David Windestal posts a video where he uses some relatively high powered video and RC transmitters to guide a small foamie glider back to Earth after releasing it from a weather balloon. It wasn't entirely successful, but pretty cool nonetheless. Something I've always wanted to try.
All Posts (14049)
Sort by
Robotics the Hobby of the Future Part 1
Article By: Joshua Johnson
Drones and robotics are being integrated into our lives at an extremely fast pace. Do you ask yourself why? It's because computer/robotics programs can preform tedious tasks over and over at a very high success rate. Their is some kind of unmanned system in almost every piece of technology you own or use today. If you own a Smart Phone for example they are very cheap affordable systems that are being converted at a low cost into amateur robotics and even corporate robotics.
With this fast paced integration of robotics into cars/transportation, medicine/healthcare, and our hobbies their will be people out there that will fear this. It's our job as robotics hobbyists to help inform and educate the people who aren't informed.
With all the Military Drone news most people see on TV they have a bad image painted in their heads. The amateur news articles showcasing great uses for these systems that could revolutionize our lives are often brushed aside. I've seen hundreds of podcast's, video, and projects that are soon going to be hitting the market. These products are going to change everything in our lives and the amount of free time we have in our lives. The Google Map Cars for example have been driving around for years unmanned while avoiding accidents with unpredictable human drivers all around. Soon we will be enjoying TV, Books, and entertainment all inside of our cars on our car rides. We won't be driving cars soon just ridding in them.
I hope that fellow hobbyists feel the urge that I feel to educate and share with the misinformed that the technology that fuels our hobby is safe. With all this technology and fast passed growth and expansion comes the laws and regulations. Over the next 10 years we will see a rise in laws, regulations, permits, rules surrounding our hobby. If we inform more people on the great uses the better the odds will be that Drone/Robotic Regulation will be less harsh on the average robotics/Drone hobbyist. Everyday these technologies get cheaper and cheaper to produce and innovate new affordable products with. Stay informed and educated so you don't miss out on this fast paced hobby.
***Please take all Military Conversation, Political Debates, and other such Debates over to Dronecafe.com***
Nice brief article explains winglets & shows some new and unusual concepts
From Things With Wings - AvaitionWeek:
"Winglets all work in the same basic way, but they don't all look the same. In essence, winglets reduce drag by recovering some of the energy in the wingtip vortex. This provides an effective increase in wing aspect-ratio (span² divided by area - a measure of slenderness), and therefore a reduction in lift-induced drag, for a smaller increase in span, weight and profile drag compared with simply making the wing longer
Once rare, winglets have become commonplace, and over the years their design has evolved to make them more efficient and maximize the fuel savings they provide. Here are some examples of how winglets have changed - and how they could change in the future."
"A third recent patent, also assigned to Airbus (above, US patent 8,387,922), uses the winglet for more than just reducing wing drag. Actively controlled surfaces are added to the trailing edges of the winglets to introduce aerodynamic instabilities into the eddies shed by the wing. These instabilities would accelerate the dissipation of high-velocity wake vortices and allow aircraft to follow each other more closely. (in the diagram above the cylindrical object (20) at the bottom is a structural housing for the active-surface actuators)."
Hi guys I had an opportunity build the aluminum spine to put between the 2 haves of the Multiplex Easy star this week What I observed on you tube Foam planes don't stand up to impact very well when they hit the ground they break in half or they suffer from compression damage the foam compresses loosing it's original shape . The problem I had with the Radian pro was when you turned the rudder the tail would flex the fuselage independent of the front end The idea of the spine is to give some rigidity to the fuselage the Radian motor and propeller are much bigger than the Easy stars I made the new motor mount for the Radian pro motor and I just have to weld it to the spine then I can laminate the 2 haves of the Easy Star to it.I am extending the fuselage2 3/4 inches and making the rudder and elevator bigger
I am going to "the big city tomorrow night and the hobby shop to look at ways to reinforce the wings I just fly out my backdoor so I can leave the wings assembled and join them permanently together Im going with "flaperons and might "flatten the wing tips . Have a Great Day!
Well, just completed my first flight on my quad, 3dr stock frame. I received a replacement ESC from 3DR today (speedy service!), programmed it and put it on. A few minutes of soldering and a LiPo battery charge later I brought it down to the basement to fly (too rainy outside). I turned it on and armed the motors, noticing that the props all were spinning the wrong way, so I readjusted the esc wires and nervously took off. I got off the ground and steered a little, and in the process, noticed how sensitive the controls were. I had some hard landings, but thanks to my 3D printed landing shoes I found on thingiverse, it had no damage to the copter. I came to close to the wall so I dropped the throttle and landed on a hard piece of metal (ouch!), I heard a cracking noise and it turned out to be a small piece of wood, odd. My PIDs seem all fine, maybe a little tweaking, but I'm rather impressed. Can't wait to outside! I took pictures and a video, the video is too dark though, so I'll just post before flight pictures.
mwc quad // ultraesc 3d from warthox on Vimeo.
There seems to be a lot of concern that the opportunities for applying "good" drone technology will be limited by the fear of "bad" drones by the general public (at least in the U.S.) and with the Alitalia drone encounter the fear of restrictions on model aircraft operations has also increased. My personal interest is in finding ways to facilitate the use of model aircraft in community service projects. I posted a question on the legality of this under the following post describing the problems encountered by the Otter Tail County government in Minnesota to continue their use of model aircraft to perform photographic surveys. I would note that if the county government had these same surveys performed by an aerial survey company from manned aircraft then this whole thing would probably not even be in the news. Aerial surveys from manned aircraft at higher altitudes are pretty routine but would be cost prohibitive for many users.
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/spies-in-the-sky-signal-new-age...
The question I posted over there was whether it would be legal for someone flying under the model aircraft exemption to voluntarily and without compensation collect the imagery and put it into the public domain and for the county government to then use this data to accomplish their survey goals. For the rest of this post, let's assume that this is legal (which I will leave to the experts to decide).
In order to do some good for the public and along the way give the public a better understanding on the "good" uses of drones, we should consider the opportunities for using model aircraft in community service projects.
Some potential application areas might include:
- Aerial surveys such as noted in the post above
- Agricultural / Forest surveys
- Search and Rescue operations
- Wildlife conservation activities (this activity seems to be taking off outside the U.S. with Conservation Drones, SPOTS, etc.)
- Many more that are not even on the radar at the moment
Some potential volunteers to do this work might include:
- Model UAV enthusiasts as individuals
- RC Model Clubs
- Local UAV enthusiast clubs (e.g., D.C. Drones, PDXDrones)
- Boy Scouts / Girl Scouts / 4H / Future Farmers of America / etc. looking for community service projects
- Many more than I can think of at the moment
I would think that national RC Model organizations (e.g., AMA in the U.S.) could form a specific initiative for these types of activities by their local clubs. I know that many UAV enthusiasts have not looked to the traditional RC Model Clubs as something they would be interested in since they have traditionally focused on the modeling and competition sides of the model aircraft world. When I took a look at my local AMA clubs on the web I did not see anything at all regarding UAV technology that would lead me into joining AMA. Looking to the future the RC Model Clubs might find a new source of members and new clubs with a focus on these new areas of model aircraft technology.
As an analogy to the AMA activities I would point to the agreement between the ARRL (HAM radio) and FEMA in the U.S. where local ARRL clubs are trained and perform practice drills in order to be capable of providing emergency communication support during disasters in the U.S. and elsewhere (recently in Haiti). HAM radio cannot be used for commercial purposes but they can provide volunteer support as a community service. I would think that a similar relationship could exist between Amateur Model Aircraft groups and government organizations.
So, assuming there are no legal barriers, what would need to be done to facilitate these types of activities. Most of the current model drone activity seems focused around the technical side with good info and conversation available at rcgroups, fpvforum, and of course here at DIYDrones. This is to be expected for new technology. There are some communities at Google+ focused on "good" drone applications (e.g., Drones for Good, Unmanned Aircraft and Agriculture). Probably others I have missed but I have not seen anything on community service projects.
I suggest that the DIYDrones community has the opportunity to take the lead here. What if we consider adding a capability at DIYDrones to facilitate community service activities. Maybe some sort of clearing house for info on what can be done, how to do it, and maybe a way to connect volunteers to projects. I just finished Chris Anderson's last book (Makers) and some of the info there sparked this suggestion for finding ways to connect people together for community service.
I realize that this quick note has focused on activities in the U.S. so please provide info related to activities elsewhere…
Hoping for some interesting feedback on this...
(As for the picture I needed to include at the start to make this an acceptable blog post, I picked the Techpod since I just ordered one and plan to use it in the future as a platform for experimenting with the types of technology needed for the applications outlined above. I am a retired aerospace engineer and will be looking for opportunities for model drone based community service projects myself.)
Please take a moment to congratulate Tom Coyle on his new position as Senior Administrator for the diydrones.com site.
Tom has been a community member for almost four years now, and has been a great asset to the site. He founded the ArduRover user group, and has been a long-time moderator. In short, Tom is a great example of a positive contributor to the diydrones.com site.
Here's a bit more about Tom from the man himself:
"I guess that you could say that I have engineering in my blood as I have always had to be tinkering with some technical project since I was a child. Both my grandfather and father were engineers and I followed suit, after a six year stint in the US Navy as an electronic technician, earning my BS in Electrical Engineering from CSUN while working for Hughes Aircraft Co.
Except for about a five year period where I worked in the Motion Picture Industry, I have been involved with the Aerospace Industry like my father before me. During the last 15 years, before my recent retirement, I worked for the Raytheon Co as a Senior Principal Engineer providing reliability, testing, and system engineering expertise for the F/A 18 Advanced Targeting FLIR (ATFLIR) Program, the F-16 Modular Mission Computer (MMC) Program, and the Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) Missile Defense Program.
Presently I am enjoying my retirement in sunny Florida, however I have found additional enjoyment participating as a developer/moderator on the DIY Drones website. I am the founder of the ArduRover User Group on DIY Drones and am presently working with Tridgell and Linus on updating the ArduRover2 operating firmware."
Tom, we appreciate your efforts to date and look forward to your continued success with diydrones.com.
Thank you!
John C.
I am please to say that x6 and x7 is coming soon it looks very promising.
DroneCafe.com Is currently being built!
Paul ends Senate filibuster of CIA nominee over drone concerns after nearly 13 hours
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/06/sen-paul-holds-floor-for-hours-in-filibuster-cia-nominee-over-drone-concerns/#ixzz2MrXaL8kk
Published March 07, 2013
FoxNews.com
Nearly 13 hours after he started, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., ended a dramatic, old-fashioned filibuster early Thursday morning -- having held the floor for most of the day and night to rail against the administration's drone program while holding up the nomination of John Brennan for CIA director.
Business in the Senate ground to a halt Wednesday as Paul, aided by colleagues from both parties, launched into the filibuster as he challenged the president’s authority to kill Americans with drones.
Paul's filibuster was longer than most in U.S. history, as most flame out by the 10-hour mark. Paul finished speaking around 12:40 a.m. local time, and his filibuster lasted 12 hours and 52 minutes.
"My legs hurt. My feet hurt. Everything hurts right now," Paul told Fox News shortly after stepping off the Senate floor, saying he believes "we did the best that we could."
"I would be surprised if we didn’t hear back from the White House," Paul said.
Watch Paul discuss his filibuster on Fox News at 2:05 p.m. ET on Thursday.
In a show of support, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came to the Senate floor and congratulated Paul for his "tenacity and for his conviction." McConnell also called Obama's choice of Brennan a "controversial nominee."
The late Rep. Strom Thurmond holds the record for the longest filibuster, at more than 24 hours.
Paul is one of several lawmakers -- on both sides of the aisle -- who has raised concerns about the legal justification for launching drone strikes against Americans overseas. But Paul took to the floor after receiving a statement from Attorney General Eric Holder that creaked open the door to the possibility of using a drone to kill an American inside the United States.
“To allow one man to accuse you in secret -- you never get notified you've been accused,” Paul said on the floor. “Your notification is the buzz of propellers on the drone as it flies overhead in the seconds before you're killed. Is that what we really want from our government?”
Paul said he’d be raising the same complaints under a Republican president.
“No one politician should be allowed to judge the guilt, to charge an individual, to judge the guilt of an individual and to execute an individual. It goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country,” he said.
The senator, speaking for hours, was later joined by Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, as well as fellow Republican senators -- all of whom dragged out the filibuster by asking Paul lengthy and drawn-out questions. At one point, after the filibuster neared it's eleventh hour, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas began reading numerous Tweets in favor of Paul.
That tactic allowed Paul to take brief breaks -- which included a snack break when the senator ate a Milky Way candy bar -- before resuming his speech.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid briefly interrupted to ask Paul if he planned to allow a vote to end debate. When Paul said he wouldn't, Reid concluded that other senators should acknowledge that their work for the day is "through" and plan to come back Thursday.
Paul, who started speaking shortly before noon, said he will filibuster Brennan's nomination “until I can no longer speak,” though he later suggested he would back down if he received a written assurance from Attorney General Eric Holder that the administration would not carry out drone strikes on noncombatant Americans.
This kind of filibuster is rare – typically, senators “filibuster” by refusing to grant the majority the 60 votes needed to proceed to a final vote on certain bills.
Paul, though, said he wanted to raise the “alarm” about the drone issue.
He spoke after receiving letters from Holder on drone authority.
In one letter, Holder said the U.S. has never carried out a drone strike against one of its citizens on American soil, and called a situation where such a strike may occur "entirely hypothetical" and "unlikely to occur."
However, Holder did not entirely rule out that such a scenario may occur in the future, and indicated that such a strike would be legal under the Constitution.
“It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the president to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States," Holder said.
Holder said "catastrophic" attacks such as the Sept. 11 attacks or the attack on Pearl Harbor are examples of circumstances where the president could conceivably feel such an action is necessary.
Testifying on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Holder agreed that it would be unconstitutional to use a drone on American soil against a U.S. citizen and suspected terrorist who did not pose an imminent threat.
Brennan has been a staunch supporter of the administration’s drone program. But, after members of the Senate Intelligence Committee extracted key documents on the program from the administration, the panel on Tuesday voted 12-3 to approve the nomination.
Fox News' Chad Pergram contributed to this report.
***Please take all Military Conversation, Political Debates, and other such Debates over to Dronecafe.com***
First off, we have an exciting announcement about the 2013 SparkFun Autonomous Vehicle Competition. After months of filling out forms, writing emails, and making phone calls, we’ve nailed down a date and location for the 2013 SparkFun AVC. The event will take place on June 8, 2013 at the Boulder Reservoir.
If you’re not familiar with the AVC, this has become SparkFun’s signature event where competitors race against each other with DIY autonomous vehicles. In the past, the event has been held at SparkFun HQ, but the AVC has officially outgrown our location so we’re moving it to the reservoir.
Details, like entrant and spectator signups, will be coming soon, but we have now locked down the date and location. Plan accordingly! We’ll be posting again soon with more details, a course preview, rules, and other info. We hope you can make it for what should be an awesome day of robotics!
With the recent release of APM 2.9x for Arducopter, reducing vibration has become a top top priority. This is because inertial navigation is being implemented, starting with an inertial PID loop in altitude hold. Vibration problems show up in altitude hold and any mode that requires the use of the altitude controller. I was having problems with my quad climbing uncontrollably in forward flight (while in altitude hold) and then descending again when forward motion stopped. I thought it had something to do with transnational lift or air blowing into my APM case, but Randy (developer) helped me determine that the root cause of the problem was in fact vibration.
By enabling RAW logging I was able to see the acceleration forces on the quad in flight. The current thought is that during normal flight (not just a hover - you need to include data from high power settings) the Z acceleration should generally stay between -15 and -5. As shown by the green line on the graph below I was well outside that. I've got a motor that really whistles while flying, so I would guess it has a bent shaft. All my props are meticulously balanced. The red line shows the current vibration level the APM feels after I made a simple mod to the mounting of the APM. By no means was this my idea, but it works great and I highly recommend anyone having trouble with altitude give something like this a shot. Here is the wiki on Vibration Control. By importing the log data to Excel I was able to determine that the standard deviation of the red line is 1.4. I learned how to analyze flight data here. The second video discusses using Excel.
I previously had my APM mounted on a high quality gyro mounting tape, the same kind that the xBee is mounted on in the second picture. The ONLY modification I made to achieve the lower vibration to the APM was to switch to supporting the APM, receiver, xBee and a 42 gram plate with four really squishy earplugs. The diameter of the holes I drilled for the earplugs are a .25". The distance between the plate and frame is 7/32". I admit, 42 grams is A LOT of weight to just add to the quad, but the results are excellent. The all up weight of the supported structure is 111 grams. I first saw this mounting method here. The earplugs hold very well, I can actually pick up the whole quad by the APM and not have it all come disconnected. I messed around with using a little CA glue to hold the ear plugs in more permanently and found that thick CA and some accelerator did not attack the foam at all.
I hope this can help someone who has had trouble switching to 2.9.1.
From Hackaday, news of a new Indiegogo project to produce a real IR camera for less than $300 (although it needs an iPhone/Android smarthphone, too):
These devices normally cost a few thousand dollars, but the team behind the Mu Thermal Camera managed to get the price down to about $300.
The basic idea behind the Mu Thermal Camera is overlaying the output of an infrared thermopile – basically, an infrared camera – on top of the video feed of a smart phone’s camera. This is an approach we’ve seen before and something that has even been turned into a successful Kickstarter. These previous incarnations suffered from terrible resolution, though; just 16×4 pixels for the infrared camera. The Mu thermal camera, on the other hand, has 160×120 pixels of resolution. That’s the same resolution as this $2500 Fluke IR camera. After the indiegogo campaign is over, the Mu camera will eventually sell for $325.
We have no idea how the folks behind the Mu camera were able to create a thermal imaging with such exceptional resolution at this price point. The good news is the team will be open sourcing the Mu camera after their indiegogo run is over. W’e'd love to see those docs now, if only to figure out how a thousand dollars of infrared sensor is crammed into a $300 device.
This would be my first time doing tricks while flying..im not sure what im doing or if its good for a first time.
DroneCafe.com Is currently being built!
Article by: MARK BRUNSWICK , Star Tribune
Updated: February 19, 2013 - 7:42 PM
9 States Wrestling With Legislation On Drones
Drones continue to come home. Nine states, including Minnesota, are working on domestic drone legislation, and a Government Accountability report released last week raises questions about where the federal government is in opening up the skies domestically.
If you need further evidence of how drones are invading our everyday life, there is now a Drone Journalism Lab, a product of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications.
The American Civil Liberties Union reports that the domestic drone legislation that is perhaps the furthest along is in Florida, where a bill would ban drones with exceptions for certain emergencies, suspected terrorism and surveillance that’s been approved by a judge. The measure is moving through the Legislature even as law enforcement has suggested there should be exceptions to allow monitoring of crowds at things like football games, which, in Florida, often translates into civil disturbance.
Last year, we went to North Dakota to see how the domestic drone debate was playing out. At the time, the federal government was trying to come up with rules and regulations to control the use of drones in domestic airspace. Current domestic use of drones is limited to activities such as law enforcement, search and rescue, forensic photography, border security, weather research and the collection of scientific data.
But drones have a future in everything from pipeline safety to monitoring crops to film production to the real estate industry. The Federal Aviation Administration estimates that about 30,000 drones will be flying over the United States in the next 10 years.
Last week, the Government Accountability Office released a report that said the FAA has made progress but still faces challenges. North Dakota hopes to become one of six test sites for drones, known in military parlance as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, but that process is being delayed by privacy concerns. Other concerns: Drones have yet to successfully develop a “sense-and-avoid” technology to keep from hitting other aircraft.
***Please take all Military Conversation, Political Debates, and other such Debates over to Dronecafe.com***
DroneCafe.com Is currently being built!
Article by: MARK BRUNSWICK , Star Tribune
FERGUS FALLS, MINN. - A few years ago, the folks in Otter Tail County thought they had come up with an efficient and inexpensive way to map county land and check for beaver dams in drainage ditches.
They built their own drone with a couple thousand dollars worth of computer equipment, a garage door remote control, a digital camera they bought at Wal-Mart, and a paper and balsa 9-pound plane anyone could buy on the Internet. Using GPS and Mosaic mapping equipment, they could survey 80 acres of farmland 400 feet overhead in about 20 minutes, a job that could take hours on foot in hip boots or cost thousands if they hired a pilot to fly overhead.
That was until the cease and desist letter came from the federal government. The plane has been grounded since then.
"Somebody from Washington called and said, 'What are you doing?' recalled Brian Armstrong, spatial address coordinator with the county's GIS Department. "I said, 'I'm doing this.' And he said, 'You can't do that.'"
County officials recently sought approval from the FAA to begin flying their drone again, in the process becoming embroiled in the larger debate over the increased domestic use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, more commonly known as drones. Otter Tail County showed up on a list of groups seeking to fly above U.S. skies that included the military, the FBI, Border and Customs Patrol, and NASA.
When the list was made public by a group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based consumer digital advocacy group, questions were raised among civil libertarians and conspiracy theorists about why the likes of quiet Otter Tail County in west-central Minnesota would need its own drone. Ever since, Brian Armstrong has been explaining that his drone would be used for surveying, not surveillance.
"I got caught up in the 'Why are you spying on us?' program," he said, "In other countries, people use this for monitoring crops, managing wildlife. There's a lot of uses people have for these small remote-controlled aircraft."
When it was operating, the Otter Tail County drone was never anything more than what you could fly with your kids in the park on a Sunday. Armstrong operated the plane with two people on each end of the flight path, with two additional spotters strictly to watch for "hot air balloons, 747s and fighter jets so it wouldn't crash into anybody at a whooping 400 feet above the ground," Armstrong said.
When he inquired about what would be needed to qualify for federal approval, he was told he had to be a registered pilot and that his ground crew needed to pass airmen physicals.
"All to sit in a lawn chair with a pair of binoculars to watch a plane 400 feet above the ground snapping photographs."
***Please take all Military Conversation, Political Debates, and other such Debates over to Dronecafe.com***
Hello from two members of DIY Drones,
We have built a small website that we think will be useful to this community. We want to know what you think about the site as it is today.
a) Should a common vocabulary be developed for discussing civilian unmanned vehicles, drones, and unmanned vehicle systems?
b) Does this new site provide a sufficient vocabulary for tagging the discussions, so we can all find information faster?
c) Do you think the site could become a reference site for this community, and for the general public?
d) How do you think the site should evolve to provide the most benefit to the most people?
Your comments will influence the direction and pace of further development. Now is a great time to be heard, here where there can be some lively, friendly dialog. We will check in from time to time to read your comments, and to offer some of our own.
Please click here to access and explore the site before leaving a comment.
Thank you, in advance, for taking some time to let us know what you think.
- John (D.) Githens and Doug (R.D.) Starwalt
Don't usually upload a lot of flights but I had been dreaming of this one for a while so I wanted to share. Enjoy!
Santa Monica Airlines from robert mcintosh on Vimeo.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/05/opinion/calo-drones/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Made this simple case for the 3dr uBlox GPS
It's made out of three parts in order to fit a reflector(shield) between the mid and bottom sections.I used thin copper plate but any conductive material should work.
Just ignore bottom part if you're not going to bother with a shield.
No actual pictures yet, out of plastic :)
