Hi All

I have been thinking about a ROLL/TILT for the skywalker platform and I came up with something like this. This design is great for Roll/Tilt stabilization.

Any good ideas for something like this?

Of cause I'm willing to share 3D drawings in what ever filetype needed for milling or 3D printing when and if the thing will be finished.

Inspiration from the skylark uav.

Hello all,

I have read many comments on the sensitivity of the Sonar sensor, i.e. mainly two types of issues:

-first electromagnetic interferences, electric interferences that impact the distance measurement stability. Especially the sonar sensor should be as far as possible from all magnetic/electric sources (such as the ESCs, the motors, electronics in general).

-second parasitic sound sources, or vibrations (which by definitions creates sound waves in the air) can also impact correct and stable readings of the sonar sensor.

In the pictures below is shown the installation of the XL-MaxSonar-EZL0 sonar sensor:

I have used the 3DR sensor mount that places the sensor in between two arms of the quad copter. On this picture you see that the three wires going from the sensor to the APM are shielded within a metallic plastic sleeve. This was home built from these metal bags that protect electronic boards...

On the following picture you can see a close up of the sensor that I covered with some microphone bonnet. In fact I purchased a microphone bonnet and I cut the tip of it to match the size of the sensor. This improves the sonar not to pick up too much parasitic noises:

This picture shows the microphone bonnet positionned on top of the sonar sensor

This picture shows the system in place, screwed on the sonar mount (fiberglass piece from 3DR store accessories)

On the last picture below you see how the cables passes through the microphone bonnet, by making a little slit into it:

The wires coming out of the sensor are wrapped in this metal plastic foil as explained above. The bonnet holds simply with a touch of hot glue (hot glue guns are great for that) and by the cables going through the slit.

I did not test this setup yet in flight (I just built the quad and am still waiting to get my radio delivered from hobbyking and that takes ages to come from Asia...) but will keep you posted of the results. So far some tests done as inside a cluttered room with PC interferences are promissing.

Happy new year to all

The christmas Tiger-Motors Navigator Series MN4010 370kv motors  !

Unbox photo review of these pretty motors.

More picts on our blog : http://www.aedrox.com

Interesting Video i thought many guys would use it for food for thought... Anjoy it. 

Excellent positive piece about domestic drones in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal, featuring us ;-)

Excerpt:

'Didn't you always want a bird on a leash?" asked the young man. He was wearing a dinosaur hoodie, with soft fabric spikes down the back, and holding a piece of tape about 10 feet long. At the end was an airborne personal drone—four hoops fused together, propellers inside each—buzzing obediently behind him. The crowd of a hundred, at this month's DroneGames in San Francisco, was rapt. A drone as a pet! We all wanted one.

The competition, a sneak peek into what's coming in the new year, included 12 teams, with 43 programmers from Twitter, Stanford and beyond. The winner wrote a virus that installed itself in a drone and made it go crazy. He called it "amuckcopter." But don't let that throw you. Drones are more peaceable than you think—or they can be.

I've just added this page of tips on choosing radio frequencies to the manual. Corrections/suggestions?

-----------

Some tips on picking wireless frequencies

Wireless can be something of a black art, and there are a dizzying array of standards and choices. Here are some simple guidelines to help you pick wisely:

• RC and amateur UAV gear usually operates in these frequency ranges:

1. 72 MHz (older analog RC gear in the US)
2. 35 MHz (older analog RC gear in Europe)
3. 433 MHz (RC and telemetry, in Europe)
4. 900-915 MHz (video and telemetry, in the US)
5. 1.3 GHz (video)
6. 2.4 GHz (digital RC gear, video and telemetry)
7. 5.8 GHz (video)

• It is a bad idea to have transmitters and receivers in the same frequency range, so you'll want to choose your equipment to avoid this. Even if they use different frequencies, try to keep transmitters (telemetry, video) and receivers (RC, GPS) as far apart as possible. The only time you should consider having two radios onboard that share the same frequency is if they are digital spread-spectrum radios, such as those in the 2.4 GHz range.

• In general, the lower the frequency the longer the range because it can go around obstructions better, so 900 MHz video tends to have longer range than 2.4 GHz video. But digital transmission technology can more than compensate for that, so it's not a hard-and-fast rule. For instance, a high-end spread-spectrum 2.4 GHz wireless video setup can outperform a lower-end 900 MHz one.

• Some frequency ranges are more crowded than others. For instance, indoors and in urban environments 2.4 GHz has to compete with everything from WiFi to Bluetooth to cordless phones. 900 MHz just competes with some cordless phones.

• 1.3 GHz is quite close to the frequencies the GPS satellites transmit at, and it can degrade your GPS performance. If you are using a 1.3 GHz transmitter, keep it as far from your GPS module as possible.

Here are some sample recommended configurations:

This video was just posted by EndOfDays, a well known figure in the photo/video multicopter scene.

And for the record, let me just say that some people have WAY to much free time. :)

More cool stuff from MIT's AeroAstro lab.

Cool stuff from MIT's AeroAstro lab. 

Congrats to Gary Mortimer, whose sUASNews site broke this story:

The long arm of the law has finally caught up with the operators of the Columbia Packing Company.

In January 2012 we were sent the images that exposed the level of pollution occurring. They were taken by an sUAS News reader that still wishes to remain anonymous. The story went viral and continues to receive hits nearly a year later.   I believe this is the first environmental crime to be prosecuted on the basis of UA evidence. Authorities had to act because of the attention the story was receiving.

Well done again that person for getting the shot and making a difference.

DALLAS -

A Dallas County grand jury returned several indictments on Wednesday against an Oak Cliff meat packing company accused of dumping animal blood in a creek that flows into the Trinity River.

Columbia Packing Company and its owner, Joe Ondrusek, face twelve indictments for water pollution.

If found guilty, the company could pay fines between $6,000 and $1.5 million. Ondrusek himself could get five years in prison and fined up to $100,000 for each count.

The grand jury also found evidence that the company, Joe Ondrusek and family member Donny Ondrusek tampered with physical evidence and returned six counts against them. The company could face more fines, and the Ondruseks could face up to 10 years in prison and $10,000 for each charge.

Neighbors near the plant on 11th Street had long complained about noxious fumes and other problems from the meat packers. But investigators didn’t get involved until a remote-controlled toy enthusiast happened to affix a video camera to an RC aircraft and videotape gallons of what appeared to be blood gushing down the river.

This has been out there for a while, but I don't think we've posted on it here yet. It's an art piece (with a bit of a political message), but still very nicely done. From the Ponoko blog:

The UAV Identification Kit 001 was made by James Bridle while he was an Artist in Residence at the Visible Futures Lab at the School of Visual Arts in New York. It is intended both to help visualize drones for a public that is still largely unaware of their particulars and to aid in the identification of drones by observers on the ground.

The kit includes 3D printed models of three commonly used military drones: the MQ-1 Predator, the RQ-170 Sentinel, and the RQ-4 Global Hawk. Equivalent kits for manned aircraft have long been used to train both military and civilian spotters, the most well-known example being civilian spotters trained during WWII.

For their "Problemsolving and design" project, 2nd year engineeringstudents of the Katholic university of Leuven (Belgium) designed and built multicopters out of the departments waste materials stream.  The electronics were given and the focus of the project was on frame materials and design.  Therefore they only got a limited budget of 20€ for the frame.

All 6 teams succeeded in designing and building a flying copter.

Some notable designs were a sandwich composite frame called ROXXY, which can be seen flying in the video and a frame base on spokes from a bicycle wheel.  Both frames turned out to be rather crashresistent, as the students had never flown a copter before.

Feedback from the students about this project was very positive and they clearly enjoyed themselves doing it.

Good news for those who wanted the APM 2.5+ with side pins (best for multicopters): they're now available fully assembled in the enclosure, with the usual GPS and Power Module (shown). No more connector soldering required!

We're also offering APM 2.5+ kits with the 3DR telemetry pack, in both 915Mhz (US) and 433Mhz (Europe) versions, and both side-pin and top-pin varieties.

• APM 2.5+ (top entry) w/ 915Mhz 3DR radio set
• APM 2.5+ (side entry) w/ 915Mhz 3DR radio set
• APM 2.5+ (top entry) w/ 433Mhz 3DR radio set
• APM 2.5+ (side entry) w/ 433Mhz 3DR radio set

In addition, we're having an End of Year sale of Ready-to-Fly ArduCopters and Arduplanes. You can take $50 off the already-discounted holiday prices of any RTF vehicle by using the discount code RTF05. That brings their prices down to:

RTF 3DR ArduPlane ($500)

RTF 3DR ArduCopter Quad ($550)

RTF 3DR ArduCopter Hexa ($715)

Finally, check out some of the other sale items at the 3DR store, including $15 off the MinimOSD board and a new lower price for the PX4 AR.Drone replacement kit, which allows you to turn your Parrot AR.Drone into a real drone!

Found a neat little plastic box at "The Container Store" for 99 cents.  Fits the UBlox LEA 6H in width and height perfectly.  May need to stuff a foam spacer on the length wise side.  Just tried it in the backyard and the GPS got a fix in about 30 seconds - the plastic cover is not adversely affecting the reception.

New machines are arriving to jDrones office. 

What is it, we will se in following weeks. But as a hint there are some details that we can share now for it:

- It's 3.000 Kg heavy

- It's 2.7m tall, 1 meter wide and 2.8 meters long

- It uses electricity (and a lot)

- It's rather silent

With the machine we can really change many of our products to be better and better. It won't get tired on new parts.

Let's start guessing what it might be. 

There are few people that already know what it is and we do not accept guesses from those, you all know who i mean :)

So who will be first one to guess what is our new mystery machine???

Jani / jDrones

SECOM is Japanese home & business security services provider.

They are introducing Quad UAV to support their business.

The security UAV is based on Ascending Technologies GmbH by ASCII.jp.

SECOM will provide this UAV as rental bases about $60/month.

Nothing particularly new in the argument (drones will require new privacy regulations), but it's notable that the New York Times has recognized that domestic drones are going to be a big new industry. Op-ed here. This is the way it starts:

The Dawning of Domestic Drones

The drones are coming to a neighborhood near you.

Hi! I just want to inform you that there is a very good progress in the german forum here:

http://fpv-community.de/showthread.php?19252-Brushless-Gimbal-Controller

and here:

http://fpv-community.de/showthread.php?15899-Brushless-Direct-Drive-Gimbal

concerning the brushless gimbal that was originally kicked off by Alexmos.

Greetings

Kraut Rob