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Hey all,

The weather conditions were very favourable this morning, so I took advantage and did a couple of technical flights.  The one featured here was to see how stable I could fly at altitude.  As you'll see in the video, it was quite stable on the way up, peaking and holding at 100 metres with some amazing views of Melbourne, Australia.  There's no music with this video so you can hear the change in motor pitch and how it handled the wind (light breeze).  I deliberately descended quickly and found it a little bumpy, so something to work on.

Enjoy Melbourne in Autumn.

Cheers,
David.

 Hi, I have made a small modification to the "AP_Mount" library to be used mainly by the filmmakers, basically is:

1- Add a dead zone when we use the joystick mode to prevent undesired movements of cam, you can change the dead zone using the min and max value in ms.

#define CAM_STICK_DEAD_ZONE_MIN 1400 // Set the dead zone in ms
#define CAM_STICK_DEAD_ZONE_MAX 1600 // Added by Pablo Zeron

and disable this mode with:

#define SLOW_STOP 1 // 1 -> Enable the slow stop 0 -> Disable

2- Add a slow stop mode, until now when you release the stick the movement stops, but with this option the movement continues in base at the actual speed and it goes down slowly trying to get a smooth motion. The stop speed can be change by this parameter:

#define SLOW_STOP_SPEED 0.02f // Change this value to make it faster or slower.

I am a beginner programmer, and I hope that Amilcar Lucas or Gregory Fletcher can take a look to the code and check if it is well done or can be optimized, but it works well for me.

Thanks.

The files:

AP_Mount.cpp

AP_Mount.h

From Co:Design:

A group of scientists at Brown University are replicating the bat’s unique anatomy in the hopes of applying its fundamental mechanics to aerospace engineering. “Bats are different than all other flying animals,” says study co-author Kenny Breuer, who worked with biologist Sharon Swartz on the study. “We’re focusing on understanding how bats fly, and understanding the essential elements of that from an engineering perspective.”

But asking a bat to fly at a certain speed in a small enclosed space wasn’t in the cards. So the team set out to build a workable model that’d allow them to test things like flapping frequency, amplitude, and angle. Using a 3-D printer, they prototyped dozens of model wings made of silicone skin and plastic bones. Cables serve as tendons, and three small motors set the wing in motion. The final working model, which was published in the February issue of Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, included the following insight:

One experiment looked at the aerodynamic effects of wing folding. Bats and some birds fold their wings back during the upstroke. Previous research from Brown had found that folding helped the bats save energy, but how folding affected aerodynamic forces wasn’t clear. Testing with the robot wing shows that folding is all about lift. In a flapping animal, positive lift is generated by the downstroke, but some of that lift is undone by the subsequent upstroke, which generates negative lift. By running trials with and without wing folding, the robot showed that folding the wing on the upstroke dramatically decreases that negative lift, increasing net lift by 50 percent.

The study was funded in part by the Air Force, which should give you some idea about how this information will be used. DARPA and other government agencies are increasingly interested in small, unmanned aircraft--especially those that can turn and change course at the drop of a hat. “There’s a lot of interest in building what are called micro-air vehicles,” notes graduate student Joseph Bahlman. “The theory, what we’re developing here can be used to improve the efficiency of aircraft in general.” But batwing micro-drones won’t hit the market for some years. For now, the team will focus on testing materials for the “robatic” wing.

You may have seen this fun Audi vs Audi paintball duel. The above hexa is how they captured the aerial shots in a field too dangerous for a boom:

(via Core77)

Thanks to everyone that passed us at the Model Expo Italy Verona ... today 'was a good day ... in the evening we were destroyed ... are now in a hotel near the fair, tomorrow it starts again ... from 9.00
Today I met many friends VirtualRobotix, Diydrones and BaroneRosso and not only that we have gone to find, Rino, who was here at the stand of FIAM, Michael is' doing acrobatic flights with its quad here in the aviary Pad 7, Ale with Joseph, Marco Robustini that I always see with pleasure, Rfale, and many others. My "MEMBERS" today are given in thousands of presentations, Emile, Flavio and Marco Masiero, we flew in the aviary in pair with their drones based VRBrain and Mikrokopter.
Tomorrow it's up to Drones "Professional" for video applications and civil protection, etc. etc. etc. ... So who wants to see them live and not just in our video finds us at our stand and also during the day with presentations in the aviary of the main stand.
Greetings to all and see you tomorrow in the meantime a video made by Daniele with our drones that tomorrow you will see the truth in action.

Grazie a tutti di essere passati a trovarci a Verona al Model Expo Italy ... oggi e' stata una bella giornata ... a sera eravamo distrutti ... ora sono in albergo vicino alla fiera , domani si ricomincia ... dalle 9.00
Oggi ho conosciuto tanti amici di VirtualRobotix , DIYDrones e del BaroneRosso e non solo che ci sono passati a trovare , Rino che era qui allo stand della FIAM , Michele che sta' facendo voli acrobatici con i suoi quad qui nella voliera del Pad 7 , Ale con Giuseppe ,Marco Robustini che vedo sempre molto voleniteri , Rfale , e tanti altri  I miei "SOCI" oggi si sono dati in mille presentazioni , Emile , Flavio e Marco Masiero , abbiamo volato nella voliera anche in coppia con i loro droni basati su VRBrain e su Mikrokopter .
Domani tocca ai Droni "Professionali" per riprese video e applicazioni di protezione civile ,ecc ecc ecc ... Quindi chi vuole vederli live e non solo nei nostri video ci trova al nostro stand e anche durante la giornata con presentazioni nella voliera principale dello stand. 
Un saluto a tutti e a domani nel frattempo un video fatto da Daniele con i nostri droni che domani potrete vedere dal vero in azione 

Original Blog post : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/profiles/blogs/virtualrobotix-al-modelexpoitaly

 ( Sorry for the crappy photo )  It's time to retire the Radian pro after logging over 100 flights in the past year The wings are pretty well mush from flexing so much. Spring is just around the corner and I am going to
"Morph the Radian pro into a Multiplex easy star I live and fly near a significant body of water and there is always a breeze here you get a on shore breeze in the morning and a off shore breeze
in the afternoon The radian pro doesn't penetrate the wind very well unless you keep the air speed up in a shallow dive then you risk ripping the wings off when you pull out. The wing tips flex
up over a foot or more .If you get into turbulance and a wing drops you push the opposite rudder to bring it back up and the whole fusalage bends and nothing happens. When the breeze is blowing
you have to "nurse it around carefully with the rudder and airlerons and try not to pull to many "g's". In less than 5 mph wind is when it flies best when there is a light breeze blowing against
the cliff and the seagulls are soaring 150 feet up I have soared right beside them with the engine off just giving it short bursts when needed for up to an hour I only crashed twice. Once I
stayed up to long and the battery went dead and all I could do was watch as the off shore breeze pushed it towards the edge of the cliff and the lake. It landed in a bush 3 feet from going over
the edge. The other time it flew into the bright sun light the next time I seen it The tail was sticking up in the center of the bean field . I dinged the prop and replaced it 3 times (once it
tried to eat the coffee table) I used 2 batteries at around 47 flights the original battery swelled up round and wouldn't charge. I stripped the elevator servo the Very first flight and replaced
it with a standard size hightec servo I modified the fusulage for.I put balsa skids on the wings along side the aileron and flap servo horns for protection for landing .The left wing was
heavier than the right wing right out of the box and I had to put 6 thumb tacks in the right wing 3/4 of the way out to get it to balance level side to side I had "crow programmed in
but I never used it The flaps were adequate , with no wind ( which was rare) it would float in ground effect . I had mine given to me by my boys . It is not a "first plane," down wind or in a
dive it accellerates quickly. A Newbie would end up with a lot of broken foam on the plus the hobby shop can get parts readily. I wouldn't go out and buy another one .
For the Easy star it is going to have an alunimum spine down the center stretch the fuslage 2 3/4 inches, larger rudder and elevaror , either airlerons, flaperons or ailerons and flaps.and I
am going to reinforce the wing "right out of the box change the radian motor from a Tractor to a pusher machine a prop hub so I can use the radian folding prop
MyF4 Phantom I am going to leave it stock maby a bright led on the front.There is a abandoned WW2 air strip about an hour north of here shaped like a triangle the farmer utilizes 2 ofthe
runways the other is left open it is not marked on the charts any more but pilots know it is there and use it as a" Emergency strip" .I know the farmer, back in the day I would land there and
bring him a coffee from 'Timmys' I am going to fly the F4 there. When I take it out I am bringing along a bunch of guys that want to see it fly and 4 fire extinguishers From what I have seen of
Vidieos of the F4 you have to keep the airspeed up it has a long takeoff and rool out on landing it glides like a brick and you have to "Fly" it onto the runway . http://youtu.be/WBHCnjXLbrk
and http://youtu.be/7K_sQ8gR3d0
` I just have to repower my alunimum scratch build and it is ready to go! A jet cat gas turbine would fit right in where the 32 EDF was without a'majour modification . Or I go with a piston engine
put the engine in the middle near the center of gravity and run a shaft out the back with a thrust bearing and a folding prop? Or I could mount the engine on a pilon and make it into a "flying
boat and use my dive boat as a "Chase vehicle'!. You Guys have a Great Day!

From Slashdot:

Mr_Blank writes

"Organizations like the EFF and ACLU have been raising the alarm over increased government surveillance of U.S. citizens. Legislators haven't been quick to respond to concerns of government spying on citizens. But Texas legislators are apparently quite concerned that private citizens operating hobby drones might spot environmental violations by businesses. Representative Lance Gooden has introduced HB912 which proposes: 'A person commits an offense if the person uses or authorizes the use of an unmanned vehicle or aircraft to capture an image without the express consent of the person who owns or lawfully occupies the real property captured in the image. ('Image' is defined as including any type of recorded telemetry from sensors that measure sound waves, thermal, infrared, ultraviolet, visible light, or other electromagnetic waves, odor, or other conditions.)' Can you foresee any unintended consequences if this proposal becomes law?"

Another reader notes that New Hampshire has introduced a similar bill: "Neal Kurk, a Republican member of New Hampshire's House of Representatives knows that those drones present a growing privacy concern, and in response has introduced a bill that would ban all aerial photography in the state. That is, unless you're working for the government. The bill, HB 619-FN (PDF), is blessedly short, and I suggest reading the whole thing for yourself." Here's part of the bill: "A person is guilty of a class A misdemeanor if such person knowingly creates or assists in creating an image of the exterior of any residential dwelling in this state where such image is created by or with the assistance of a satellite, drone, or any device that is not supported by the ground."

Article at: Slashdot

From Ars Technica

Unmanned aircraft crash. In fact, they crash a lot—though there's no recent specific data, the Congressional Research Service reported last year that despite improvements "the accident rate for unmanned aircraft is still far above that of manned aircraft." And while many of those accidents can be attributed to hostile fire or terrible flight conditions, a significant percentage of drone crashes is caused by human error. A December 2004 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) study of Defense Department drone crashes found human factors to be a causal factor in about a third of the cases the researchers examined.

But as four human factors engineering researchers have found, sometimes the accidents are by design. That is, the design of the systems that operators use to fly the drones are so bad that they invite accidents. A recent Ergonomics in Design article reported that a small but significant number of crashes could be directly attributed to bad ergonomics on ground control station hardware. These factors may have played a major part in crashes that were attributed to other causes.

Take, for example, one drone crash in 2006. As the operator brought the drone in for a landing, he meant to flip the landing gear button on the control joystick but accidentally hit the nearby ignition switch instead—shutting off the engine in mid-flight. The $1.5 million drone plummeted to the ground, a total loss. On another occasion, glare on a screen was so bad that a drone operator couldn't read an alert and mistook it for a landing signal—again killing the engines before the drone had landed.

Read more here

Hi

following on from this post by Chris A.  http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/connecting-to-apm-2-5-via-bluetooth?xg_source=activity

I have been using the WiFly RN-XV module from Roving Networks as a telemetry link to the APM 2.5. I have been using the XtremeBee adapter from 3DR to connect it to the APM.

I have to say this unit is amazing at it can be configured in so many different ways. It's a mini, no micro-router. It's great. (I know it's short range, but if you fly within a small area as many do it's not an issue, long range FPV enthusiasts look away now ;-) )

Due to it's flexibility the WiFly can be somewhat daunting to configure. I am going to list out some standard configs to help people get started.

This is the simplest configuration and is great at home when you have an available WiFi network. Good for testing, and leaves your computer able to connect to the internet.

To configure the WiFly connect it using an FTDI cable to  your computer. (I'm using a Mac so this will be Unix flavour, for windows you can use, mmm been along time, is Hyperterminal still there?)

The default baud is 9600, to connect i run Terminal and the command

screen /dev/cu.usbserial-AM01RMWT 9600

type $$$ to enter setup mode.

Option: Infrastructure TCP

1. factory R
2. set uart baudrate 57600
3. set wlan ssid YOUR_SSID
4. set wlan phrase PASSOWRD
5. set ip flags 0x6 (means TCP connection closed on disconnect)
6. set uart baudrate 57600
7. save infratcp (save it with a name, so easily switch configs with load later)
8. save
9. reboot

Now you should be able to connect using Mission Planner TCP option to assigned IP address port 2000

Option: Soft AP

You can also set the Wi-Fly up as a micro-router In this mode device connect to the device

1. set ftp address 0
2. set ftp filename wifly-EZX-AP.img
3. set dns name rn.microchip.com
4. ftp update
5. factory R
6. set uart baudrate 57600
7. save
8. reboot
9. set ip address 10.0.0.1
10. set ip net 255.255.255.0
11. set ip gateway 10.0.0.1
12. set wlan channel 11
13. set wlan APMNetwork
14. save softap
15. save
16. reboot

You can simply connect to the APMNetwork to 10.0.0.1:2000 to connect to the APM

There are other modes as well, like UDP, ADHOC etc... I haven't used them yet, but I can post configurations as needed.

Hope this helps :-)

From the Robot Operating System mailing list:

ardrone_autonomy" is a ROS driver for Parrot AR-Drone quadrocopter. This driver is based on official AR-Drone SDK version 2.0 and supports both AR-Drone 1.0 and 2.0. "ardrone_autonomy" is a fork of AR-Drone Brown driver. This package has been developed in Autonomy Lab of Simon Fraser University by Mani Monajjemi.

Read more here.

Hi all
We have had the privilege here in having the Avalon airshow every second year, this year, we had a few highlights that are of importance to this group.

1. which has been mentioned, CASA, (our FAA) have made lots of noise on helping us get Airborne, and

2. Bask industries had a stand, with the APM2.5 at Center stage. People were crowding around the stand, amazed at the product, able to play with the Mission Planner, and in general see how good Ardupilot is. 

I was amazed at the fact that there were a lot of UAV platforms at the Airshow, including multiple Multirotors. Yet Bask had the most people at their stand.

We adopted the way of Desktop Fabrication to build HeX. Here is an example what that way does to it and how it effects on other hobbyists who also want to build a similar one.

the files of the designs of HeX will be uploaded onto the internet and freely accessible to anyone who is enthusiastic about it. With these files, if you also happen to get some CNC routers and laser cutters at home, you can build the same stuff as I have done. Moreover, you can go furthur to help us improve the designs and upload them as well.

After 2-3 weeks nightmare I am finaly flying 100%. Until this time I has strange motor problem. Motor was stopping spining for 0.5 seconds and spining againt for full speed. Main Skywalker 40A running with new firmware version 10. Thank you to www.olliw.eu

- 15" carbon proppelers

- Hengli 4822 690KV motors

- 5000 battery

- Arducopter Mega 2.5 with default setting, no pid adjustment, no accelometer calibration.

Video for inspiration how to secure fly in room. Dont look on mess around.

EDIT March 4th, 2013: Thank you very much for your feedback and patience!  We've got a good to-do list now, and rather than keep two stores up and running, we're going to take the beta site down until we're ready with all of the great feedback you provided.  It will be back again soon, but if you'd like to place an order now, please visit our current site at:  http://store.diydrones.com

In conjunction with updates to the documentation, we are also rolling out a new store! It's now in beta, so we're rewarding the brave folks who are willing to help us wring out the bugs. Only a small number of product categories are currently enabled; if what you want isn't among them, please use the regular store, which will continue to be the main way to buy gear until we take the new store out of beta.

From now through the rest of this weekend, you can order a select set of 3D Robotics hardware at an incredible 25% discount!

You can get to the new store at: http://store.3drobotics.com

While you're taking advantage of this offer, please be sure to take some notes on the experience and send us some feedback at: feedback@3drobotics.com

We appreciate your business and look forward to seeing what the community does with even more cutting-edge products in 2013!

Thank you!

Just thought I'd share a news article about possible changes that are occurring with the Australian, Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) in relation to drones.

“Under a new weight class system, prospective drone entrepreneurs with craft weighing 2 kilograms or less could take off after completing nothing more than an online application form”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-01/drones-set-for-large-scale-commercial-take-off/4546556?WT.svl=news0http://

Regards,

James

Great hack here (via Hackaday)

As a tie in to my No ‘Air Ambulance Challenge, a sponsored body wax for the local Air Ambulance charity, I’ve decided to upgrade my old project by swapping the RC car out for a Syma S107G.  If you enjoyed this post, please donate a few quid or whatever you can here.  It’s for a very good cause and as it’ll put me through a *lot* of pain you can be sure I’m not asking for my health!

I tried to implement the IR protocol in C# using the .NET Micro Framework for the Netduino but it proved more than a little tricky to get the timing right.  As there are a few implementation out there for the Arduino I decided to stand on the shoulders of giants and build on top of existing code, two in particular.

http://www.kerrywong.com/2012/08/27/reverse-engineering-the-syma-s107g-ir-protocol/
http://abarry.org/s107g-helicopter-control-via-arduino/

One thing worth of note is that my helicopter uses Channel B, as you can see in the comments in my code (heavily based on Kerry Wong’s) it is easy to switch between the two channels.  For the serial control aspect I implemented a similar method as with my Netduino project and in Andrew Barry’s implementation.  For the Xbox 360 Controller interface, I updated my previous application to listen for the trigger for the throttle and the right analogue stick for pitch and yaw.  I had some fun when I got the values backwards and I slammed the copter into a wall.  Thankfully they are built tough to survive kids and geeks alike…

The IR emitter is  a 500Ohm resistor inline with a pair of IR LEDs, connected to Pin3 on the Arduino.  Video demo below;

On February 16, the EDGE Research Lab team launched EDGE4 (flight summary), a relatively light flight designed to inform infrastructure decisions for our research project.  The flight lasted almost 5 hours, reached a max altitude of 106,504 feet, and traveled 165 miles downrange.  Of particular interest to this community is the head-to-head test that we did comparing the reliability and performance of the 9xTend (our standby radio for years - starting well before the formation of the EDGE team) against the recently released RFD900 (originally announced here on DIYDrones: RFD900 - New long range radio modem).  A full writeup of the testing scenario, configuration, and the results can be found on our report page, but here's the short version: from a link speed and reliability perspective, the RFD900s are amazing.  Here's a side-by-side comparison of the GPS tracking information that we received (xTend on the left, RFD900 on the right):

This was captured from two different chase vehicles at the same location, about 41.5 miles line-of-sight from the balloon at the time.  The advantages of the built-in diversity and filtering on the RFD900 are clearly evident.  Also, in case you're wondering, ground-based testing of the two payloads side-by-side indicated no substantial difference in the noise floor reported by either of the receiving stations with the other radio on, so they're not interfering with each other.

Big kudos to Seppo and his team at RFDesign; they've put together a phenomenal radio.  We went into this test expecting to come out with a clear choice to stick with the xTends for our operations, but this result has us seriously reconsidering.  On top of all of the performance goodness, these radios operate on the same SiK open-source firmware as the 3DR 900MHz radios!

We are in the process of making some significant changes to our site layout and content to improve the overall ease-of-use experience here at DIY Drones.

As part of that effort, we wanted to put out the first section of the site that is ready for community-wide peer review.  You can see the updates at:

http://copter.ardupilot.com

We need to add the footer, and a few other small things, but we want your input!

Please take a look through the site and the wiki, and submit your feedback to:

feedback@3drobotics.com

We'll do our best to keep up with the comments here, but using the address above will definitely get noticed.

Thank you!

The first video is up! I go in-depth and walk you through the entire build of a techpod wing, from soldering servo extensions to  laying in the spar. 

enjoy!

From Kottke:

One of the most intriguing demos I've seen, if the footage in the video is to be believed, is the Myo gesture control armband.

It's an eye-popping demo. The copy on the site reads "unleash your inner Jedi" and you pretty much do look like Obi-Wan using the thing. Which is to say, like a crazy person cosplaying Star Wars in the middle of the street. Adam Lisagor calledGoogle Glass a "Segway for your face" back in April. The Segway was another great idea on paper that failed in part because of human vanity. Segways weren't cool...you looked like a dork riding one. You're gonna look like a dork wearing Google Glass. You're gonna look like a dork unlocking your car with a swipe of your Myo-enabled arm.

But the uncool factor can be overridden in various ways. Nike can make anyone wear anything, especially if it's packaged like a watch with superpowers. A few years ago, you looked like a dork wearing headphones in public but Apple made it cool. Beats By Dre made wearing huge over-the-ear headphones in public cool a few years later. You look like a dork wearing a Bluetooth headset and talking to yourself, but they are cheap and useful enough that it doesn't matter. Mobile phone usage in public used to appear very strange...for awhile it was difficult to tell the brokers-in-a-hurry from the mentally unstable homeless folks muttering to themselves.

That's the challenge for Google Glass and Myo: are these things useful enough and cheap enough to overcome that dork factor or can they somehow be made cool? Because if they aren't and you can't, no one wants to be seen using a Nintendo Power Glove in public and no amount of extreme sports dubstep transitions can save you.