Well first of all I'll start with the reason I chose to build this ground station instead of using a laptop

So after many times of carrying the laptop around assembling and disassembling parts and cables xbees usb cables and such I figured my laptop days as ground station will be numbered

Because of this I decided that I needed a ground station that would save me the need to deal with the assembling and disassembling in the field and will be more durable then my laptop

First I had to plan my shopping and inventory list

I had an old laptop with a broken screen that did not survive its frequent trips around and my poor handling skills And an older laptop screen that i planned on using with the other laptop mother board in order to do it I had to buy a lcd adapter that will let me use the vga port on the motherboard with the lvds laptop screen

That's about what I had to start with

The second thing was to look for a case that will be large enough to contain the mother board the screen another small screen that will fit in the remaining space and some lcd meters for giving a better look mostly and some 3 position switches

After many searches I found an old stock of Pelican at an affordable price and size that is suitable for my budget and needs i measured the space that left after installing the main screen and figure out that a 5 inch screen will just fit

then i needed to think of a way to install everything in a way that would give me easy access to the parts just for any case

after trying multiple materials Plexiglas plywood and others which are not very easy to work with without machinery which i didnt have access to i found just what i needed a pvc foam it is not the perfect material consider his toughness which is lacking but it is very easy to work with and so i chose it and start to cut holes and install the switches and lcds

for the finishing touch of the station i used a vinyl sticker in a 3d carbon woven pattern which gave the panel a nicer look

some technical details:

for powering the station i chose to use a sla battery instead of lipo for some reasons

first it is easier to deal with in terms of charging it and is much safer then lipo

second it is cheaper and heavier so I can save money and use it for balancing the case

i also wanted to be able to hook the station to ac power when its available

so i searched for some ac/dc converter that will meet my power demends and it turned out that i missed it in my calculation by a bit but for the moment it is working and i see no reason to change it but when it brake i'll certenly buy a bigger one capable of outputing more current

I then wanted to charge the battery while using the ac/dc convertor and giving the station more reliability i found a charger which is also a ups that is just what i wished for

also used step up regulator from 12v to 19v for powering the motherboard

and a step down regulator from 12v to 5v for powering the usb hub

both regulators are adjustable with lcd meters for convenience reasons and capable of outputting more current than consumed

bom for the station is:

laptop mother board and screen - free

pelican 1520 - ebay

LCD Controller Board DIY Kit - for connecting lvds screen to the motherboard - ebay

VGA 2AV driver board 5inch HSD050IDW1 800×480 screen - ebay

12v to 19v step up convertor with lcd for powering the motherboard - ebay

temperature meter with two sensors (inside and out of the case) - ebay

power meter with 2X lcd voltmeter and amp meter - ebay

12v to 5v step down convertor with lcd for powering usb hub - ebay

picoUPS-120 12v dc micro ups system - ebay

4X 3 position 6 pins switches - bought at a local electricity store - ebay

4X Delta Fan for Compaq 12vdc .15A 40mm EFB0412HHA - ebay

3d carbon woven pvc vinyl sticker - deal extreme

ac/dc convertor 100-240v input 12v output 3.2A or higher :) - ebay

pvc foam sheet - ebay

access point modem asus wl-330ge - ebay

usb hub 7-ports - ebay *

thermal skin for wires - ebay

I didn't really traced every buy that I made for the station but roughly everything sums for less then 400$ in total

- ebay is not the cheapest by any mean

* if you want to build your own usb hub you can do it using fe1.1s chip or similar very easily

**and so on with the other regulators it is just to my believe cheaper and faster to order it assembled :)

features of the station:

up to 2.5 hours of use on a single 12v 7Ah sla battery

secondary screen switchable between av and vga (via pc hdmi port and vga converter)

wireless connection to antenna tracker (xbee repeater, Bluetooth, 5.8Ghz)

access point modem - for multiple connection to the station (andropilot for ex)

can be easily modified and upgraded

sorry for my poor writing and description capabilities/skills

the uav station is not complete yet still need to do some more things so I will update the post as It go

Many of you might know the Sky9x upgrade board for 9x-model Chinese radios. It boasts an ARM Cortex M3 32bit processor and a whole bunch of additional features, such as audio out, SD card for saving configs, USB programming interface and so on. It runs on the very feature-rich and mature open source firmware Open9X. It has a PPM out, so with the right connector board, it can run with any TX module, may it be Futaba, JR, FrSky, Orange, Lemon, whatever...

The official feature list:

-  Atmel SAM3S Arm Cortex M3 32 bit Microprocessor (256K EPROM , 48K RAM , 64Mhz)
 - Built-in USB port for loading new firmware , and to access the SD card as a Mass storage device.
 - Connector for LED Backlight , with software dimming control
-  1/2 Watt  audio amplifier with 8 Ohm Speaker Output  and support for a headphone jack
-  4Mb EEPROM provides on board storage for 20 - 40 models depends on software used.
- Support for Koycera  64x128 LED backlight LCD  
- Two , internal RS232 Serial communication ports  with support for external 2.5mm jacks..
- FrSky Telemetry can hook directly up to board (no convertors needed)
- Micro SD Card Socket for Sound , Model and Telemetry logging / storage.
- One , TTL Serial Port , for hookup to a Bluetooth Module , Like RN-42
- Hardware PPM , PXX output   .
​- Haptic Output connector
- AVR Co-Processor , ATtiny167 AVR  , provides 12 more I/O channels and  provides  RTC
  (Real Time Clock) functions , with on board 3V Lithium Battery
- On Board CR2032 Lithium Battery Holder  
- On Board Current Sensor monitors the current being drawn from the battery, and stores
  the amount of mAH used up.
- 5V Linear Pre - Regulator  supplies the Main LDO 3.3V Linear Regulator. For better heat management, and a 5V Switching Regulator Upgrade is available for using  3S Lipo batteries

In my opinion, this board is great! It's way too good to be seen just as an upgrade for the 9x transmitters. It also makes a very nice base for every DIY-transmitter project - that's why I selected it as the RC core for my intergrated groundstation project.

Now, unfortunately, the board is in danger of dying out! Brent, the designer and the guy who makes those great boards as a hobby, wrote in the 9x-forums that problems in the last production run left him 25 boards short, leading to a loss of ~$2500. A pretty big sum for a hobby project!

If you have a 9x transmitter and are looking for more features, if you always wanted to build your own TX or if you are planning to build a version of my UAV Control Station, once my software is getting mature, have a look at the Sky9X-board! Brent wrote that if he gets enough people to pre-order for another production run, the board will continue to live. Otherwise, it will die...

Check the website here: http://www.ersky9x.net/

Home of My Podcast on Diydrones.com

My Youtube Channel

Here is a couple links that will give you more information about blogs on Diydrones.com

Great Information On Blogs and More!

When is a blog not a blog?

From Wired's Danger Room:

When the flying robots that loiter in Afghanistan’s and Yemen’s airspace come home, they won’t just be headed for the local police station. They might prefer a pastoral existence of spraying crops, scanning soil patterns and other features of America’s farms.

No, Predators and Reapers aren’t going to scan large swaths of vegetation for suspected militants. And there’s tremendous interest from state and local law enforcement in drones as surveillance tools. But to Chris Mailey, a vice president with the drone promotion organization known as AUVSI, the cop shops represent short money. “Agriculture,” Mailey tells Danger Room, “is gonna be the big market.”

To Mailey, it’s a question of where the growth opportunities are. Military drone purchases are plateauing, even as the drones become increasingly central to U.S. counterterrorism. And there are limits, financial and otherwise, to the ability of police departments to purchase drones. Farming looks like a drone market with both fewer impediments and bigger incentives for early technological adoption.

“A manned crop sprayer is flying 10 feet above his crops — how accurate is it? Any crop you spray that isn’t on your farm you have to pay for, and a remote-controlled ‘copter can be very precise,” Mailey says. “Spraying, watering — there’s a whole market for precision agriculture, and when you put that cost-benefit together, farmers will buy [drones].”

AUVSI intends to publish a study in the next few weeks anticipating the scope of the domestic, non-military market for drones. But there’s already some data to support Mailey’s hypothesis. “Precision farmers” love using data tools to increase crop yields. In 2009, an Idaho farmer homebrewed his own drone, slapped a commercial digital camera on it, and began extracting data on soil patterns to help his business expand. Companies like CropCam build lightweight, modular, GPS-driven gliders to give farmers an aerial view of their fields without requiring pilot training or the expense of buying a small manned plane. Of course, this is all dependent on drone manufacturers pricing their robots inexpensively enough for farmers who also have to buy a lot of other expensive equipment to ply their trade.

Japan also provides some indication of the potential demand for drones by farmers. Yamaha introduced its RMAX unmanned helicopter for crop-spraying in 1990. By 2010, the drone ‘copter and its robotic competitors — some 2,300 of them — sprayed 30 percent of Japanese rice fields with pesticides, according to a recent Yamaha presentation. The Japanese farm hectares sprayed by manned helicopters dropped from 1,328 in 1995 to 57 in 2011, as unmanned helicopter spray rose to 1,000 hectares that year.

Closer to home, last year the Electronic Frontier Foundation, using the Freedom of Information Act, obtained data from the Federal Aviation Administration detailing who’s been cleared to operate drones in U.S. airspace. Local, state and federal police and homeland-security agencies had received 17 certificates of authorization for flying drones. Universities received 21 of them. “All those universities are focused on agriculture,” Mailey says.

Of course, your local police, if they can, are very likely to buy drones, ushering in a new era of tech-enabled aerial privacy erosions. Several already have — although a full list is unavailable — like the Miami-Dade Police Department, whose use of Honeywell’s T-Hawk spy drone I profiled in the December 2011 Playboy. (Link is SFW.) Mailey’s argument is that there’s a hard limit of 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S., many of which may not be able to afford the expense of what could be argued is an optional piece of hardware that can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and requires cumbersome FAA licenses. (Which, in fairness, farmers will need as well.) Put a different way, Mailey and AUVSI forecast a steeper growth in the drone market for farms than it does in the drone market for law enforcement — but it sees both on the rise.

The biggest reversal? While the U.S. market for drones is “almost 100 percent military,” Mailey puts it, the drone industry doesn’t think it can rely on the Defense Department much longer. Last year, the Pentagon indicated in a congressional report that it was going to level off most of its drone purchases through 2017; it currently spends about $6.5 billion annually on unmanned robotic systems. Maintenance and replacement-level purchases, rather than inventory expansions, is likely to characterize drone purchases — at least until the Navy’s carrier-based drone joins the fleet at the end of the decade.

“There’s still a lot of money [in military drones], but it’s more predictable,” Mailey says. “This wild wild west we’ve had is consolidating.” Sounds like time to farm.

Raffaello D’Andrea from ETH (home of PX4!) wowed them at Zurich Minds. From Robohub:

During the 20 minute presentation, Raffaello D’Andrea revealed some of the key concepts behind his group’s impressive demonstrations of quadrocopters juggling, throwing and catching balls, dancing, and building structures – and illustrated them with live examples with quadrocopters flying on stage.

To watch him hurtle quadrocopters towards his audience, see them juggle balls and balance poles, and to find out what happens when control fails, check out the video:

Hey everybody.  I've finally finished the airframe portion of my 3D printed FPV Quad.  I'm working now to finnish up the GoPro mount.  The whole thing took a lot a lot longer than I would have liked, but a month long trip back home left me without my printer.  And the arms proved particularly difficult.  There was a lot of flex in my V1 arms that made the quad un-flyable, the V2 arms were better but made for a very unstable, but flyable quad.  The V3 arms are beefed up with both lateral and vertical support.  I'm glad to say it flies perfectly now.  I will also be working to reduce the weight of the frame.  It is still very light, though I don't have a scale to make an exact weight.  I think though there is some fat to be trimmed.   Anyway here it is.  You can check it out and print it if you would like here: My Quad

Hi folks,

I just saw this on /. and couldn't believe it.  Has it received much press elsewhere?

"According to an Al-Jazeera report, 'Charlottesville, Virginia is the first city in the United States to pass an anti-drone resolution. The writing of the resolution coincides with a leaked memo outlining the legal case for drone strikes on U.S. citizens and a Federal Aviation Administration plan to allow the deployment of some 30,000 domestic drones.' The finalized resolution is fairly weak, but it's a start. There is also some anti-drone legislation in the Oregon state Senate, and it has much bigger teeth. It defines public airspace as anything above your shoelaces, and the wording for 'drone' is broad enough to include RC helicopters and the like."

Cheers,
David.

A very sensible opinion piece in the Washington Post, which discusses us. A couple small technical errors (most DIY Drones aren't controlled by WiFi), but otherwise one of the best I've seen:

Here's how it starts:

The drone debate we need to have

By Vivek Wadhwa

Last week, a Virginia House panel approved a two-year moratorium on drone use within the state. In December, Berkeley’s City Council debated a similar proposal from its Peace and Justice Commission. The commission wanted to prohibit the city from purchasing, borrowing, testing or using drones, or allowing “drones in transit.” Hobbyists would, however, have been allowed to use drones which didn’t carry cameras or audio surveillance equipment. The legislation was shot down because, as Berkeley Councilman Gordon Wozniak argued, “Berkeley doesn’t have jurisdiction over its airspace and can’t enforce it unless we buy Patriot missiles to shoot things down.” Both of these bills were prompted by law enforcement officials wanting to use drones for surveillance and intelligence gathering.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) calls this “spying.”

These are the harbingers of debates to come as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) moves towards approving the use ofUnmanned Aircraft Systems for law enforcement. Groups such as the ACLU are working to stop this because of concerns over privacy. As M. Ryan Calo, my colleague at Stanford Law School and Director for Privacy and Robotics at theCenter for Internet & Society, has written, U.S. privacy laws don’t address these issues. This means we are in for some significantlegislative battles on Capitol Hill and in the Supreme Court. Calo says these “could be just the visceral jolt society needs to drag privacy law into the twenty-first century.”

No doubt, privacy is an important issue. But this is going to be the least of our concerns as drone technologies advance further. We are entering the “drone age” writes drone-builder Chris Anderson, whose company 3D Robotics sells drone kits to mix and match capabilities. With sensors, optics, and embedded processors advancing exponentially and prices dropping precipitously, do-it-yourself-ers are building even more sophisticated and smaller drones than what the U.S. government had a few years ago.

Read the rest here. 

Years ago I had run across this old post from rec.aviation.military, "Weird question":

From: Mary Shafer <shafer@reseng.dfrc.nasa.gov>
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military
Subject: Re: Weird question: Date: 08 Apr 1998 11:56:55 -0700
"Zorak" <someone@somewhere.net> writes:
> I have a weird question: has anyone attempted to convert a cruise missile
> like the tomahawk into a piloted aircraft? (without the warhead, of course!)
> I think I remember hearing once that some woman had a piloted version of the
> tomahawk.

In 1993 two employees of Scaled Composites reported on "Manned Test
Flight of an Unmanned Air Vehicle" at the SETP Symposium. However,
they didn't get a written version into the Proceedings, so that's
about all I can say specifically. The general technique involved
adding a very limited instrument panel and pilot controls, with the
pilot straddling the vehicle, I think somewhere near the cg. I
believe they provided a backrest and foot pegs for pilot stability.
Shades of Slim Pickins, which is what came to everyone's mind
immediately on seeing the picture pf the pilot riding the vehicle.

Regarding the identity of the vehicle, all I can say for sure is that
it wasn't a Tomahawk. I don't remember what it was and don't think it
was a cruise missile anyway.
--
Mary Shafer               NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA
SR-71 Flying Qualities Lead Engineer     Of course I don't speak for NASA
sha...@reseng.dfrc.nasa.gov                                DoD #362 KotFR
URL http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/People/Shafer/mary.html
For personal messages, please use sha...@ursa-major.spdcc.com

It took me a while, but eventually I was able to acquire a photo of the flight in question through a well-placed contact.

Apparently this Raptor drone later crashed.

Post links to other drone riders you're aware of!

What happens if you lose line of sight to your UAV or your FPV videolink breaks down?

If you still have a working telemetry link, the PFD-display of the UxV-CS might just help you bring your bird back in one piece. It shows a simplified attitude indicator (the display isn't designed for heavy graphics), a compass rose with a heading bug showing the bearing to the home location and airspeed, speed over ground, vertical speed and altitude. If you know your terrain, with that data you should be able to get you UAV back into LoS / FPV-range.

Evan Ackerman at IEEE Spectrumreports:

This is the RobotsLab Box. It's a giant box, and it's full of robots. As if that wasn't enough, it's also full of a tablet which is full of a complete STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) curriculum that uses the robots as tools to show things like math and physics in action. The Box is designed to make it easy and affordable for teachers to drop a bunch of awesome robots right into the classroom, and even though I'm not a teacher or a student, I want one.

Inside the Box (it really is just called "the Box") you'll find an AR Drone, a Sphero robotic ball, a Mobot two-wheeled modular robot vehicle, and an Armbot robotic arm. To control them all, you also get a tablet. By itself, this wouldn't be that interesting, but what makes the Box valuable is that it's got everything on it that someone who's not a robotics expert needs to teach a classroom of 7th to 12th graders something that they might actually remember. There are detailed step-by-step instructions on how to get the robots to not crash and/or blow up, comprehensive lesson plans, and even quizzes. You get 50 different individual lessons, plus an option for 30 more. 

We love this idea, but the question here is really going to be whether the included curriculum is able to justify the added expense and complexity of the robots. The Box costs $3,500, and if you were to buy the robots separately at retail prices, you'd end up paying $300 for the AR Drone, $130 for Sphero, and about $300 for the Mobot. I'm not sure exactly what the Armbot is, but if we're looking at something similar, it might set you back $400 or $500. Add a tablet for perhaps $500 on the outside, and you can duplicate all of this hardware for something under $2,000, putting a $1,500 premium on software, curriculum, and support.

So, okay. That seems generally reasonable, although we're by no means qualified to make a determination like that for teachers. Really, what we're wondering is whether or not the robots will be integrated into the curriculum in such a way that they're more than a gimmick at best, or a distraction at worst. Here's what the RobotsLab people have to say about this:

Robots are used to expose scientific principles providing a bridge between the abstract topics and the real world. Students will have to practice equation solving skills, understanding of physical forces and scientific investigation thinking in order to solve the quizzes. Each robot included in the box was carefully chosen by our team because of its ability to demonstrate the scientific principles, its ease of operation and its durability.

We got a look at one of the 50 lessons that will be included in the box, and here's a sample, focusing on something called "quadratic equations," whatever those are:

Quadratic Search & Rescue– Quadratic Formula Creation

General Information:

This lesson demonstrates quadratic function based on area. The story plot behind the lesson is that a quadcopter was sent to a search and rescue mission using its bottom camera. The higher the quadcopter flies the bigger the area covered by the camera. The relationship between the height and the area covered is quadratic. (The relationship between the height and an edge of the image is linear, edge X edge is edge squared.)

Lesson Objectives:

This lesson demonstrates what a quadratic graph looks like and how it associates to area. It also helps to relate a quadratic function to the physical world

Lesson Tasks:

Students are first presented with a demonstration of how the helicopter system works along with the video camera located on the bottom of the A.R. Drone

Helicopter run through a 'demonstration mode' where it takes off and begins to hover at a certain height. The students should take note of how much area is viewable from the camera. The helicopter then climbs in elevation and pauses, followed by a drop in elevation closer to the ground. The helicopter finally lands and the demonstration is over. As the camera height is adjusted, what conclusions can you form between the relationship of the viewable area of the camera and height?

Given a situation where the dimensions of the viewable area and the height of the helicopter are known, what is a quadratic function that can be used to describe the helicopter's height in terms of viewing area?

Based on this deduced formula above, use it to figure out the height of the helicopter when the image area is given? Demonstrate this with the A.R. Drone. Use this same formula to determine the image area when the helicopter is a given distance from the ground.

You know what? I used to work for a company where I had to do exactly this. Score one for robots teaching real world skills!

Of course, there's a bunch more included in the lesson plan, like detailed checklists for teachers as well as quizzes for students that are aligned with teaching standards. Here's RobotsLab CEO Elad Inbar talking about the Box, and giving a brief example of the quadratic formula lesson:

If you recognize Elad, it's because he's also the CEO of RobotAppStore. In fact, RobotsLab is the same company- it's just the educational division, which also includes a dedicated panel of 14 teachers. It's probably not a coincidence that Grishin Robotics invested a quarter million bucks into RobotsAppStore at the end of last year, and Elad has told us that Dimitri Grishin is "involved and excited," since "[RobotsLab's] work with the educational industry is definitely aligned with his vision of how the 21st century class room should look like." We here at Spectrum take that to mean that 21st century classrooms should be full of robots, which is a sentiment that we heartily approve of.

RobotsLab Box is launching today at the Texas Computer Education Association (TECA) conference down in Texas. It looks like it's available now at the website below, and we're definitely excited to see how fast this concept catches on. We're also excited to see what else might be possible here: with all of this hardware, we'd love some lesson plans that encourage students to get their hands dirty playing with the robots themselves as well.

Hobbyking have a ARF Quadcopter. Capable of aerobatic maneuvers! Just add your transmitter and fly.I think its a great idea with the trainer port module.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewitem.asp?idproduct=29595&aff=536086

Features:
• 2.4gHz RF module allowing for use with your own transmitter
• 6-axis gyro stabilization system
• Ultra stable flight characteristics
• Aerobatic flight mode allowing for flips, rolls and loops
• Compact and lightweight design

Hard landings with my 3DR quad always puts it firmly 3 inches into the ground, splitting the legs up and destroying the nylon spacers.

I created these very simple bumpers so i don't have to dig up my quad anymore:

They are made from pipe insulation and a wooden hub from a broomstick i had laying around.

I cut up the stick in four 18 mm pieces to replace the nylon spacers and drilled a 3 mm hole in the center.

CA glued the hub to the middle of the foam piece and cut openings for the two legs.

Finally i replaced the two short 3 mm screws with a longer one that goes through both legs and the hub, securing it with a locknut.

I just designed and printed this. It snaps together in a few seconds and provides a good way for me to keep my radio pointed vertically. Seems very stable even with the longer antenna. You can find it on thingiverse if you want to print one for yourself Check it out here.

A tiny new open source drone kit made by Bitcraze is buzzing its way to market this spring, targeted at hackers and modders who want to explore droning indoors as well as out.

Read more at http://www.wired.com/design/2013/02/crazyflie-nano/

At Event 38, part of our goal of offering low-cost, ready to fly UAS is to promote their adoption into a variety of alternate uses. We recently partnered with the physics and engineering departments of Universidad de Chile to explore the viability using an E382 to study low altitude atmospheric effects.

As a preliminary study, we set out to measure the size of the boundary layer over Santiago, Chile as it grows over the morning hours. In the graphs below, you can see the edge of the boundary layer as the area where the temperature starts to increase at about 910-925 hPa.

It’s only visible in the first two graphs because after that time it had grown beyond the altitude we were testing.

The flights were spaced 20-25 minutes apart and lasted about 15 minutes each. For these missions we used guided mode and simply reset the altitude after a few minutes at each altitude break.

The advantage of using UAS in this scenario is the ability to reach both low and high altitudes quickly and repeatably. Logistically it is much more portable and cheaper per flight than weather balloons or tethered balloons.

Hopefully this is part of the future of small UAS once they’re completely integrated into the airspace worldwide!

Finally the last missing board from the PX4 series has been released, the PX4FLOW smart camera module. It can replace GPS in indoor and outdoor applications and provides a metric position close to the ground with only very little drift. It is essentially a microcontroller hooked up to an automotive-grade machine vision sensor that can be freely programmed.

Given the wide distribution of the AR.Drone one might ask what the purpose is, and the answer is simple and well illustrated by the video: You can use this board with PX4FMU and the PX4 native autopilot stack, but you can also interface it with any other system, including Linux onboard computers running ROS. It works indoors and outdoors and brings the same stability the AR.Drone shows in flight to any aerial robot.

It has a native resolution of 752×480 pixels and calculates optical flow on a 4x binned and cropped area at 250 Hz (bright, outdoors), giving it a very high light sensitivy. Unlike many mouse sensors, it also works indoors and in low outdoor light conditions without the need for an illumination LED at 120 Hz (dark, indoors).

• 168 MHz Cortex M4F CPU (128 + 64 KB RAM)
• 752×480 MT9V034 image sensor
• L3GD20 3D Gyro
• 16 mm M12 lens (with IR block filter)

As the aerial image with overlaid trajectory shows, the position estimate is very accurate. This is without GPS, captured in flight at 1.6 m altitude and in one pass.

The work on this module has been accepted at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2013) in Karlsruhe, Germany: Dominik Honegger, Lorenz Meier, Petri Tanskanen and Marc Pollefeys. An Open Source and Open Hardware Embedded Metric Optical Flow CMOS Camera for Indoor and Outdoor Applications, ICRA2013

The module has been developed by Samuel Zihlmann, Laurens Mackay, Dominik Honegger, Petri Transkanen and Lorenz Meier.

Frequently Asked Questions

• When will it be available? - It is available here and starts shipping next Monday, according to 3D Robotics
• Is the software available? - The software will be made available shortly open-source licensed. The module comes pre-flashed with the latest state.
• Is a ROS interface available? - Yes, here
• Will you offer a low-cost version? - The module has been designed to meet scientific standards and provide a baseline for what one can achieve with a reduced design. A low cost version is not planned, but we're interested to hear if someone is willing to contribute a cell-phone camera based design.
• Can I hook it up to robot XY? - Almost for sure, as it outputs the flow already in m/s and in MAVLink format
• Has it been used in scientific work yet? Yes, for example in this paper by Fraundorfer et al.

More information needed?

OFFICIAL PX4 WEBSITE

Here are some photos and a short video of a 80mm diameter fully articulated turret Ball, currently fitted with the FLIR TAU-2 IR video camera. 

Camera and lens is approx 100grams. Complete assembly is 220grams.  Camera line of sight view is from 15deg below horizontal, full 360deg coverage. The Ball can be fitted with the smaller Sony Block cameras as well. Ball is 78mm OD - see the dimensions added to the one image right at the end.

The complete structure is made from composite. Male and female molds were machined from Polypropylene for the two half-domes. Timing gears and belts all from RS Components in South Africa.

From start of 3d CAD model to this prototype was 2 weeks.

The Gimbal is currently fitted to our SurVoyeur Aircraft, ready for Night Flight trials with the Ministry of Nature Conservation here in Namibia.

Here is a YouTube video of it working:

Turret Gimbal Vdeo

all Underside                                                                                              Assembly Side View

FLIR TAU-2 camera

For all you UAV enthusiasts that need a break from all your efforts, there is an ebook available at Amazon that might be just the ticket.

Wthout giving away too much of the plot, it definitely involves the use of a drone in significant ways.

It also doesn't hurt that there are 5 kick ass women at Rex's side.

Mallory- Mallory Heart Reviews's review

               
Review of Rex Randall and the Jericho Secret

5 stars

 

Readers who loved James Bond and similar thrillers will revel in this tale of Rex Randall, multi-bestselling novelist whose series character is a master of disguise and roles.

 

Rex himself is quite the active one, as he and his covey of five beautiful, intelligent ladies test out roles, construct disguises, and assign themselves situations in which to prepare for the next novel in the series.

 

Additionally, they are frequently contracted to work assignments-a sort of covert consultancy-for the mysterious “W,” a woman whom Rex knows only on sight, as his handler, and whom he assumes is just the visible outlet of a secretive governmental agency.

 

This time Rex and crew are tasked to discover discrepancies and missed connections in the U.S. government’s Secret Service protective cover for the President, and visiting political dignitaries. The assignment promises to be fraught with danger, but surely Rex Randall and his five cohorts can seize the day.

Amazon

First off who I am:

My name Eugene Lawson

I have always had an affinity for things that fly. As a young child my uncle wanted to fly military (he went Navy AOCS). And showed me Iron Eagle (yeah that movie) I was hooked. But my grades were poor in high school and I didn't know that I had to earn a commision to fly. So I went to the #2 thing that I loved Computers

I am a Software engineer with Crestron Electronics. (7 mos). I have been programming for about 18 years.

Within that time frame I have worked out at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) as a defense contractor working with DFCS (Drone Formation Control Systems). Basically, code moves drone (aerial or ground based) targets, and the military test its weapon systems on them. Apparently you can't fire weapons at them if people are in and controlling them (go figure). seems like a perfect job for death row inmates but hey.. that's just me.

Since then I made 3 commercial video games for the ps3 and xbox360 and pc. This got me very interested in Artificial Intelligence and Finite State Machines.

Being at Crestron there is a lot of hardware here. So I joined up with former co-worker or current co-worker actually (it's complicated). And we started a small Quadcopter project.

Our current skill set:

Programming 40 years combined programming experinece
5 years Drone experience. (mine)
6 years Game programming experience.(mine)
10+ years electronic experience (his)

We know NOTHING about quadcopters, flight physics, ect. We are banking on our ability to read, current experience and knowledge to get this working.

There is definitely something to be said about learning from previous mistakes and accomplishments of others, but on this project, I feel that more can be learned by independently building this machine. We also feel that maybe by working independently we might find new ways of handling things. Probably for the worse, but could be for the better. That being said, if you view our videos, post, ect. Look at them as a... "look at what these idiots are doing now!" and not as a "How to" posts. Because more likely than not, we will be doing it completely bass ackwards.

As of right now I have already shorted one 3S Lipo 25C 5Ah. I cut the leads off the battery AT THE SAME TIME! (yeah I know right?!) I couldn't have just read in the forum.
I do suspect we'll gather a lot of data. So feel free to look at that and gather what you will from it. Oppose to what we say we are getting from the data.

We are very excited about this project. Our first test is scheduled for this weekend (weather permitting). Provided we don't throw a prop into our chests, I will post our vids, findings, and data.

Talk to you all soon (I hope?)