For those of you who are using Google+, the DIY Drones community there is growing nicely and just broke 1,000 members. It's a good way to get DIYD content in your regular G+ stream, and it's easy to share other relevent G+ posts with the rest of the community. Join here. 

This is a quick video of a flight after some fresh snow in Castlewood Canyon State Park south of Denver, which was one of my favorite places to go as a kid. This is the first video I've posted using my new GoPro3 White Edition. It's taken me forever to figure out the right settings for color correction, since the raw video from this camera is normally flat and lacking in contrast. I think I finally got it right, though the flat lighting and the sun shining through the clouds confusing the GoPro's light meter didn't help.

This canyon is a real challenge to fly and get smooth video, since the slightest wind is amplified by the canyon walls producing a lot of turbulence. My Deep Reaper can handle it better than my old Hawk Sky, but it's still a little bumpy. It was also fun to fly as low through the canyon as possible without blocking LOS with an intervening hill. Enjoy!

So a few weeks ago I started writing a ground controller for Android (using a spiffy mavlink library - see credits).  With the help of a few kind alpha testers, it seems to work pretty well now.

Current features:

• Direct control & monitoring of ArduPlane/Copter with no PC required.  Just a $5 USB adapter cable and your Android tablet or phone (Android 3.1 or later).  No rooting or hardware mods required.
• Map view
• Parameter editing
• Waypoint editing
• Vehicle mode display & control (AUTO, STABILIZE, etc...)
• Capture tlog files to sdcard
• Direct connect to USB on the APM
• 3DR telemetry module support
• Warnings for low battery, low rssi, or low GPS sat count
• Fully android 'native' (Scala backend talks directly to the USB device and renders the frontend)
• Most of the early nasty bugs seem gone... thus the beta...

Not ready now but should be in soon:

• UDP link (either as a client or a server)

I think we are now ready for more testers (and devs - if you want to add a feature!).  You can download a binary from github.  Or wait a few hours and it will be up on the play store.  Developers - if you'd like to get started, I'm happy to help if you have questions (getting it building etc...)

WARNING: This is beta test software.  If you are using it with your vehicle I recommend the following:

• Don't edit parameters in flight (until we have lots of confirmation this works - it works fine for me, but you know how things go...)
• Keep your RC controller close at hand and be ready to use it to force the vehicle into Stablize or some other 'safeish mode'.  Watch the vehicle carefully when it hits waypoints
• If you think anything is not working safely, unplug the radio from the tablet

If you have comments/questions/ideas please post on the discussion thread.

I am proud to have the opportunity to announce hardware availability of a new target for TauLabs.

quanton flight control rev. 1 <-- shop site (on stock, worldwide shipping)

System information and components:

• STM32F405 32bit arm cortex-m4 cpu with fpu, 192k ram and 1024k flash
• invensense MPU6000 3-axis accel and 3-axis gyro sensor
• honeywell HMC5883L 3-axis compass
• meas-spec MS5611 high precision barometer
• 32mbit spi flash memory
• up to 8 x pwm input, 1 x ppm input, up to 15 x pwm output
• up to 5 x uart, 2 x i2c, sbus, dsmx, mini usb, swd
• 50x50mm board size, 45x45mm mikrokopter style mounting
• schematics at http://github.com/taulabs
• sourcecode at http://github.com/taulabs
• binaries at http://jenkins.taulabs.org
• answers at http://thespyd.net/questions
• support at https://groups.google.com

For those who don't know about TauLabs, please look here.

OpenPilot firmware on pre release hardware:

https://vimeo.com/51772080
https://vimeo.com/51772080
https://vimeo.com/51776478

TauLabs firmware on final hardware:
https://vimeo.com/58572704
https://vimeo.com/58536514
https://vimeo.com/58536515
https://vimeo.com/58668541

Oakland tribute tower from ZM Interactive on Vimeo.

Hey everyone, just wanted to share,

This is part of a video for a featured film we did, it got pretty windy, check the flags later on the video :)

Let me know what u think!

Ziv.

In searching for sensors to use with the Arduino, looking for something new to play with I discovered a 16x4 Thermopile array, a bit of a search revealed a manufacturer that makes a 32x31 array, these may well be within the reach of the hobbyist, giving us a way to add thermal imaging to our copters.  Affordable thermal imaging would be a massive step forward for the civilian drone! 

Manufacturer Website

Drone Cafe Video Podcast

Drone Cafe Youtube

***Footage of how the helicopter flies is in the second half of the video***

Drone Cafe - Episode 8 - Micro Siri Heli - Part 1

***Part 2 I am going to open up the Heli for the first time and make a video about whats inside, how much space is available, and what my options are***

If anyone has any knowledge in voice control, programming, Siri code, or anything useful to this project please help contribute.  You can do that by giving me all the information that you think I would find useful in completing my goals for this project.

Useful Links to this Project:

Siri Controlled Arduino using Ruby

I had a blast helping my friend build his hexacopter last weekend. This video includes some tips and tricks. We also had to do some interesting trouble shooting for problem that showed up during ESC calibration that turned out to be a bad soldering job (yep it was my fault!).

Anyway please enjoy a 5 minute condensed version of a fun day building the most excellent 3DR ArduCopter Hexa-B Frame + Motors + Full Flight Electronics Kit.

At first, we tried principle experiment with 1-axis arm robot.

Next, we tried principle experiment with 2-axes arm robot.

This is our latest experiment with humanoid robot.

This Kickstarter project is awesome (I'm a backer). The video above, from the San Jose State team doing this project, is inspiring. And they use APM 2.5!

From the listing:

What is HLQ?

We are designing and building a Heavy Lift Quadcopter (HLQ) which we are calling Incredible HLQ (sounds like "Hulk"). Like the super hero, HLQ will be able to lift and transport a huge amount of weight for it's size and cost. HLQ will be capable autonomously retrieving and delivering 50 pounds of payload.

How are we doing it?

In order to accomplish the 50 pound goal, HLQ will utilize a drive train powered by two gasoline two-stroke engines of about 12.5 HP each. Lift will be achieved using four commercial RC helicopter rotor heads spinning four 435mm blades. Selection of these blades were based of actual lift testing in our test rig which is featured in the video. Control is achieved by using the variable pitch control of the rotor-heads to change the lift output and induces torque of each rotor.

Flight control will utilize DIYDrone's Ardupilot APM2.5+ module. The Ardupilot is a open-source arduino based control board for UAV's. It has been widely utilized for many fixed wing, helicopter and multi-rotor flight platforms and has a proven track record. Best of all, the programming is already done for us.

In addition, we will be utilizing a computer vision system for payload identification and tracking using the OpenCV library on a Roboard RB-110. The RB-110 is a complete computer on a single board. It has a 486 compatible processor running at 1GHz and is capable of running, Windows, Linux or Dos. We will be using OpenCV through it's Python extensions to identify payloads and guide HLQ in for retrieval.

As students of San Jose State, we have a lot of resources available to us for designing and building HLQ. The Engineering department has a computer lab which has design tools such as PTC Creo, Solid Works, and Inventor. We have thus far been utilizing mostly Creo to design and analyze HLQ. We also have access to electronics labs, mechatronics labs, and product testing labs to help build and troubleshoot HLQ.

We are also just two blocks away from the San Jose TechShop which gives us access to lathes, mills, laser cutters, a water-jet machine, electronics equipment and more.

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, we have made contact with members of the worlds top aerospace and mechanical engineering firms right here in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are designing HLQ with reliance on their knowledge and experience.

As you can see we have all the resources necessary to complete HLQ. But there is one thing keeping us from meeting our goal: funding! That is, of course why we are here on kick-starter, and why we need your help to make HLQ a reality!

I just streamed live via YouTube a "T-500 days until the start of the USA trip" update and took questions from those who could join. Thought you might like to see what was discussed.

Just skip the first 4 minutes, its a blank screen as I waited for the event to start.

In other news, the Polaris, my APM focused airplane, will complete it's maiden flight here in a week or so! If it flies well, then I'll be adding the APM!

Thank you for all your support,

-Trent

Impressive philosophical opinion about the modern world and the role of self-regulating systems in our life.

From ZURICH.MINDS conferences YT reports.

Check YT channel  https://www.youtube.com/user/zurichminds for more interesting things and http://zurichminds.com   for such another events.

"ZURICH.MINDS is a community of leaders in science, the arts and business. We are driven by passion and curiosity. We strive for deep understanding and love new ideas. Our goal is to improve the quality of our decisions as private individuals, as role models and as citizens of this planet – and to inspire others to do so.

///

Description from YT.

I dont have a good picture of the P-51 Mustang but the sound as it flies over my house is awesome.

I was surprised  how small they were inside and that all the control surfaces were cover like a balsa rc wing  a little spooky considering how large they are.

Now I need to find some really large servos.......LOL

The cover story, by Lev Grossman, is here and discusses DIY Drones. The editors of Time also invited me to write a companion piece in the issue, which is below (they wrote the headline, not me!)

Why We Shouldn’t Fear Personal Drones

By Chris Anderson

Drones, like most robots, are designed for jobs that are “dull, dirty or dangerous.” We know what that means in a military context — everything from endless “loitering” over combat zones to remote-controlled warfare with the pilots safely in a trailer in Nevada — but soon civilian drones will be flying commonly overhead here at home. What will they be doing?

 

The usual assumption is that it will be police surveillance and general snooping. Interestingly, that’s just what people feared when the computer, which had also been introduced as a military technology, started to be used commercially in the 1960s. The worry then was that computers would be used primarily to spy on us, as an arm of Big Brother. Only decades later, once we all had one, did we figure out that they were better at work and entertainment, communicating with each other and generally being welcome additions to our lives. That’s because we could control them and tailor their use to our own needs, which we did amazingly well.

 

This change is already underway with drones. Personal versions are small, cheap and easy to use. They cost as little as $300 and are GPS-guided fully-autonomous flying robots (my company, 3D Robotics, is one of many making them). They fly themselves, from takeoff to landing, and can even follow the terrain for miles. There are already more in the hands of amateurs than the military, and some of the uses may surprise you. Civilian drones don’t just do the “dull, dirty and dangerous” jobs better; they can also make the expensive ones cheaper. In a world of Google maps, the advantage of aerial views of the world are clear, but satellites and manned aircraft are expensive and the pictures they take are often too far away or too infrequent to be useful. Drones can get better views, more often. And those shots can be of exactly what you want to see — an anytime, anywhere eye in the sky, controlled by you, not The Man.

 

Take sports videos. If you’re a windsurfer and want a great YouTube video of your exploits, you’re not going to get that from the shore, and hiring a manned helicopter and camera crew to follow you offshore isn’t cheap. But if you’ve got a “FollowMe” box on your belt, you can just press a button and a quadcopter drone with a camera can take off from the shore, position itself 30 feet up and 30 feet away from you and automatically follow you as you skim the waves, camera trained on you the whole way (when its battery gets low, it can return to the shore and land itself). Fast forward a year or so, and that same FollowMe box will become a FollowMe sticker, which you can put on soccer ball. Now that copter can follow the action of your kid’s soccer game, bringing NFL-quality aerial video to PeeWee sports.

 

One father has already set his personal drone to follow his kid to the school bus stop. Another team configured a drone to be a personal “periscope”; it flies above your head, giving you a video view from ten feet up. Yet another programmed a drone to fly in front of a runner, like a mock rabbit to a greyhound, encouraging them to pick up the pace.

 

Commercially, the potential is even greater. Farmers are already using drones to monitor their crops; a weekly overhead picture of a field can give them the information they need to use less chemicals and water on the plants, saving money and the environment. Scientists use drones for wildlife conservation, mapping the nests of endangered species without disturbing them. And energy companies use drones to monitor electric pylons and gas pipelines.

 

What was once military technology can now be used by children and I’m sure a generation growing up with drones — my kids launch them in the park on weekends — will find better uses than I could ever think of. What we, the technologists, know is that they will soon be cheap and easy enough to be commonplace; what we don’t know is what application will emerge as result. Tomorrow you may think nothing of driving by a farm swarming with robot cropdusters. Or see film sets with hovering cameras. Or skiers followed by personal videodroids. Or, more likely, something I can’t imagine at all that’s better than any of those. That’s what happens when you add “personal” to a technology. It evolves into something new, often more powerful in the hands of regular people than it ever was in the hands of the few.

With the amount of equipment in my X8 is on the increase, so is the weight. Its becoming very difficult and somewhat dangerous to hand launch. 

Iv decided to build a catapult. I dont like the idea of a bungee launcher because of the amount of flat space required. some places I fly dont have this.(eg: off a cliff =) ) I really wanted something self-contained and foldable.

The APM flies the X8 really well BTW =)

If anyone wants to build one I have posted all the info and pics here

I have found this link about some paranoid anti drone person.

I am not sure if it was shown here but they stole footage of from black sheeps videos.

I'm very excited to announce that I've been published by Robot Magazine! :)  My article describes the ups and downs of my two year experience building Data Bus, my 25mph race rover, for the 2011 and 2012 Sparkfun AVC (Autonomous Vehicle Competition).

The article appears in the Mar-Apr issue (#39) and sheds light on some of the problems I ran int as well as solutions that worked, and describes some of the adventure -- the thrill of success and crushing blows of failure :)

Sad news from the northwest. It sounds like it may become a Class B Misdemeanor to simply own a drone capable of video or photo, and a Class A to fly it.

Check out the story.

I blew up my first MinimOSD, and then received my second one, but didn't realize I needed the FTDI cable, so another week went by, but all is good now..

I received my FDTI cable from 3DR today, which i needed to get my MinimOSD loaded and working. Within minutes I had it working and configured. This is a great product and very inexpensive for all that it does! So, I am in a waiting mode for a good time to do another FPV flight, although I feel I should wait until 2.92., I will feel much more comfortable with the inertial navigation in the X-Y.\

I am using the camera from 3DR that is a night cam/ day cam and auto switch's.
I was amazed when I took it outdoors tonight. I live in a rural area that doesn't even have streetlights. There was no moon out and the only source of light was the lights from distant houses in the hills. The camera shows the multitude of pinpoints of light sources and even showed the trees, and other objects that I couldn't see much better with my eyes. I was amazed, I am used to cameras that show nothing in the dark..

My plan of getting some interesting video, (already have a number of subjects in mind) at night looks like it just might work..

Anyway, as soon as I do, I will post the video or some pictures here. I just hope my GoPro 3 Black will do as good!

Here is how it is mounted, (used the bolt that holds an arm on)

A small testimony of "Italian industrial archeology " some company try to resist .
Now that everyone thinks that is possible to produced only in china ... Italian Makers say No! You can 'and you must try to do something more here in Italy !! Virtualrobotix is a farmless company , so we use small company near us for going in production or some great partner around the world :)
There's the little mounting backstage box of VRBRAIN

The first test was doing by a 3d printer but for produce a pcs it need 4 hours ... with a molder only 30 sec for 4 pcs ...now i need to sell it :) Help me to solve my problem ;)

my RepRap 3DPrinter and first printer test ...

original blog post : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/profiles/blogs/vr-brain-enclosure-back-stage-made-in-italy

Best

Roberto