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Designed in house by myself and Alan Sanchez, this new quad frame is designed to be rock solid in every way. The frame is constructed of Aluminum and fiberglass. We've made some changes to increase the amount of free space available for electronics and sensors. The legs are moved out to leave a clear field of view from cameras mounted beneath the body. The power distribution board is now sandwiched between the arms but the plugs are still easily accessible from the sides.

The main frame has a hole pattern allowing you to mount APM in any orientation. The holes around the edges will fit the tilt/roll camera mount and the sonar mounting kit. The arms have a cutout in the end to route the cables through so they don't get pinched in a crash.

The added strength doesn't compromise flight time. With a 4900mAh 3S Rhino battery pack which it easily lifted, I timed 17 minutes of hovering out of ground effect in steady winds of 5-8 knots. The video below was taken while carrying a 4900mAh battery.

The legs are also cut of fiberglass and can really take some abuse! This video will give you an idea of their strength.

Overall the quad handles very well and it feels nice and smooth to fly. I haven't modified any of the standard PID values on ACM to make these videos, the same values translate nicely to this quad because of the similar size and weight.

The kits are available at the usual price of $170 here: ArduCopter 3DR Frame Kit Preorder. The kit includes:

• 2 Main frame boards
• 4 Aluminum arms
• 2 Carrier boards
• Landing gear
• Power distribution board, power cables and signal cables for PDB-APM
• All hardware needed to assemble the components above

The kits will start shipping next Thursday, the first of September. We will hold your entire order until that day if you choose to buy one during the preorder.

Randy is one of the key members of the ArduCopter team, and has been leading the traditional heli part of it, along with integrating optical flow sensors into the ArduCopter code (look for a product we may be offering in that space soon).

He's also a great example of the international nature of the team. If you thought Jani was pretty exotic, as a Finn living in Thailand, Randy is a Canadian living in Japan!

This project is like a smoothie of all my favorite things blended together.

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is keeping track of a ground robot that leads a flock of similar robots.  The UAV flies autonomously and uses its cameras to help the units moving in a defined formation, while communicating with the leader through an interfacing device.

It sounds so simple when you put it like that!

Folks, 

We've accidentally introduced a bug into the latest ArduCopter code that interferes with MAVLink setup. After you load the firmware with the Mission Planner, when you go through the setup process and click on "Level" it resets the board into a state where MAVlink can no longer connect. (If you reset the board, MAVLink will connect again, but you still can't run the Level command)

The tempory solution is to do the setup via the CLI process instead. But we're working on the bug and hope to have a fix released by tomorrow. 

Many apologies for the glitch. We were just moving too fast and this one slipped through. 

--Chris

Add new video :) Emile Enjoy to fly with Arducopter32 :)

Dear Friends,

in these summer Holiday i found the time to finish my porting of Arducopter 2.0.39 to Multipilot32 ( AP32 ).

In this video dimostration you can found the result of my work. We need only to finish the test on waypoint navigation .

The configuration of quad in the video is follow :

• VR Multipilot32.
• DIY Oilpan.
• DIY GPS MTK16.
• DIY Compass.
• Radio is Spektrum DX6.
• Motors is Keda 20-22.

The AP32 Upgrade Kit is Available for your Arducopter more info click here : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/page/multipilot32-1

In the next days will be available on repo : http://code.google.com/p/multipilot32/downloads/list

The functionality available and tested in the video are :

• Stable mode flight .
• Loiter + Altitude Hold
• Return to home.
• simple mode flight.

The code is fully compatible with Mission Planner i tested until rev 1.0.54.

I tested also the Copter Ground Station for Android it work fine !!!

The code support mavlink protocol and the platform tha use it.

The upgrade available using Multipilot32 are :

Imu refresh rate 1 khz instead of 200 hz , more stable flight.

PPMSUM radio input compatible .

SD card for save Option and log not on internal eeprom (Work in progress).

Radio Remap functionality for PPMSUMRECEIVER using Mavlink parameters (Work in progress).

Mixertable for define custom configuration using Mavlink parameters (Work in progress).

Thank you very much to all member of Arducopter DevTeam that help me in these work and for they great works:)

A special Thanks for Chris , Jason , Mike and Emile the beta tester taht setup and fly Arducopter32 on his quad and fly in fpv the quad during the test :)

Official Thread : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/profiles/blogs/arducopter32-ver-2-0-39-is-alive

Best

Roberto Navoni Foxteam

This blog post contains photos and small descriptions of UAV projects, presented at MAKS-2011. Mainly, teams use commercial autopilots, however some of them had very nice their own built systems.
However, the prices are sufficently high, usually starts from $30,000. I had a talk with representatives of a few different projects and almost all of them said that clients usually prefer to get service (aerial photography or video) rather than buy UAV. Anyway, here is a small photo report:

Guys develop multirotors of different sizes and types based on MikroKopter system

Tiny quadcopter

Really tiny...

This one has even weapons

UAV for aerial photography

This project I liked more than others

Aerial photography mission planning

And very cool multifunctional ground station! We definitely need to make something like this for APM :)

Some of you may wonder.

Why was there such so long silence ?

Indeed, my last entry dates back to last christmas. And here is the reason why:

http://www.apress.com/9781430231837

 
I was asked by JD Warren, who is also a diydrones member ( http://diydrones.com/profile/JDWarren ) to help him on a book about Arduino-controlled robots.

JD is a great inventor and maker of various machines that (mostly) roll on wheels. He was also featured on the title of the MAKE magazine in April 2010. 
Finally, with a delay of six months, the book was published by mid July and JD, Josh and i are happy now that all the work is over. 
If you want things to be moved with Arduino, this is the ultimate Book.

There are lots of hands-on descriptions in it and it is also a good starting point for newbies, that have never had a soldering iron in their hand.It gives also a good introduction to the basics of electronics and computerized control.

Here is an overview of some of the chapters:

• Basics of motor-control
• Basics of PCB design and fabrication
• R/C control and decoding
• Autonomous sensor guidance
• Frame building from various materials
• Instructions for a variety of robot designs, including: 

• Linus the Line Bot, who follows a line on the floor  
• Wally the Wall-Bot, who tries to avoid crashing to the wall  
• The Bug-Bot, who acts a little bit like an insect  
• The Explorer-Bot, who is strong enough to carry a human and that can work outdoors  
• The RoboBoat, which is navigating via GPS to predefined waypoints.    (this is in fact the chapter written by me and summarizes the building of the catamaran, and the modified ArduPilot hardware that i am using to do the survey of lakes)  
• The Lawn-Bot 400,  who is the first that can do something useful in your garden  
• The Seg-Bot, which is in truth not a robot, but a Segway (tm) Clone  
• And finally: the Battle-Bot

The book is available as e-book or in a printed version:
 http://www.apress.com/9781430231837 or 

http://www.amazon.com/Arduino-Robotics-John-David-Warren/dp/1430231831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314021806&sr=8-1

  

This week the Robotics Association at Embry-Riddle attended the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) North America conference in Washington D.C. We had 14 students and 6 faculty at the event.

At the conference we met Jordi Munoz, Gigio Romero and Geoffrey Barrows. They all came by our booth at the conference and we all talked for a while about DIYDrones and the Ardupilot. We are excited to continue using the Ardupilot on our Easystar aircraft which we had on display at the conference.

The conference was a big success for our students. We were able to network with many major companies, and we will probably get significant donations for our projects. The Stratasys booth had one of our Monocopters on display that they printed on their Fortus500 FDM printer. 

We were also able to fly a couple of our vehicles in the demonstration area. We flew our monocopter and our quadrotor at the same time in the netted arena. To everyone's surprise, they didn't hit each other! 

Our students had a great time at the worlds largest unmanned systems conference and we are looking forward to next year's conference in Las Vegas, NV! 

Sometimes APM development goes fast, and sometimes it goes like molasses in winter. After being asked repeatedly (over many months - sorry) I have finally gotten support for multiple aileron channels in place. You can use this if you want to set your airframe up with differential ailerons or if you have separate servos on your ailerons and they don't move opposite directions for a given input.

The big delay with this change was coordinating the way we would use channels 5-8 for a variety of purposes.  Functionality is coming for flaps, camera mounts and more.

Here are the things to know about using the new dual aileron functionality:

1. I have tested this on the bench, but have not flight tested it.  I do not expect any problem, but as always with new functionality exercise some caution.
2. The functionality is in the current version of the code in the repo (trunk).
3. You can set up the second aileron on either channel 5 or 6.  Remember that it does not matter which channel it is on your receiver.  Just take that receiver output and hook it up to 5 or 6.
4. For that channel (5 or 6) you will need to set a new parameter.  For channel 5 it is rc_5_funct.  You can set this as a parameter through a GCS like APM Planner, or you can set it using a #define in your config file.  If you set it in your config file use #define RC_5_FUNCT RC_5_FUNCT_AILERON.  If you set it through the GCS set rc_5_funct to a value of 1.
5. If you want to use differential aileron travel program your radio so that it works as you desire in manual mode.
6. You will need to redo your radio calibration.   I do not know if APM Planner properly supports calibration of channels 5 and 6, but I will drop Mike O an email about it and I'm sure if it does not now, it will very soon.  The CLI procedure does work fine.
7. You cannot set the reversing for the 2nd aileron channel with the dip switches (as there is not one available for this).  So, it is highly recommended that you disable the dip switches and set up your reversing using the parameters.  Remember that if you are working with the raw parameter values reversing is 1 or -1.

Been out testing today with my Razor600e.

Wind was Blowing around 8-10mph on the ground, you can hear it on the video.

Testing altitude hold.

I'm still having trouble with the tail control but i think i have the Altitude Hold is sorted out now.

Running Code Version 2.0.38

Had a few small problems with the P value. Oscillations were pretty bad before I lowered it. 

Touched the ground a couple of times.

Had a few small issues when i changed to Loiter mode but i need to talk to randy.

It seems to be holding certain values when i switched out. Tried after i made the video to do some more Alt_hold

and it kept going up until it hit the same level as it was when i had it in loiter.

But i think i'm getting there.

Will post the Log file in my discussion.

Maybe someone knows, that this week (August 16-21) in Moscow has been MAKS-2011. This is International Aviation and Space Exhibition which is held every two years and is one of the most important aviation events in Russia.
There have been a lot of different exhibits from tiny aircraft parts to even Airbus A380 and Boeing 787 Dreamliner! And, certainly, ArduPilot Mega is not an exception.
I presented my amateur UAV (actually, this is RC plane with APM) as a part of our University exposition (I am a third-year student at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology).
I did HIL simulation in X-Plane to show all the possibilities of the system. A lot of visitors were interested in APM and really liked it after flying in different modes and watching how good AUTO mode works. Some of them are even going to purchase APM. Moreover, it was nice to see many foreigners, mainly from Europe and Asia (there were a few from the US) interested in APM too.
During the first days of exhibition (business days, only for specialists), visitors mostly interested in technical and commercial aspects of the system and during the last days (when it was opened for all people) children were happy to fly in Manual or Stabilize modes using transmitter. I was pleased to show my plane setup and tell people about APM.
Here are some photos of the event:

Our University's exposition

APM is working

In the end of exhibition our University got this diploma of a party

Later I will make yet another one blog post about the other UAV projects presented at the exhibition.

I know this isn't news, but please indulge me a moment of pride in the APM dev teams. They have built the world's first "universal autopilot". The same hardware can fly all of the above--every kind of airplane, multicopter and helicopter, along with hardware-in-the-loop simulations--with one click to load new firmware in the Mission Planner. That's just amazing.

And if you want it to autonomously control a rover or boat, that's just a few more clicks. 

As far as I know, this has never been done before. Congrats to the whole APM dev team!

(And they're just getting started. You'll be blown away by what's coming...)

The latest version of the Mission Planner (1.0.55) has a nice little feature that you might not notice, so I thought I'd call it out. In the Configuration tab, where all the user-modifiable MAVLink parameters are, "tool tips" that explain what each does now appear when you hover over each parameter. Very handy for figuring out what does what and how to modify them.

The full list of MAVLink parameters is in the manual here, but now you don't need to look them up. It's right there in the Mission Planner. Another great update by Michael Oborne!

Today's Meet the Developers is Sandro Benigno, who displays the amazing range of talent we have here. I first realized the scope of his abilities when he took the APM design files and, on his own, created the photorealistic renders of them that we still use in the manual:

Since then Sandro had designed and rendered countless other images and diagrams for the manual and other pages. Now he's working, with Max Levine and Samantha Nelson, on an overall rebranding of the product pages. Plus he's part of the team leading the camera control features that will be in the next version of APM, which means he's coding, too! 

He's a warm and genuinely nice person, and it's always a pleasure to work with him. And he stays up to 2:00 am Brazil time for our Sunday night Dev Calls. See what I mean about him? Amazing--we're luck to have him on the dev team.

Over to Sandro:

Name: Sandro de Freitas Benigno

As with any inventor, designer or engineer, things don't always go my way!

Actually as it turns out, I did not damage the Seraphim prototype, but did destroy the reciever! That cheered me up a bit as we have much more need for the Seraphim rather than the reciever at the moment, I have spare of the latter.

Nonetheless, the lesson still stands...check all the wiring, check it again, and check it once more. The problem is that bad wiring doesn't always do damage, so I tend to rush soldering jobs, if you cut a bit of wood short, there are no two ways about it....it definately won't bridge the gap!

I've been running loads of new tests recently, which I'll gradually find time to talk about! Check here on DIY drones for more detail and other information I don't have the time to post more than once on our website: www.universalair.co.uk

I have just recently created a crash test video and written about why I chose aluminium for the ROFL frame, you can read this at: www.universalair.co.uk/content/durability-aluminium-crash-testing-rofl

Comments and ideas appreciated as always :)

Having an interest in robots that mimic living creatures I found this vid amusing. Imagine 100 of these APMed and schooling around a football stadium!

localhawk

At aprox 200Euros including special flybareles head seems ok to me.....

Here's a cool project to open source the telemetry data stream that the Aurora 9 RC gear uses:

 

Among others, one thing that makes the 2.4GHz Aurora 9 so great is the big LCD in combination with the full telemetry features of the Optima 7/9 receivers. These receivers contain a so-called data port that connects to Hitec’s sensor station. Sensor stations come in 2 flavors: a nitro version for gas and glow powered planes and a blue version for electric powered aircrafts.

  

But … Hitec’s sensor stations are not so versatile as they should be, therefore I developed one by myself. It works so great that I decided to share my design and introduce a DIY kit. Also great is that all software and hardware is open source. Build one by yourself or buy a DIY kit containing all necessary components and a professionally manufactured circuit board.

Via Hackaday

Today's Meet the Developers profile is Jani Hirvinen, who is one of the leaders of the ArduCopter project. Jani is one of our core team members, is always on the Sunday night dev call and is constantly testing new code, suggesting improvments and extending the platform to new airframes and configurations. He's got boundless energy and seems to always be working!

One of his most impressive contributions was the hardware design for the official ArduCopter frames, motors and whole concept including firmwares, which he did almost single-handedly and really accelerated the project. Jani's one of the DIY Drones entrepreneurial sucess stories, too. He got so into the project that he made it his job, and now runs jDrones, which is both a manufacturing operation and retail store, full time out of Bangkok.

Name:Jani Hirvinen

Nationality: Finnish

Home: Bangkok, Thailand

Dev role: ArduCopter hardware leader, bug hunter and extreme tester.

Day job: Running jDrones, ArduCopter & UAV parts development and production in multiple countries. HQ as in Bangkok

Background: After working a long time with AeroQuad and many other multicopters, the move to ArduCopter project was convenient. When DIY Drones wanted to move towards multirotors and ArduCopter was born, I joined to ArduCopter dev team as one of it's original members and we created well known ArduCopter frames and kits as they are known these days. 

First we created basic ArduCopter software as a merge from AeroQuad and Joses codebases. We quickly saw that it was not that path that we want to go so me and Jose created new architecture for ArduCopter and ArduCopterNG was born. ArduCopterNG was big step towards ArduPilot Mega code bases

Nowdays all my time goes on parts development, management issues, dealing out with all our suppliers, looking new and better parts to help you all our users out there, testing and crashing a lot on our products so our users not need to crash them :)

Personal History: Born in Helsinki, Finland 1969 to aviation full family as dad used to be Captain on Finnair and flight instructor, Naturally Mom had her flight licenses and flew often if had time from her car racing career. Started electronics on age of 4 and got my first computer on age of 6. Hobby airplanes came along age of 8. Having degrees on Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. Last 20 years been running Global Internet service providers,  IT Training & Consult projects and working on high tech technology transfers between Finland and Thailand. Now living full time in land of smiles and working like crazy on jDrones and DIYDrones related projects. 

Motto: There are no stupid questions... Learn something new every day, if not it's a boring day. (not fan of boring days)

Other hobbies: R/C Heli flying, Electronics, Occasional Paragliding, Sailplane flying, Ice Skating (yes in Bangkok... hey i'm from Finland). Among many other things if there are any free time left, which has not been the case lately.