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For those who haven't seen my previous blog here's some background on what this project involves.

The goal of this project is to prove that it is possible to print a miniQuad on a 3D printer at a reasonable price.  This frame was designed using the excellent 3D modelling program Blender 3D.  It would then be manufactured using a 3D printing service Shapeways.com.  By using this printing service it becomes available for the public to order their own copies of this frame.

I am now one step closer to that goal.  Over the holidays, I received the printed frame from Shapeways, and assembled it.  Unfortunately, I need a few more parts, like additional motors, propellers, and batteries, before first flight.

My assessment so far is that, the strength and weight of the frame is more than adequate for flight.  The plastic used has a small amount of flex, which should help to survive hard landings, but is stiff enough to keep the shape of the quad.

I have decided to dub this frame Firefly Mark One!

The following is major components for this project:

1 x Firefly Mark One Frame from Shapeways.com

4 x 18-11 2000kv Micro Brushless Outrunner (10g)

4 x HobbyKing Red Brick 10A ESC

2 x GWS HD8040 3 Blade Prop Counter Rotate (2pc)

2 x GWS HD8040 3 Blade Prop (2pc pack)

1 x Turnigy nano-tech 950mah 2S 25~50C Lipo Pack

For those who always ask, "How much does it cost and where can I get one?":

I've placed all the parts of the Firefly Mark One frame in my shop on http://Shapeways.com/shops/rcshop, for public viewing.  You can look at each model in 3D, spinning it around for better viewing. 

The Firefly Mark One will come in at a cost of under $100, the long arm version of the frame (25.7 cm motor-motor), including the hub, 4 arms, battery holder, and APM mounting plate. Electronics, and mounting hardware not included, of course, since I can't print nuts and bolts.

Flight videos and tuning parameters coming, as soon as I get my parts from HobbyKing.

Would love to get any feedback from the community, before making it publicly available for ordering.

This definitely counts as more sci-fi than practical reality, but a South Korean team has proposed using a cloud of "robotic bees" to squirt building material to form structures the way bees make nests. 

NRP reports:

Writing in eVolo, an architecture magazine, Danielle Del Sol says, "These bees aren't interested in honey: these workers will actually build a structure. Each robot is capable of using cartridges filled with agents that enable them to construct literal physical material, which the designers dub "augmented synthetic material."

eVolo then offers this fanciful vision of a robotic bee:

They were inspired by the now-famous French demonstration of a quadcopter-built tower:

This is awesome and a great candidate project for the PhoneDrone Android/RC interface board. 

From the creator:

Recently, I have been refreshing my knowledge of Machine Learning by taking Andrew Ng's excellent Stanford Machine Learning course online. The lecture module on Neural Networks ends with an intriging motivating video of the ALVINN autonomous car driving itself along normal roads at CMU in the mid 90s.

I was inspired by this video to see what I could build myself over the course of a weekend.

Here's the hardware setup:

And how the neural network works:

(via Hackaday)

While looking at new products on GlobalSpec, I came across this sensor from Delta Metrics.  Delta Metrics (a subsidiary of tecsis DBA) has created a single sensor to measure both static and dynamic pressure simultaneously, reducing the complexity of implementing an airspeed sensor.  More information is available through Delta Metrics.

Image from Globalspec.com

We often get questions from newcomers who are confused by all the Ardu* nomenclature here, so I made the above product comparison matrix, which you can find here. 

And just to extend this to the full family, including software:

• APM 1&2: the autopilot hardware (see above) that can operate nearly any vehicle, once the right software is loaded
• ArduPlane, ArduCopter, ArduRover, ArduBoat, etc: the software that runs on the APM hardware that's optimized for that sort of vehicle. 
• Mission Planner: the desktop software that loads the software on the APM board, configures it and serves as a ground station, mission planner (of course!), an interface with flight simulators for hardware-in-the-loop simulation and a datalog analysis tool. 

The 2012 AMA Expo (happening this week) will be featuring the NASA DROID, a drone that's being used as an educational vehicle for high school students.

Come and see and learn how NASA Dryden Flight Research Center uses the DROID or Dryden Remotely Operated Integrated Drone for flight research, pilot training and the INSPIRE student internship program.

The DROID is one of four aircraft used for INSPIRE or Interdisciplinary National Science Project Incorporating Research and Education Experience. INSPIRE is a multi-tiered year-round program designed for students in ninth-to-12th grades who are interested in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and careers.

“The INSPIRE summer internship program provides the opportunity for students interested in careers in engineering to get direct project experience prior to entering their senior year of high school or first semester of college,” said Candace Clements, Student & Faculty Programs Coordinator at NASA Dryden’s Office of Education.

http://amaexpo.com/2011/10/27/the-droid-is-coming/

Gyro stabilized mount works quite well. The roll servo does seem to be a bit jerky, but from the forums it seems its one of the downsides to digital servos. What about a small air shock absorber? A trade off of reaction time for fluidity of movement. Although, the platform is for photos not video...

Comments any1? :)

G:)

P.s. When am I going to be able to use the APM v2.0 for the above??? :)

A somber ceremony begins, as the machine which caused Major Marcy to sever all contact with us is dismantled & returned to its role as an aircraft position tracker.

The construction of an indoor test harness greatly improved matters.

A single steel wire from floor to ceiling arrested all horizontal movement & allowed us to focus just on altitude hold.

There you have the 1st successful altitude hold.  This controlled altitude directly & was sloppy.

Camera mounted on the laser painting turret is tracking it.

The most successful algorithm controlled climb rate.  The mane factor was update rate of the position.  The camera could update position at 15Hz.

Focusing on stable takeoff & altitude with cyclic changes should keep our nights occupied.  The real challenge is the horizontal position.

Now video of the vision guided takeoff & altitude control.

Just built a suprisingly good flying quad. Total price with battery but without receiver and APM was $127. It's very usable indoors and later I will add GPS mag, xbee and fpv tilt roll cam today.

http://www.quadcopters.co.uk/?PageID=ShowItem&Item=8%20x%204.5%20CW%20&Desc=8%20X%204.5%20CW%20Green%20Epp%20Propeller%20Pair
$2

http://www.quadcopters.co.uk/?PageID=ShowItem&Item=8%20x%204.5%20Orange%20Propeller%20Pair&Desc=8%20x%204.5%20Multi%20Copter%20Propeller%20pair
$2

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=4204
$9 x 4

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=19033
$13 x 4

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=16631
$17

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=19595
$8

$127 total plus Rx and APM1 and AC 2.1

I haven't done extensive tuning but used ch6 in flight tuning on acro and stable and got it flying very good with these PI settings.

Will upload video later today.

Didn't intend to take any pics (the hat portion of ye olde hatcam being misplaced), but things went so well I was able to fly one-handed and hold the iphone in the other hand.  Beautiful!!

From the air.  I hadn't planned on doing this either, but things were so smooth I taped the GoPro and sent it off.  Simple mode is going to be a Godsend for arial photography.

Spinning one-handedly.  This is cut from the first video, but it's so unique and impressive I wanted to hilight it by itself.

An oscilloscope turned out to be a pretty handy debugging tool when trying to troubleshoot my APM2 ESC problem.  Here's a shakycam showing how I used mine to verify the problem was with the ESC and not with the APM2.

I got everything together last night and couldn't wait until the morning to go out, so I took a quick flight in the basement.  Stability was pretty good.  I made a quick video of simple mode too.

Both Andreas and I had the same problem... fortunately he had it before I did, and had figured out a workaround.

Problem: when powering up, not all motors will spin.

Workaround:  apply power to the APM2 before attaching the main battery.  You can do this either via USB or by attaching a spare battery/ESC to one of the output lines.  As soon as the board boots up, hook up the main battery and remove the second battery.

This is my second flight with the GU-INS in GPS Hold mode

Standard setup

ArduCopter in action: Testing the QuadCopter (HIL mode) on X-Plane v9

Here a video a the ArduMega board (2560 or 1280) with the firmware ArduCopter v2.1.1b (JLN update for X-Plane) connected on the X-Plane simulator throught the APM Planner in HIL mode. The QuadCopter QRO has been modelized for X-Plane v9.0 (or greater) so as get a closest replication of a true QuadCopter UAV.

This is a very good method for testing all the features of the ArduCopter firmware. For conducting a such test, only an ArduMega board (APM1280, APM2560, APM2) is used, no IMU shield or sensor are required here...

Setup:

- Receiver: Turnigy 9X8C v2 connected to the APM board

- Transmitter: Turnigy 9x

- APM planner v1.1.1x

- ArduMega board (APM v1 or APM v2)

- firmware ArduCopter v2.x.x + the JLN mod for X-Plane

- Software: X-Plane v9 or greater

- QRO_X: the quadcopter model (by JLN) for X-Plane

 
More infos at:

http://diydrones.com/profile/JeanLouisNaudin

Quad-copter equipped with the advanced AS3X by Blade (Horizon Hobby)

Very interesting video from VectorNav showing what high frequency noise and magnetic fields actually do to an imu.

Nice visual representation!

Also this vectornav unit seems to be quite the imu!

G:)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16354430

Another good article from IEEE Spectrum. I'm particularly interested in the disposable glider drone at the bottom, which is basically just a PCB with wings. (Because this comes from the research arm of the Navy, and is of broad technical interest to this community, I am make a sysadmin exemption to our no-military rule. I don't do it often.) 

Excerpt:

Here's a wild way to launch UAVs: by using a high-altitude weather balloon with a drone stapled to it, with drones stapled to it. Nope, that's not a typo: The Naval Research Laboratory has been using weather balloons to carry a medium-sized Tempest UAV up to 60,000 feet, and the Tempest UAV itself is carrying a pair of tiny little CICADA (Close-In Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft ) drones underneath its wings. Look:

The Tempest can travel up to 30 miles and deploy the CICADAs as gliders, which can then land within 15 feet of their target coordinates. Each CICADA can carry a variety of sensor payloads, and as the name implies, they're designed to be cheap and disposable: The airframe is actually just a custom printed circuit board.

This balloon launch multi-drone thing in particular is very cool, since whatever you attach to the balloon can use its engine purely for range as opposed to altitude. And dropping off these little microdrones to get in and do the dirty work saves a bunch of money and adds that much more versatility to the entire system.

A video of one of my test flights, pushing it hard.