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Other than "you get what you paid for" Anyone have a reason Not to buy this pair? 

My personal goal would be to use it as a learning tool, prepairing for adding telemetry to my projects. But it should be usefull too.  Secondary use in some project around the house, ie halloween automation, laser guided water splasher (anti-cat crap in the yard device currently in planning stage) ect.

Here's the Junk:

This package consists of two mini half-duplex wireless data transceiver modules and each such module is highly integrated with an ultra speed MCU and a powerful RF chip. With the introduction of the innovative yet higly-efficient encoding method, its anti-interference ability and sensitivity are significantly improved. Features like various channel options, ultra long transmission distance (1000 meters) or abundant interfaces (UART/TTL, RS-485 & RS-232) helps make the transmission of data of any size possible and eliminate the needs of writing transmission program and running complicated settings. A software application ("RF-Magic") is offered for free so that users can modify the settings of the module. Besides, its slim size and wide power supply range makes itself the most popular selection of many applications in different fields.

Features:

• Ultra long transmission distance: 800-1000 meters @1200bps
• Working frequency: 431-478Mhz (1KHz step)
• +3.3-5.5V wide power supply range
• -112dBm(9600bps) high sensitivity
• Over 100 channels
• GFSK modulation
• Highly efficient cyclic interleaving error correction encoding
• Flexible software programme option settings
• Selectable RFID index
• UART/TTL, RS-485 & RS-232
• Large data buffer: 512bytes
• Suitable for massive data transfer
• Built-in watchdog ensures long-term operation
• Length of antenna: 104.32mm

Product Link:

Try to use your Iphone on this Magic Box , download i-nigma app point with your camera the MP32 box and yo can see that we put a lot of getting started info on MP32 Magic Box :)

Suggestions ;)

To Support new customers on MultiPilot32 migration FoxTeam open a Learning Center , Two Webinar at the month and Past event online here : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/page/webcast-1 Here you can meet developer and advanced user to obtain reply to your main question . Online last meeting where we present last revision of Virtual Robotix Ide .

Best

Roberto

This story has a happy ending, and it's not just more evidence of how amazing the waterproof GoPro camera is.

(via Multirotor News)

I attended the Bay Area meetup last weekend.  One interesting thing that Chris Anderson mentioned was his philosophy that it's often more important to make things that are easy to repair than it is to make things that can't break.

I almost immediately had an object lesson in this by crashing my quad.  Two props were broken, so I put it in the car to take care of later. When I got it home, I noticed that one of  the motor mounts was bent to an almost 45 degree angle.  Fixing it took less than a minute.  Thanks AeroQuad!

http://eastbay-rc.blogspot.com/2011/04/repairing-aeroquad-motor-mount.html

Dear Friends,

I'm happy to inform you that i have upload the VRIDE 0.0.3 Alpha Revision.

Inside this early version of our ide i put some example about the opportunity to use on MP32 a lot of Analog and digital sensor.

In this thread is possible to discuss about the experience on sensor , driver implementation , code example , performances ecc.

In the VRIDE 0.0.3

Actually 07-03-11 is available the support to :

HMC5843 : I2c Magnetometer.

BMP085 : I2c Barometer.

Mediatek GPS prtocol NMEA e MTK16 : High performances GPS 10 HZ

SPI ADC Converter connect to 3 axis Analog Gyro and 3 axis Analog Accelerometer.

Standard MP32 ADC converter : High Resolution 12 bit ADC Converter.

I'm working on driver of sonar and IR Sensor and on WMP+ and NK Gyro and Accelerometer Wii sensor.

About this task support from community is welcome.

This evening we are online at 22:30 CET to discuss about the news about MP32  , New Ide/library available  and New Firmware. We're working on ArduPiratesNG32 ,too :)

http://www.virtualrobotix.com/events/webcast-on-multipilot32

Official thread :http://www.virtualrobotix.com/forum/topics/sensors-labs-a-discussion

Best

Redfox74

Starting at about 2:46 in this NASA video, a rocket powered quad with payload!

Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity Rover) Mission Animation

ITU Tilt-Rotor VTOL UAV concept from here

A good mate and I were talking a few weeks ago about the AR Drone and it's possible application in scouting for our hunting trips. We discussed putting bigger batteries in it and using a directional antenna to increase it's range and flight time but we came across several problems, the first being the fact that by the time we unpacked it and flew it out to it's maximum range, one of us could have just walked over and taken a look for ourselves.

This prompted a discussion on what our actual requirements were and after seeing a few youtube clips of aggressive maneuvering by quadrotors, we decided to build. My mate has an electronics background and mine is IT so we figured we'd be able to work the project ourselves. I fly micro helicopters as well as R/C planes and have built several from scratch.

Our requirements are these:

1. Man Portable
2. VTOL
3. Autonomous flight via waypoints
4. Ability to loiter
5. Video Feed

So from here... the Planning begins.

One of the best decisions we made was basing our autopilot system on Arduino (credit goes to Jordi for spotting its potential so early and selling me on it). The engineers all sniffed at it, complaining that it was just an 8-bit processor running at 16Mhz and could never compete with 32-bit ARM processors running at 70Mhz and faster. But what Jordi spotted was something more: the Atmel chips are RISC processors and very effecient, an autopilot is not actually a very computationally intensive task, and most importantly, it's not about "feeds and speeds", it's about community, which Arduino attracts by being cheap, open and very easy to use.

Arduino has won the community competition hands down. The chart above is from the latest status post, and it shows more than 750,000 monthly vistors to the website and nearly 5 million monthly page views. These figures continue to grow at 100% per year.

Community brings tens of thousands of smart people around a platform, and many hands make light work. The amount of code and libraries out there that can be used for free are staggering and there's little need to reinvent the wheel. What basing the ArduPilot line on Arduino has meant is that we're not just using a great technology platform; we're part of a movement. That means not just great tools and thousands of available developers, but also a "cool factor", that really helps with marketing and adoption. In short, the success of the Arduino revolution is thrilling to watch, not least because it means we've hitched our wagon to the right horse!

Whilst those of you in the USA await regulation to allow flight, other countries are pushing forward.

Project URSULA (UAS Remote Sensing for Use in Land Applications) was launched by Welsh Assembly Minister for Rural Affairs, Elin Jones. The 2 year research and development programme will explore the potential for advanced remote sensing, using small unmanned aircraft, for use in land applications, primarily high input arable farming. The project is supported by the Welsh Assembly Government.

About autonomy this is ..... WOW ! 

From the Economist (jan-11)  http://www.economist.com/node/17951584

Fantastic project, which was 3D printed at Shapeways. Here's their blog post describing the whole thing. Check out the lovely snap fit with a twist-knob closure design.

Video of the week. Hands down.

Hi,

trying to help a developer (Ben Levitt) to track down a bug on my UavDevBoard system, it was hard to explain by email the strange behavior.

After he suggested me to try with a sound card oscilloscope, I decided to try something I was planning from sometime now : a soundcard oscilloscope.

I build a voltage divider to scale down PWM voltage (3.3V) to about 0.7V, which is more suitable for a PC audio input.

I crimped a couple of cables with servo connectors on one side and a stereo mini jack, from a boken headphone on the other side.

The interface is double channel capable, but some PC (like my laptop) only has mono input.

On the picture above you can see a double channel PWM signal from two different UavDevBoard outputs.

As soundcard oscilloscope I use Zelscope, which is ridiculously cheap, and Visual Analyser, which is free instead.

Here you can find a little tutorial, with schematics and pictures, I did about all that.

Best regards,

Ric

Hello,

here is the last news of my development.

I received my small 5dof imu, some new sample of the last 24bits integrated pressure sensor from intersema MS5706, I plug everything on my RC receiver and telemetry transmitter and look at what will work... Surprisingly .. everything...

I check the range out of my telemetry board with just a crap antenna, and it is far from being good, less than 100m...

waiting for other antenna to make other check, I must have mistaken something...

beside that I bought one of those ultra-cheap android tablet and started to look what can be done and how...

there is only a dirty wifi module, no bluetooth, a crapy 30pin ipod style dongle that give 2 usb port, 1 rs232 plugged to u-boot and a rj45.

So I plugged one of my board on it and try some things...

I First had some bad luck, the software is fully buggy, the tablet is ultra slow, impossible to root it so it is impossible to access the serial port (for writting), but I succesfully was able to read the serial data that come out of my board via USB CDC bridge.

I'm not good either with java, and the emulator works worth than the real tablet... but I did some stuff that seems to work ;)

... to be continued... (I'm waiting for stuffs...)

Got some high speed photographs of Marcy 1 spinning at flight speed, to see if the actuator & the wing did anything.   A slow motion video cam would be nice.

The idea was to make a wing which would be pressed up into an actuator
by the airflow, but there was no way to see if it was pressing up
without high speed photography.  It definitely converges on a natural
angle at which She takes off.  The actuator needs to go slightly steeper
than that, to accommodate water loads.  Maybe the hinge tape was keeping
it from pressing up.

It was less like hinge tape & more like kite string.  The wing was
free hanging off the spar & still lifting the fuselage. There was an
oscillation in the wing angle. 

Next, came a paraglider concept, with extreme turbulance.  There is a
limit to the hang distance.  The free hanging wing solved a lot of
problems, regardless of its actuateability.  Its own weight turns it
into an airfoil.

Finally arrived at a wing with actuator, where the air flow was enough to restore its angle.

Finally, the wing actuator came on, the wing moved slightly, & nothing happened.  There was no rolling, no lift, no nothing.

Another control surface behind the propeller didn't have enough thrust to overcome the airflow, at all. 

It's getting closer to a heavy, brushed servo.  How about a home made LCD driver, instead.  A way to display data for $1 would be real useful for the credit challenged.

Took interest in using these $1 LCD panels to display data.

They have 4 ground planes, connected to all segments, & 10 wires connected to half of each digit.  They're wired in such a way that any single segment can be lit by a combination of ground plane & half digit.

Driving LCD panels with bare voltages is a bit harder than sending commands to a UART.  We reverse engineered the waveform, since The Goog had nothing on it.

The easiest route for us was using a voltage divider to get 1.5V & making the planes 0V or 3.3V for on & 1.5V for off.

The panel could actually be driven with only 0V & 3.3V, but it wouldn't work in sunlight.  Either the UV light or the heat turns on all the segments.  This alternating current with 3 voltages is how all passive matrix LCD panels work, but everything from the earliest 1970's watch to the newest LED backlit phone uses alternating current in some form.