Part 6 of the series takes us to Monument Valley in Utah. We had the coolest guide ever. Quickly explained him the concept, where he needs to take us so we can take shots, and then off we went in an old rusty bumpy vehicle. Great fun, great scenery and I think none of the "random tourists" that were there with us will ever forget the views ...
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Heads up: Drones are going mainstream.
Civilian cousins of the unmanned military aircraft that have tracked and killed terrorists in the Middle East and Asia are in demand by police departments, border patrols, power companies, news organizations and others wanting a bird's-eye view that's too impractical or dangerous for conventional planes or helicopters to get.
Along with the enthusiasm, there are qualms.
Drones overhead could invade people's privacy. The government worries they could collide with passenger planes or come crashing down to the ground, concerns that have slowed more widespread adoption of the technology.
Despite that, pressure is building to give drones the same access as manned aircraft to the sky at home.
"It's going to be the next big revolution in aviation. It's coming," says Dan Elwell, the Aerospace Industries Association's vice president for civil aviation.
Some impetus comes from the military, which will bring home drones from Afghanistan and wants room to test and use them. In December, Congress gave the Federal Aviation Administration six months to pick half a dozen sites around the country where the military and others can fly unmanned aircraft in the vicinity of regular air traffic, with the aim of demonstrating they're safe.
The Defense Department says the demand for drones and their expanding missions requires routine and unfettered access to domestic airspace, including around airports and cities. In a report last October, the Pentagon called for flights first by small drones both solo and in groups, day and night, expanding over several years. Flights by large and medium-sized drones would follow in the latter half of this decade.
Other government agencies want to fly drones, too, but they've been hobbled by an FAA ban unless they first receive case-by-case permission. Fewer than 300 waivers were in use at the end of 2011, and they often include restrictions that severely limit the usefulness of the flights. Businesses that want to put drones to work are out of luck; waivers are only for government agencies.
But that's changing.
Congress has told the FAA that the agency must allow civilian and military drones to fly in civilian airspace by September 2015. This spring, the FAA is set to take a first step by proposing rules that would allow limited commercial use of small drones for the first time.
Until recently, agency officials were saying there were too many unresolved safety issues to give drones greater access. Even now FAA officials are cautious about describing their plans and they avoid discussion of deadlines.
"The thing we care about is doing that in an orderly and safe way and finding the appropriate ... balance of all the users in the system," Michael Huerta, FAA's acting administrator, told a recent industry luncheon in Washington. "Let's develop these six sites — and we will be doing that — where we can develop further data, further testing and more history on how these things actually operate."
Drones come in all sizes, from the high-flying Global Hawk with its 116-foot wingspan to a hummingbird-like drone that weighs less than an AA battery and can perch on a window ledge to record sound and video. Lockheed Martin has developed a fake maple leaf seed, or "whirly bird," equipped with imaging sensors, that weighs less than an ounce.
Potential civilian users are as varied as the drones themselves.
Power companies want them to monitor transmission lines. Farmers want to fly them over fields to detect which crops need water. Ranchers want them to count cows.
Journalists are exploring drones' newsgathering potential. The FAA is investigating whether The Daily, a digital publication of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., used drones without permission to capture aerial footage of floodwaters in North Dakota and Mississippi last year. At the University of Nebraska, journalism professor Matt Waite has started a lab for students to experiment with using a small, remote-controlled helicopter.
"Can you cover news with a drone? I think the answer is yes," Waite said.
The aerospace industry forecasts a worldwide deployment of almost 30,000 drones by 2018, with the United States accounting for half of them.
"The potential ... civil market for these systems could dwarf the military market in the coming years if we can get access to the airspace," said Ben Gielow, government relations manager for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry trade group.
The hungriest market is the nation's 19,000 law enforcement agencies.
Customs and Border Patrol has nine Predator drones mostly in use on the U.S.-Mexico border, and plans to expand to 24 by 2016. Officials say the unmanned aircraft have helped in the seizure of more than 20 tons of illegal drugs and the arrest of 7,500 people since border patrols began six years ago.
Several police departments are experimenting with smaller drones to photograph crime scenes, aid searches and scan the ground ahead of SWAT teams. The Justice Department has four drones it loans to police agencies.
"We look at this as a low-cost alternative to buying a helicopter or fixed-wing plane," said Michael O'Shea, the department's aviation technology program manager. A small drone can cost less than $50,000, about the price of a patrol car with standard police gear.
Like other agencies, police departments must get FAA waivers and follow much the same rules as model airplane hobbyists: Drones must weigh less than 55 pounds, stay below an altitude of 400 feet, keep away from airports and always stay within sight of the operator. The restrictions are meant to prevent collisions with manned aircraft.
Even a small drone can be "a huge threat" to a larger plane, said Dale Wright, head of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association's safety and technology department. "If an airliner sucks it up in an engine, it's probably going to take the engine out," he said. "If it hits a small plane, it could bring it down."
Controllers want drone operators to be required to have instrument-rated pilot licenses — a step above a basic private pilot license. "We don't want the Microsoft pilot who has never really flown an airplane and doesn't know the rules of how to fly," Wright said.
Military drones designed for battlefields haven't had to meet the kind of rigorous safety standards required of commercial aircraft.
"If you are going to design these things to operate in the (civilian) airspace you need to start upping the ante," said Tom Haueter, director of the National Transportation Safety Board's aviation safety office. "It's one thing to operate down low. It's another thing to operate where other airplanes are, especially over populated areas."
Even with FAA restrictions, drones are proving useful in the field.
Deputies with the Mesa County Sheriff's Office in Colorado can launch a 2-pound Draganflyer X6 helicopter from the back of a patrol car. The drone's bird's-eye view cut the manpower needed for a search of a creek bed for a missing person from 10 people to two, said Ben Miller, who runs the drone program. The craft also enabled deputies to alert fire officials to a potential roof collapse in time for the evacuation of firefighters from the building, he said.
The drone could do more if it were not for the FAA's line-of-sight restriction, Miller said. "I don't think (the restriction) provides any extra safety," he said.
The Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, north of Houston, used a Department of Homeland Security grant to buy a $300,000, 50-pound ShadowHawk helicopter drone for its SWAT team. The drone has a high-powered video camera and an infrared camera that can spot a person's thermal image in the dark.
"Public-safety agencies are beginning to see this as an invaluable tool for them, just as the car was an improvement over the horse and the single-shot pistol was improved upon by the six-shooter," said Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel, who runs the Montgomery drone program.
The ShadowHawk can be equipped with a 40 mm grenade launcher and a 12-guage shotgun, according to its maker, Vanguard Defense Industries of Conroe, Texas. The company doesn't sell the armed version in the United States, although "we have had interest from law-enforcement entities for deployment of nonlethal munitions from the aircraft," Vanguard CEO Michael Buscher said.
The possibility of armed police drones someday patrolling the sky disturbs Terri Burke, executive director of the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"The Constitution is taking a back seat so that boys can play with their toys," Burke said. "It's kind of scary that they can use a laptop computer to zap people from the air."
A recent ACLU report said allowing drones greater access takes the country "a large step closer to a surveillance society in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded, and scrutinized by the authorities."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which focuses on civil liberties threats involving new technologies, sued the FAA recently, seeking disclosure of which agencies have been given permission to use drones. FAA officials declined to answer questions from The Associated Press about the lawsuit.
Industry officials said privacy concerns are overblown.
"Today anybody— the paparazzi, anybody — can hire a helicopter or a (small plane) to circle around something that they're interested in and shoot away with high-powered cameras all they want," said Elwell, the aerospace industry spokesman. "I don't understand all the comments about the Big Brother thing."
Awhile ago we (Centeye) started ArduEye, a project to implement an open source programmable vision sensor built around the Arduino platform. The first ArduEye version used a simple Tam image sensor chip and a plastic lens attached directly to the chip. After much experimentation and some feedback from users, we now have a second generation ArduEye.
The second generation ArduEye is meant to be extremely flexible, ultimately allowing one to implement a wide variety of different sensor configurations. A basic, complete ArduEye is shown below, and contains the following basic components:
An Arduino- Currently we are supporting Arduino UNO-sized boards (e.g. UNO, Duemilanove, Pro) and the Arduino MEGA. When the ARM-driven DUE comes out, we will surely support that as well.
A shield board- this board plugs into the Arduino, and has a number of places to mount one or more image sensor breakout boards. This shield also has places to mount an optional external ADC as well as additional power supply capacitors if desired.
A Stonyman image sensor on a breakout board- The Stonyman is a Centeye-designed 112x112 resolution image sensor chip with an extremely simple interface: 5 digital lines in, which are pulse in predefined sequences, and one analog line out, which contains the pixel. The Stonyman chips are wirebonded directly to a 1-inch square breakout board, which can plug into the shield.
Optics- Possibilities include printed pinholes, printed slits, and cell-phone camera lenses, depending on what you want to do.
Example application- The "application" is an Arduino sketch programmed into the Arduino. This sketch determines what the ArduEye does. One sketch can make it track bright lights, another sketch can measure optical flow, and so on. We are releasing, initially, a base sketch that demonstrates light tracking, optical flow, and odometry. Let us know what other example applications you would like to see.
ArduEye libraries- These libraries are to be installed in your Arduino IDE's "libraries" file, and include functions to operate the Stonyman image sensor chip as well as acquire and process images, including measuring optical flow.
GUI- Finally, we created a basic GUI that serves as a visual dump terminal for the ArduEye. You can now communicate with the ArduEye via either the GUI or the basic Arduino IDE's serial terminal. The GUI was written in Processing.
We designed the system to allow easy hacking to implement a wide variety of vision sensors by exploring combinations of optics, image sensing, and image processing. I personally find it useful, and actually use this system for prototyping things at Centeye- I can prototype a new vision sensor in just a couple hours. The target applications are quite broad and include just about anything that may use embedded vision, whether robotics, sensor nets, industrial controls, interactive electronic sculptures (yes this has come up), and so forth.
The video at the top shows some of the basic things you can do with this ArduEye. You'll see the ArduEye interfacing with a host PC using both the Arduino IDE's serial terminal and the ArduEye GUI. For more details, including links to the hardware design files and source code, go to the ArduEye wiki site. The site is a work in progress, but is adequate to get people started. The sample "first application" and GUI is what was used to generate the above video.
Right now we are having 200 Stonyman breakout boards being assembled- they should be ready within a month. We'll make more if this is well-received. We can assemble a few in-house at Centeye- I'll do this if enough people twist my arm and promise to really play with the hardware. :)
Please let me know your thoughts. In particular, are there any other "sample application" sketches you'd like us to implement?
A University of Colorado Asst. Professor is transitioning his GoJett Supersonic UAV project into a business.
From University of Colorado News:
"The UAV is intended to shape the next generation of flight experimentation… Its thrust capacity makes the aircraft capable of reaching Mach 1.4, which is slightly faster than the speed of sound. Starkey says that regardless of the speed reached by the UAV, the aircraft will break the world record for speed in its weight class.
Its compact airframe is about 5 feet wide and 6 feet long. The aircraft costs between $50,000 and $100,000 -- a relatively small price tag in a field that can advance only through testing, which sometimes means equipment loss.
Starkey’s technology -- three years in the making at CU-Boulder -- is transitioning into a business venture through his weeks-old Starkey Aerospace Corp., called Starcor for short. The company was incubated by eSpace, which is a CU-affiliated nonprofit organization that supports entrepreneurial space companies. Starkey’s UAV already has garnered interest from the U.S. Army, Navy, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and NASA. The acclaimed Aviation Week publication also has highlighted Starkey’s UAV.
Starkey says technology transfer is important because it parlays university research into real-life applications that advance societies and contribute to local and global economies."
Another cool one from Hackaday today.
[Frank] managed to pull together an impressive collection of features when developing the project. First off, the quadcopter itself uses all-PCB construction. Even the supports for the motors are PCBs with keyed slots to mate perpendicular to the main control board, then held firm with solder joints. We think this will be a more resilient option than this other all-PCB build.
The control board seen in the foreground has an edge connector which mates with a Wii classic controller connector. This is what you use for flight control. But there’s even more. The pinheader just visible on the left side of the controller mates with a socket on the ‘copter board. This allows you to sync the two so that there’s no radio frequency interference, and recharge the batteries from a USB connection. Speaking of those wireless communications, [Frank] chose to use an ATmega128RFA1. This is a newer microcontroller from Atmel that has a radio built into it. Add a gyroscope sensor and some motor control and you’re in business.
Check out those flips! From Hackaday:
Straight from the Aerospace Controls Laboratory comes a variable-pitch quadrocopterdesigned by [Mark Cutler] and [Jonathan P. Howe]. While real, full-sized helicopters always have variable pitch rotors, changing the pitch of the blades on remote control aircraft is a fairly uncommon modification. When it’s done right, though, being able to easily change the thrust direction of a propeller leads to very cool flights, like having an airplane hover nose down.
[Mark] and [Jonathan] identified two interesting techniques that a variable pitch quadrotor can bring to the table. The first is trajectory generation - because of the added maneuverability, their quadrotor can perform more aggressive banking turns when following a preprogrammed path. The second benefit to their design is quick deceleration. In the first video after the break, you can compare the deceleration rates of a variable pitch and fixed pitch quadrocopter. While the fixed pitch quad continues climbing after being commanded to stop, the quadrocopter outfitted with variable pitch rotors can stop on a dime.
Not legal yet in the US without a COA, but apparently allowed in Australia. FromMakezine:
The emerging story of entrepreneurs using drones to provide marketable services is fascinating to me. Small businesses have been making money by making drones themselves for quite awhile, now, but I’m just now starting to see start-ups using drones to sell services.
Aerial photography is maybe the most obvious opportunity—surveying real estate, covering sporting or other events, stalking celebrities, assessing damage after fires or other catastrophes—but there are also all kinds of potentially lucrative (and annoying) advertising and/or promotional possibilities. And that’s just scratching the surface of the possibilities of airborne drone-based services, never mind those of land-, water-, and underwater-going
varieties.An interesting case in point is Australian Simon Jardine, whose bouncing baby drone business is called Eye in the Sky. Australia is prime country for private aerial imaging services, with its relatively low population density, ongoing development, and vast, open spaces. Jardine’s photography was recently featured in a (surprisingly upbeat) Atlantic article about drones and privacy issues, and he’s got a Flickr stream full of great drone photography. [via Boing Boing]
If your UAV is big enough to carry a DLSR, here's a great way to control the lens. From Hackaday:
[Vladimir] built an Arduino-based pass-through ring (translated) which intercepts automatic lens controls. It’s meant for use with the Canon EOS lenses which have their own electronics allowing control of things like focus and zoom.
It seems like part of the motivation here was to uses the lenses with other brands of cameras. But [Vladimir] does also talk about the possibility of improving on some of the sensors that don’t perform well in certain climate conditions (think of how crystal oscillators will drift as temperature changes).
The machine translation is a bit rough to follow, but it seems the adapter ring still uses the settings sent in from the camera but has the Arduino clone to translate them into a format that the lens is expecting. In addition to this there is a set of buttons on that small PCB beside the lens which allow for fine tuning the aperture.
Armed with a remote-controlled helicopter nicknamed the "scientific predator", CSIRO scientists are circumnavigating Australia, documenting the tonnes of litter left or washed up on the nation's beaches and calculating the impact on marine life.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/eye-in-sky-filming-our-rubbish-shame/story-e6frfro0-1226280052411#ixzz1nJTfV0mf
Much better looking than the last tethered attempt, like the idea of a big coaxial pair in the centre to do the lifting. I knew a girl like that.
The HoverMast responds to the need for quick, mobile intelligence gathering. At the click of a button, the system autonomously deploys, rising to heights of up to 50 meters within 10-15 seconds. Secured by a cable, serving as a power supply and wideband data link, the highly stabilized HoverMast combines advanced flight algorithms and innovative materials to provide the highest payload-to-size ratio available today. Weighing only 10 kg, the platform is capable of hosting 9 kg payloads, such as electro-optic sensors, laser designators, radar, and sophisticated COMINT and ELINT systems. Its data link enables the transfer of critical data to selected recipients in real time.
From Robots.net:
This image is not cgi or a miniature; it is a real mountain slope where artist Sonja Hinrichsen created this beautiful pattern simply by walking in circles. The robotic perspective of this concept is the way the photos and the video were shot, not by a helicopter but by a small (but quite expensive) octocopter by video production company steamboat aerials. The Cinestar8 costs around 10k $ but it can carry the ~400gr camera while being stable enough to produce this result. The video is similar to that of a hugely expensive helicopter shot or even better considering the lack of downwash a helicopter creates. This video is already very popular but almost no-one cares how it was shot, most people focus on the art-concept (reasonably so), maybe drone filming is starting to become quite mainstream. You can enjoy the full scale of it at this video on vimeo and you can find high-resolution aerial images here.
CANADA IS NUMBER ONE IN NORTH AMERICA!
Figure 12-2 Work Plan
Well folks after some browsing I've discovered that Canada is the current leader in terms of regulations of commercial use UAVs in North America. Whereas the US President has just recently signed a bill to get the FAA to create detailed regulations for commercial use of UAVs, Canada has been working on them since 2008.
Here's a Work Plan extracted from the final report of the UAV Working Group, from the Transport Canada website:
12.2 Work Plan for Complete and Safe Integration into Canadian Airspace: 2012
The Working Group proposes the following Work Plan to achieve complete and safe integration of UAVs into Canadian airspace by the year 2012. The Working Group believes there is an immediate need for the creation of a UAV SFOC Review Working Group. All other Working Groups that are referenced in this Work Plan would be part of a longer-term process to achieve routine operations of UAVs in Canadian airspace.
WORK PLAN
2007:
- Submit Unmanned Air Vehicle Working Group Final Report to Transport Canada Senior management; and
- Approval and creation of a UAV SFOC Review Working Group.
2008:
- Implement registration of UAVs;
- Revise Staff Instructions in accordance with UAV SFOC Review Working Group recommendations and implement additional recommendations (advisory material etc.);
- Have procedures/exemption(s) in place for UAVs operating inside buildings and underground;
- Continue the development of Industry Groups to represent the Canadian UAV Industry to Transport Canada;
- Initiate collaborative effort toward Design Standards; and
- Allocation of dedicated Transport Canada resources.
2009:
- Develop or adopt Airworthiness Design Standards for UAVs with a MTOW not exceeding 150 Kg;
- Creation of a Working Group to deal with UAS-specific components; and
- Create Notices of Proposed Amendments (NPAs) for presentation at CARAC Technical Committee Meetings:
- January 1st – December 30th:
- General Operating and Flight Rules;
- Pilot/Maintainer Qualifications and Training; and
- Maintenance and Flight Authorities.
2010:
- Create NPAs for presentation at CARAC Technical Committee Meetings:
- Completed by December 30th:
- Airworthiness Certification;
- Operating Certificates (new Working Group); and
- New operating rules (e.g., IFR approaches etc.).
- Development of Advisory material / Exemptions - after approval of NPAs
2012:
- Completion – safe airspace integration.
Driving through the west part of the US and making a short stop in Salt Lake City before heading back towards Reno.
My ambition is to send APM aloft to the edge of space on the end of a balloon, and since it gets a little cold up there, I decided to take a look at what I would need to keep things running well.
NASA have kindly given the world a mathematical atmospheric model which shows that if I can meet the challenge at -56°C, I should be OK at any altitude. Here is the temperature of the atmosphere according to NASA:
So, having established a boundary condition, I fired up APM and measured the current draw at various voltages. My measurements showed me that APM will chew anywhere between 1.3W and 2.3W, from 5V through to the 7.2V that I will probably run it on using a 2S LiPo battery.
I then constructed a small EPS enclosure model in SolidWorks and ran a simple thermal study with a boundary temeprature of -56°C and an internal heat power source of varying levels (see above). The EPS enclosure I modelled is a 10mm thick box and just large enough to fit a fully assembled APM1 with no accessories - obviously I will have to have some cable penetrations and a few other compromises in the final design, however the model suggests I can keep it comfortably above freezing with only 3.5W of power, 2.3W of which APM will generate of its own accord
.
To make this work, I will probably use a heater resistor powered by the relay that I can PWM to top-up the heat as necessary with a closed-loop controller using the on-board temperature sensor data for feedback. Obviously I will lose the OAT measurement, which will have to be subsituted by an externally mounted NTC thermistor.
So, now I have a first-pass heater power value for my mission power budgeting. I will refine and optimise this as I progress with the design of the electronics installation on HDwing.
Onward and upward (eventually!)
The New York Times invited some policy analysts to debate the issues surrounding the introduction of drones into the domestic airspace. Not a lot new here, but interesting to see this reach the mainstream media.
You can read the whole thing here.
ABC News Australia has a thorough piece on the state of "drone journalism", which gives some good examples and cuts through the sort of silliness that characterized some earlier reports, such as those featuring Occupy Wall Street types flying a Parrot AR.Drone inside.
It includes an important quote from Matt Waite, who runs the Drone Journalism Lab at the University of Nebraska
Despite America's love affair with new technology, Professor Waite says the rate of take-up of drone journalism is still very slow - for one single reason.
"Here in the US the law doesn't allow it - plain and simple," he said.
"The rules right now in the US are basically this: nothing over 400 feet, nothing out of sight, nothing near people and no commercial purposes.
"If it were (just) the first three, drone journalism would have a fighting chance. The commercial restrictions are the hardest to overcome."
Sounds like Professor Waite, at least, is taking a realistic and responsible approach.
[Thanks to Gary Mortimer/sUAS News for the link]
Here some videos samples of 8 full AUTO-LANDING tests flights that I have done with the firwmare ArduCopter v2.4xp1 (JLN mod). I have updated the official ArduCopter v2.4 firmware with a special Auto-Landing mod that I have developped and tested successfully in the previous v2.2xp2 release.
In the video you will see, full tests of the:
- STABILIZE mode (full manual flight evolutions),
- LOITER mode (GPS position hold),
- and 4 samples of FULL AUTO-LANDING with the v2.4xp1
The quadcopter is firstly set in LOITER mode and then the AUTO-LANDING is trigged by the Switch 7 of the transmitter. Setup: ArduPilot Mega v2 + Firmware ArduCopter v2.4xp1, Frame: Quadcopter DJI F450 Flame Wheel (X mode)
Here some videos samples of full AUTO-LANDING tests flights in HIL mode on AeroSIM-RC 3.83 with a Raptor 30 type helicopter (H1) done with the firwmare ArduCopter v2.4xp2 (JLN mod). The official v2.4 firmware has been updated with a special Auto-Landing mod which uses only the BARO sensor. Tested with an ArduPilot Mega v1.4 connected in HIL mode on AeroSIM-RC v3.83 through the APM Mission planner.
more infos at: http://diydrones.com/profile/JeanLouisNaudin
You don't need to be a rocket scientist (I know I know several people here really are) to realise that UAS are beginning to take off (pun 1)
We are honored at sUAS News to have Brett Whalin contributing, recent UND graduate. Brett is a commercial, multi-engine pilot with over 212 hours in manned planes, 70 hours on the ScanEagle/I-MUSE SIL, over 120 hours on the ScanEagle standalone simulator, 5 hours on the UAS DraganFlyer X6 manual controls, .2 hours on TigerShark manual controls, and .5 hours in the Predator SDS simulator.
Brett is looking after the education and training remit at sUAS News and has just added a paper which we hope will be joined by others from those of you that wish to submit any! All for the greater good you know.
Unmanned Aircraft Systems’ Remote Sensing Technology Used Against Bark Beetles in National Forests
If you have any papers you would like to be considered for inclusion on sUAS News then please let Brett know
brett (at) suasnews.com
There is also some interesting news about Patrick Egan, but I am not allowed to tell you!
This video was the 1st time we saw a camera on a monocopter getting useful images. Indeed, it was the 1st video anyone ever made from a high speed camera. Now we knew the shutter speed in daylight was fast enough & the image could be stabilized.
If a flash is timed with the rotation, the camera could work in the dark. The monocopter could be the pocketable flying camera that automatically takes self portraits everyone dreams of.
So a common, analog, wireless camera with an LED flash to time the exposures is a start towards aircraft imaging. That would work in the dark. Analog cameras that small are expensive. There isn't a standalone module which outputs composite video for under $50.
The ideal system would use 802.11 for all radio communication. We could play with the input clock signal to make it shoot at exactly the right moment.
Went through some rearrangements of the POV attachment.
To shift the mass outward & add stability. What happened was increased RPM, reduced coning angle, & less stability. The RPM definitely needs to be lower for motor pulsing to work. It's the same weight, but it's spinning faster. That was unexpected.
The LED orientation definitely affected drag. There may be a limit to the amount of weight on the outside. Too much & the center of wing rotation moves too far out, less of the wing generates lift, & it spins faster. Some other mechanism may reduce the angle of attack when the coning angle is reduced.
You want the lowest RPM, so that dictates mass as close to the center as possible.
With the weight shifted back to the middle & the LEDs in the more streamlined angle, the takeoff started jumping up while the control authority was regained, but we still saw the motor overheating & the greatly reduced flight times of the outer LED weight. It was almost like the motor was damaged.
For some guys, it's smoking. For some guys, it's alcohol. Just when you think it can't happen again, it's a 3600kv, 12x30mm motor. It was the lowest kv ever & we hooked it up to a full 3030 propeller.
This configuration leaped into the air at only -0.3 throttle & after 6 minutes, it stayed a reasonable temperature, even in a pusher configuration. At least we now know the optimum power system for a micro tri rotor. No-one has ever made a micro tri-rotor.
The LEDs on the other hand are constantly burning out. They're stepped down to 2.9V & still burning out.
The flash overwhelmed the LEDs in this shot, revealing differences in LED brightness. The LED which was ground off in 2010 & which was still working was brighter, so we figured on grinding them all off.
1st the same way the 1st one was ground off.
But then we realized they could be ground diagonally, to deflect the light & be more aerodynamic.
The default lens made them project into the room instead of light up the aircraft. Grinding them may also be useful for machine vision.
Well, it didn't even out the brightness in the properly exposed shot.
It did subjectively improve the clarity & brightness in the visually accurate shot.
After all that round of rework, some more Marcy 1 timelapses, with shaved off LEDs which greatly increased the brightness. The POV attachment is back where it was. The LEDs are shaved off.
We're never going to have enough money for DSLR video, so these timelapses are as good as it gets. The mane problem is now USB losing 99% of the machine vision packets, yet it still stays in the air. It's an AMD/ATI motherboard, so obviously this is 1 reason why AMD is not making motherboards anymore.
In other object detection adventures, even replacing an object detected with SURF is pretty bad. All these object detection technologies are good enough for toys, but not for video production.
To be sure, we used a sheet of paper, which can't be perfectly matched to the object, instead of a rigid plane.
