Blogs

Hello,

Have you been frustrated while searching the DIY Drones blog posts? You may be interested in THIS page that we made after reviewing all 250 blog posts of January 2013. We focused on unmanned aerial-vehicle systems (UAS) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to identify:

• the posts that are closely related to a defined term or topic;
• a list of sources of components, systems or services, as named in the posts;
• other kinds of information from across the January posts.

Next we will review the 279 blog posts of February 2013, followed by the remaining months of 2013 blog posts.

Because of the large number of links, the page may load slower than other pages on the DroneSpeak website.

- John (D.) Githens and Doug (R.D.) Starwalt

(DroneSpeak Administration)

For quite a while, people have been wondering

- When will ESCs be readily available with SimonK firmware pre-flashed?

- When will some easily obtainable ESCs support I2C, so that flight controllers can read motor status?

HobbyKing has provided the answer, with the newly introduced AfroESC.  It's licensed from both SimonK and timecop.

I've started collecting information here, and will update when more information is available.

http://eastbay-rc.blogspot.com/2013/07/afro-esc-simonktimecophobbyking.html

(short link)

Highlights:

- SimonK preflashed

- Open Source software

- licensed

The awesome team at Flite Test do a practice rescue mission with ArduCopter, equal parts entertaining and impressive:

Josh gets stranded so we deliver rescue supplies with the ArduCopter 3DR Hexa autonomously using waypoints!

Even though the ArduCopter 3DR Hexa is equipped with FPV, we wanted to deliver the supplies to Josh using only the waypoints and line of sight.

Setting up waypoints is as easy as clicking where you'd like the 3DR Hexa to go!

Chad was shooting aerial video with this AnyCopter Hex customized it with the RCTIMER 2-Axis Brushless Gimbal For GoPro.

Learn more about the ArduCopter 3DR Hexa from 3D Robotics HERE!

See more at Flite Test

For those of you who need to make repairs on the road, this might be the answer:

July 1, 2013 By Mike Szczys

Take the machine shop with you; that’s the mantra which drove [Ryan] to build this CNC mill in a briefcase. That album will give you a taste of the final product. But you’ll want to dig through two pages of his forum thread starting with this post in order to behold the build process.

The image above is only part way through the fabrication, but we thought it gave the best overall view of his work. It’s missing the cables which connect to the control circuitry in the lid. The bed has also not been installed and this was before he fabricated the protective case for the PCBs.

Getting everything to fit inside of a folding case was quite a trick. Of course he used CAD to make sure it was possible. There are several places where the clearance when closed is about 2mm. We’re shocked by the build quality of the mill itself. It’s a novel idea to make it portable, but the accuracy and reliability of the machine didn’t suffer for the concept.

If you need a desktop mill that’s not quite as portable here’s a project which will dish out some inspiration.

From Robohub. Excerpt:

This is the third tutorial in the Up and flying with the AR.Drone and ROS series.

In this tutorial we will:

1. Learn about the AR.Drone’s state feedback (and how it is handled by ROS)
2. Learn about the AR.Drone’s tag detection
3. Program our first ROS nodes: A subscriber and a publisher

In the previous tutorials we:

1. Installed ROS, the AR.Drone driver and AR.Drone keyboard controller then flew the AR.Drone using the provided keyboard controller (link)
2. Learned about ROS communication, setup and then flew the AR.Drone using a joystick (link)

In the next tutorials, we will:

• Write a controller to enable tag following

• Write a controller for the drone which allows us to control drone velocity, rather than body angle

Read more here

Hello,

In the DIY series, I built a Boxrover on the basis of a plastic food container, APM2.5 with GPS and telemetry, 2S Battery and a HK cheapo frame for the body (monster beatle, it comes with a 25 amps ESC and a brushless motor:

I removed the ugly HK cover to replace it with a plastic box. It is a nice soft plastic, resistant to shocks and easy to drill with a dremel like tool.

A small keychain HD camera is fixed with velcro. The box itself is fixed with dremellized holes, hot glue and a velcro band all around the frame.

One of the point to pay attention to is the parameters in the ardurover that govern the accelerations and speed. Indeed with thesse cheapo frame from HK, the spur gear is in nylon and can easily be shredded (like I did after the first ten minutes...buy replacement parts immediately)

I used version 2.42 of the ardurover firmware.

I tried a simple auto mission with one waypoint and that does not work well because the autopilot must probably calculate the trajectory based on B-splines (although I did not check the code) : instead of going in a straight line to the waypoint , it makes all sorts of arabesques.

However, as expected from bi-splines, when adding lots of waypoints, it goes all right.

I have a very bad video of my first auto Boxrover mission (sorry for the bad video quality, using a phone in the hands of my son, and he is not equipped with a brushless gimbal, yet :)

Hello,

I am trying out different DIY, cheap approaches to be used as alternatives to expensive carbon plates. When you need strong, rigid plates that are light enough for a Quad, you're stuck with either fiberglass which is not so light and has the unconvenience of being  not so rigid (except in higher thickness wich is than even heavier), either with carbon plates that have other disadvantages : price, it is a conductor material and therefore gets in the path of radio waves. They are also difficicult to shape, cut and drill (plus their dust is toxic).

Therefore, I was wondering how we could find alternate materials, which would replace the above described GF/CF plates by having a good compromise on these criteria : to remain light, strong and rigid, to be cheap, to be able to home build them with basis off-the-shelve components, to not interfere as much with radio waves as full carbon plates.

I experimented previously succesfuly with a DIY plate, baptised Hugues'plate in the following excellent post of Frantz :

Frantz post about building copter with tubes

The result was this:

In this first version I used two thin balsa plates, with in the middle a sandwich of epoxy, and a cotton fabric (cotton provides very strong fibers in all directions, therefore reinforcing the linear fiber pattern of balsa wood). It gave pretty good results.

However the fact of having the external sides of the plate as balsa wood was not a good idea, because we all know in the boom theory and practice that the most external layers of a boom support the tension of the load. Therefore to obtain a more rigid plate, you need the most external layers of the plate to be stiffer and stronger than the inner core.

Solution is easy : reverse the sandwich.

This is what I tried herebelow but experimening other materials. I used still a 1.5mm balsa plate as the inner core. Then on both sides I applied first some UHU epoxy:

This is slow cure epoxy. Very messy but very strong. Even stronger when you heat it up during the drying phase. What is also a good trick to apply such epoxy in thin layers on a plate : mix well the two components in a heat resistant cup. Then take the air dryer of your wife (I already took her cotton fabric so she's getting used to my experiments) and blow hot air on the mix. You will get a very liquid exposy that you can apply with a paint brush quite easily on large surfaces.

Secondly, I applied kind of pultruded carbon "fabric", it is less than one mm thick and comes in rolls covered by a plastic sheet, very convenient to apply in laminated construction, without the epoxy coming through on your fingers:

The result is a balsa plate covered with this carbon laminated thing. Problem is that these are fibers aligned in one direction and it is very brittle if you flex it perpendicular to the fiber's direction.

Therefore I applied a second layer of a kind of very light cotton fabric that we call here "Japan paper"; it looks like this:

As I did not have anymore epoxy, I reverted as a second choice to wood glue to apply this fabric. I used that one:

I like this wood gllue because it is very fast set and quite strong. Much more than the usual white wood glue.

The plate was then put under pressure for a night.

The final result looks like this (close up of the sandwich):

Now some numbers:

Dimensions are : 2,9mm thick - 13 cm by 14,5 cm.

Mass is 26 grams.

Volumetric mass (Density) is thus : 0,47 grams per cubic centimeter.

Rigidity is excellent and I will use it as an attachment plate between my X8 and my brushless gimbal.

I've been working for the last few weeks on developing a parachute recovery system for E382s to reduce the need for manual flying. I know from my own experience that any time a human is at the controls, the risk of crashing is significantly higher. Parachutes have been made for small aircraft before but they're often implemented in an expensive or complicated way. The idea here is to make a simple, working parachute that reduces the overall risk of damaging the aircraft, is simple to use and cheaper to install.

Building the parachute itself was pretty easy, I used this gore size calculator by Scott Bryce and just printed the gores out as patterns. I accidentally printed the pattern out on 8.5x11 instead of 11x17 so this parachute is actually only 22" diameter - much smaller than what it should be for this weight. The gores are cut out of black rip stop nylon and just sewn together. The lines are attached at 8 points, with the lines simply tied through button holes. The line I used is too thin to be sewn into the material but I prefer the thin line, made of kevlar, for its weight and size.

Next I ran a few tests using some dummy mass at about the same weight as an E382, 1.70 kg, to see how quickly it would fall and if it would even open up properly. The first few tests were done with the parachute already pretty much deployed as it was from a pretty low altitude off my building's fire escape.

I thought the speed it hit at was slow enough, despite the smaller chute size, to not significantly damage an airframe and decided to move on with the tests. So I attached the parachute to a light-weight (1.5kg) airframe to see how it would fall and if the wings would affect the speed significantly. Because of the smaller size of the parachute, the airframe was actually still had almost enough lift to fly itself. So as it fell and built up speed, it would begin to pull out of the dive, then the parachute would slow its horizontal movement and it would stall, then presumably repeat until it hit the ground. In a few of the tests, the parachute line also got caught under the horizontal stabilizer, further complicating the problem.

Not wanting to call it a day, I pressed on to simulate the actual deployment. Ideally, the parachute would deploy on its own, be near the center of gravity and allow the plane to fall down roughly level and impact the ground on its belly. That all points to a deployment from on top of the wings, right in front of the motor. On the first try, I loosely packed the parachute on top of the wing and just tossed it. This allowed it to catch wind almost immediately which promptly pushed it straight back into the tail, where it lodged itself, allowing the plane to crash at high speed.

But I tried again, packing the parachute more tightly so it would roll out past the tail in a compact ball before opening up and catching wind. That did the trick! The dive/stall issue is still there but that should be fixed with the next parachute build.

All four tests above plus one more live deployment test on a flying plane are in the video below.

Would you ever use a parachute as your primary recovery mechanism? Why or why not?

Arducopter v3.00 Tricopter GPS lock / Loiter with custom frame in Strong wind!

Tri Copter Setup:
APM 2.6
uBox GPS - RC Timer (Modified cable to connect with 3d Lab's controller)
RC Time Telemetry, transmitter 900 mhz.
Software 3.00
Main frame: DJI F550

Balsa wood arms
Dragon link
5 amps battery

For the longest time I've only been able to get about 500 meters out with my stock 3dR telemetry modules. No matter what settings I tried I couldn't get any further. There's been discussions in the forum about the specs of the radio modems and how far you can go. I've even swapped out telemetry modems thinking I might have fried one. Finally I broke down and ordered some parts from Servo City and built an antenna tracker. Then utilized a 900mhz -8dbi patch antenna I was using for FPV before I switched to 5.8ghz. Today I finally made it out to 1.3km! This is with the patch antenna and a stock antenna onboard the plane. 

I had to reduce my telemetry speed clear down to 2400 baud before I could get a relatively solid signal back to the ground station. Anyone have any suggestions for 3dR telemetry radio settings? I'd love to make it out to 2 km on the 3dR modules and still have a solid telemetry link. I've been eye'ing the RDF900's for quite some time. As much as I'd love to throw more power at my signal I'd like to squeeze what I can out of what I have. 

I am a member of a French yahoo group on 3D printing. Today a member posted a link to this nice brushless gimbal that he designed for the GoPro hero3 and posted on Thingiverse. he did not reference the controller he is using but he published the design files here.

I was browsing through my other news feed ( http://www.flyingmag.com) and notice this.  Here is the Video link to it.    Warning :Strong Language

Well, Here is the comments/post to the incident . This high lights that issue of safety and debate is not limited to RC, Diy UAVs :)

TiltyIMU:

I was digging around Kickstarter and found this pretty slick project - I hope to help this guy get funded because I want one, he's only about $1,600 shy.  I just backed the $100 for a unit.  If he gets close I was considering doing the $400 or $650 backing to put him over the top, I will keep an eye out.  Anyway I was looking at working out using this in conjunction with the UDOO board to come up with something like the AutoPilot boards with the addition of computer vision features.  I want autopilot features plus object tracking.  I would like to setup a camera on the base of my quadcopter to perform precision landing.  Anyway here is the project - TiltyIMU - Kickstarter Pojrect.  Spread the word, he only has 27 days to go and he's getting close.  He used this to create his own version of the Segway - check out his video.

My first backing was of the UDOO board: UDOO - Kickstarter.  They have killed it with 2,376% funded - they have achieved all their added goals.  Anyway I backed one of the UDOO Quad starter kits.  I have been working with the BeagleBone and the Raspberry PI - my main objective is to bring in computer vision - both are okay, but honestly even with the lower level C libraries on OpenCV I am finding the framerate is a bit slower than I want, I tried SimpleCV Python bindings, wow I got 1 - 2 for framerate - I have not tried the direct Camera unit for the Raspberry PI but it's cheap enough I will likely order one.

Anyway check out the UDOO, it's pretty impressive and I think based on the specs I found a board that will actually work for decent computer vision projects - without going to a FitPC like they use in the Darwin-OP platform.  Matt Trossen has the option to buy the electronics only for the Darwin-OP for a cool $1,100 USD.  You can find that: Trossen Robotics - Darwin Electronics Kit.  Matt and Andrew are awesome guys, a majority of my robotic hardware has come from Trossen.  I have a followup blog post I am going to do about a Robotic project years back from Japan that I was involved with and working together with Matt - It was a shame that it didn't take - Story for another time.

The end game is to have Autopilot features combined with computer vision.  Object tracking, so I can have the quadcopter basically run in a follow mode where it tracks something on the ground or in the air.  I would love to have CDAutoRover lead around the quadcopter.  Also for precision landing - I am waiting for the day we have wireless LiPo charging, you can land on a base station, power up and the take off once it is fully charged.

Since my last post From Nothing To Landing, some reader interested in my training curriculum. A few reader also point out that education is very important and actually essential to be success in UAV operation.

Here I share my " home made " UAV training program for a group of six students. They are from the GIS department of a plantation company. 

Day 1

Safety and precaution of radio control electric power UAV system

Introduction to radio control and APM auto pilot

Basic aerodynamic for aeroplane

Introduction to basic radio control plane and flight control

Basic computer simulation training

Day 2

computer simulation training

Basic radio control set up

Introduction to radio control flying in auto pilot assisted stabilize mode at STC ( our local flying field )

Day 3

Introduction to Mission Planner

Plan your first mission

Ground control station monitoring

Advance computer simulation training

Traffic pattern flight training

Take off ( hand launch ) and landing practice in auto mode

Day 4

Advance computer simulation training

APM set up and basic PID tuning

Plan and fly mission in hardware-in-the-loop computer  simulation

Traffic pattern at lower altitude

Low pass

Advance radio control airplane flying in manual mode

Day 5

Advance computer simulation training on landing approach

Navigation turning and crosstrack adjustment

Land approach practice in autopilot assisted stabilized mode

These is the general guild line of the training program. we have quite a lot of interaction with the students and sometime we will not follow the guide line but focus on what the students need.   

This training program certainly not endorse by anyone and far from ideal. I just share what I've done and hopefully fellow DIYdroner will trow in their ideas to make the program better.

By Pete Pachal

The coming Windows 8.1 update, due in the fall, will bring include better support for 3D printers, Microsoft announced Wednesday.

Microsoft vice president Antoine Leblond showed off the new ability at the company's Build 2013 keynote. With a MakerBot 3D printer hooked up to a Windows 8 PC, Leblond showed that printing objects was as easy as selecting the Devices icon from the Windows 8 Charms menu, then the printer.

In Windows 8.1, developers will be able to build 3D printer support into their apps through the new API. For users, that means fewer pieces of software to install, and over time, more apps that will work with 3D printers.

Leblond showed printing an object from a generic 3D rendering app. He also pointed out two printers that were supported, the MakerBot Replicator 2, coming soon to Microsoft Stores, and the 3D systems Cube, which retails for less than $1,300 at Staples, he said.

Will Microsoft's move lead to more platforms supporting 3D printing? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

I few days ago I took this short video of my stock DJI Phantom and stock 3DR Hexacopter on position hold side by side. What I want to share is with the new 3.0 beta firmware Arducopter now performs very similar to DJI on the part where DJI until now has been the best alone.

Being user of both APM and DJI flight controllers it is very inspiring to follow how APM Arducopter gets better and closer to DJI performance for every new firmware release. This new beta release is a milestone for the Arducopter project and the Developers have done a great work with improving the firmware.

From video you can see 3DR Hexacopter performes better than DJI Phantom. Phantom flies good as always. But compared to 3DR Hexa I noticed it moved nervous up and down and around the spot the whole flight. At last Phantom was drifting under Hexa and I ran out and grabbed it to avoid collision (not in video). I think difference in performance may be model spesific, but this show Arducopter now also is very good on position hold!

DJI Phantom from video is complete Stock With the newest firmware release.

Arducopter from video is 3DR Hexa with 880 motors and 11x5 Carbon prop (RCTimer), 3DR ublox GPS, no sonar.

APM 2.5 with Firmware 3.0.0-rc6. All PIDs default from rc6 release.

Hi all,

My motivation to get involved in the development team was to bring a good ACRO mode to ArduCopter. Three or four months ago Robert Lefebvre suggested that we could integrate the rate error and use it to correct the platform in the body frame. He went on to demonstrate this on Heli's. We have since learned that MultiWii use a similar approach and code was developed by Bob Dorion based on MultiWii and discussed here http://www.diydrones.com/forum/topics/flipping-arducopter.

I have taken Robert's approach and integrated it with the current ACRO trainer aids with the help of Robert and Bob. Here is the result:

ArduCopterACRO.zip

This code is based on ArduCopter 3.01rc1 so if you haven't got this flying yet, don't bother with this code.

Changes:

Replace Earth Frame ACRO with Body Frame ACRO

Reduce the dead band on the roll and pitch inputs

In the same way as you could before you can disable all trainer functions by setting
ACRO_BAL_PITCH,0
ACRO_BAL_ROLL,0
ACRO_TRAINER,0

For my flight testing I have been using:
ACRO_BAL_PITCH,50
ACRO_BAL_ROLL,50
ACRO_P,4.5
ACRO_TRAINER,0

Things to discuss are:

Is the performance acceptable?

What additional features are needed? (switched trainer functions, zero throttle doesn't stop motors)

Is there a better algorithm?

Do you see any problems with the code?

How does the performance and feel compare with other systems? (please only comment if you have flown those systems and this system on a well set up copter, anything less is a waist of every bodies time)

I have spent at least 20 minutes doing nothing but flips and rolls of various combinations and mixtures and a similar amount of time doing yank and bank maneuvers. I have not found a problem or any bad habits.

I look forward to your feedback and ideas.

I now have an RCTimer OpenSource BGC board ("Martinez") and a couple of LD-Power Gimbal Motors which are large enough for an NEX or smaller.  I looked over a number of BGC frames for sale but they all seem to incorporate metal or glass fibre, both of which do not have the same strength and low weight of carbon fibre.  Based on the connection system I had used on the first CF gimbal I built from scratch (servo based), I have come up with this design with the size needed for a Sony NEX and the adjust-ability to balance for any camera of that size or smaller to maintain roll balance.  Also, the base plate the camera sits on is deep enough to move the camera back to balance the weight on the pitch axis due to the size of the NEX lenses.  

Once I have hand crafted this design I'll post some video.  From there, if there is enough interest I may get a batch of these laser cut and put them up for sale.  Roughly $30 of 2mm CF board for this and whatever the rate is for laser cutting.

This specific design is for the LD-Power GM4008-57 motors which are 45mm in diameter, 21mm in depth and 85g each.  Still need to work out how many poles these motors have to be able to set up the firmware correctly.  If anyone knows please let me know?  I was planning on using the smaller LD-Power 2208 gimbal motor which was 39g or so but the eBay seller had the wrong picture and weight in the listing. 

Not sure how widespread the problem of baby deer in farm fields is, but at least one team is trying IR-camera drones to spot them before farm machinery hurts them. 

FromBoingBoing (linked video is in French):

By indicating to farmers who are operating heavy equipment where deer might be hiding and resting in their fields. Many deer are killed instantly or lose limbs when they're run over by farming equipment, by farmers who have no idea they're there. What a wonderful use of drones! Video Link. It's a Swiss TV news segment, and includes some other interesting new technologies Swiss farmers are using. (thanks, @DeerRehab)