tracks on the field. In addition, 2 more system sounds for battery warning. We have included the sound files we used. You can download the zip file at www.dronemission.com
You will need to complete the 6 Custom Switches from the previous tutorial, in order to assign the sound tracks.
Previously, Part 2: diydrones.com-blogs-part2
The Talking Taranis Experience:
Quick first flight video.
PROS-
Complete Kit
Open source Hardware/Software
Large community and support
CONS-
Manual could be updated with assembly diagrams and better clarification. Some pics and instructions conflict with company website.
Everything has it's place except power distribution board, which leads to next issue.
Very hard to manage all cables and ESC's.
Still a lot of DIY tweaking needed to make fly right.
Would love to see other builders photos of how you managed cabling and/or ARF kit photos.
Pictured below is my Y6 before first flight.
Variable-pitch props allow for amazing 3D performance with fixed-wing aircraft, as this video demonstrates. But they also require real skill to fly. How hard would it be to use APM to automate these sort of acrobatics? Or even just do VTOL takeoff and landings?
(from Hackaday)
For some time I wanted to add ability to provide RSSI from FrSky receiver to APM.
RSSI_PIN parameter works fine for that however some of receivers such as mine FrSky D8R-XP outputs 0 - 3.3 V. For that purpose I've added new param and called it RSSI_RANGE.
This was also issue requested before: https://github.com/diydrones/ardupilot/issues/648
After voltage rescaling it works. rxrssi is shown in scale 0-100.
And added ability to rescale in params:
Here few pictures:
I've used 4.7k resistor and 10uF capacitor to filter pulse signal coming from receiver's RSSI output.
Hope this helps anyone.
Lukasz
More infos at: diydrones.com/profile/JeanLouisNaudin
GitHub: github.com/jlnaudin/x-drone
Hi,
I would like to share an info about EvvGC controller for brushless gimbal. I've made a new model of the gimbal and used EvvGC controller with success.
This controller is developed very fast and Alan coordinated the code (http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1978860).
Few pictures with details.
A quick unboxing and review of the new 3DR Y6 Kit. I will also be posting a build and first flight video soon for anyone interested in this platform.
Evan Ackerman at IEEE Spectrum reports on new research that suggests that a large central rotor (like a helicopter) combined with with three smaller control rotors is a more effecient use of four motors than the conventional quadcopter configuration. They call it a "Triquad":
As cool as quadrotors are, in most cases they're simply not as good as helicopters. Because of the way they're designed (with four small rotors instead of one big one), they're less powerful, less efficient, and less maneuverable. The power and efficiency issues come from the fact that one big rotor generates more lift per aircraft footprint than four small rotors, and as for maneuverability, a helicopter that can alter rotor pitch instantly will always outmaneuver a quadrotor that can only control blade speed. Seriously, try doing this with a quadrotor.
So, the thing that quadrotors have going for them is that they're simple. Helicopters have complex main rotor heads, with shafts and bearings and linkages all over the place, while quadrotors just have four motors and that's it. The University of Queensland researchers came up with a "Y4" configuration that aims to take all the good bits of helicopters and make them as simple as quadrotors. I'm just going to start calling this new design a triquad. Keep in mind that this is still a quadrotor: it just had things shifted around a little bit.
Almost all of the triquad's lift comes from its big main fixed-pitch rotor, located at the center of the "Y" (pictured below). The three little fixed-pitch rotors in the "Y" configuration are angled (at a fixed 45 degrees) to provide counter-torque (which they do slightly more efficiently than a helicopter tail rotor) along with pitch and roll control. Here's how the control works:
Crunching numbers suggested that the triquad would have an increase in performance (in terms of flight time) of about 25 percent over a standard quadrotor configuration. The researchers, being researchers, decided that the only fair way to test this hypothesis was through experimentation, so they built a triquad and a traditional quadrotor that were as identical as possible:
They had the same mass, the same footprint, the same mass devoted to actuators, the same chassis, the same arms, the same batteries, and the same flight controller. The researchers explained that the standard "control" quadrotor had an optimized design, while the triquad was not optimized at all (because its design was constrained to keep it as similar as possible to the control quadrotor). This gave the control aircraft an advantage in power of about 9 percent.
Even with this disadvantage in power and a suboptimal design, the average current draw during hover was over 15 percent higher for the control quad, which translates into a 15 percent increase in flight time for the triquad design. The researchers think that with some tweaking, that theoretically calculated 25 percent increase should be achievable.
"Towards a More Efficient Quadrotor Configuration," by Scott Driessens andPaul E. I. Pounds from the University of Queensland, was presented last week at IROS 2013 in Tokyo, Japan.
