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                 "Drones made for U"

Udrones is happy to announce the launch of it’s first products for the amateur UAVs/DIYdrones community.

We specialize in ready to fly/out of the box systems, either assembled and tested Ardupilot systems kits or fully functional drones.

For our opening, we are pleased to offer fully  functional Ardupilot-Mega Systems and for this occasion we have seven Arducotpers V1.0, all of them, ready to fly, fully tested, and ready to configure with your radio (minor configuration needed).

We really hope that you will enjoy these great products that the community is developing and supporting, thanks to all of us. Starting this Thursday February 10^th. As of mid-March we will begin the constant supply of Arducotpers.

For more information visit and log in to our website www.udrones.com 

Udrones is a company based in Tijuana, Mexico and fully supported by DIYdrones Store in San Diego, CA. (ask Jordi). :)

Comments and questions are very welcomed.

Sincerely,

Gigio.

Hi all,

just in case someone should be interested using a FunCub I posted a couple of videos showing some flight excerpts.

FunCub flight excerpts from Riccardo Kuebler on Vimeo.

Glider towing with a FunCub from Riccardo Kuebler on Vimeo.

In the first I do some aerobatics.

In the second we do an Easyglider tow.

Plane is still not equipped with any autopilot, but this could help if someone is wondering about it. There is plenty of room available for everything.

Motor is Turnigy TR 35-42D 1000kv with APC 12x6

I use a Turnigy 60A ESC. It's quiet exaggerated. I will swap with a 50A that's more than enough.

Servos are for elevator and rudder Hitec HS81, ailerons and flaps MKS DS460, tow a Turnigy DS480 (only because I had it laying around).

Current is 35A with 3300-3s lipo.

Model climbs vertically at half throttle. You can see it in the videos.

I still don't know if I will use it as a drone with autopilot or FPV or both, affaire à suivre ...

Best regards,

Ric

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri53-myR2B4

FPV (first person view) flying from a park in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Aircraft stabilized with ArduPilot (+ thermopiles) with GPS "return to launch" safety switch. Camera has fisheye lens so height appears magnified, max height achieved during flight around 120m.

Video transmitted to ground via BOB Fox 700mW system and viewed/flown with video goggles, camera is Sony 420 line with tilt. Plane is twin boom pusher 148cm span, 1500mAh 3S LiPo, motor: EMax EF2812, 8x6 prop.

Built from strong yet light weight Ply wood and glass fiber materials the HobbyKing Quadcopter frame provides the perfect test bed or starting point for any Quadcopter enthusiast. The HobbyKing Quadcopter frame comes with the main components pre-assembled right out of the box. The interlocking parts make assembling the entire frame easy. Light weight nylon nuts, bolts and spacers have been included to keep the flying weight down. The Camera tilt mechanism also includes a vibration dampening system to combat rolling shutter effects.

Height: 200mm
Witdh: 550mm
Weight: 195gram (No electonics)
Skid width: 256mm
Ply Wood: 3mm

Clearance:
Underside of main frame: 115mm
Underside of Camera support: 35mm

Price: US$ 14.95

Product page

The judges have ruled! Here are the winners of T3 Season Two, Round One, the simulation round. Contestants simulated Trappy's controversial flight over NYC, but in a safe way in a flight simulator with their autopilot running a hardware-in-the-loop mission simulation.

Judge: Gary Mortimer.

Place    Pilot        Autopilot     Points

-------------------------------------------------------------

1. Marcus         UDB3         10 pt
2. Michael        APM           8 pt
3. Sys-Ak        Crash4Sure  8pt
4. Brian Wolfe  PICPilot       5 pt
5. Phil Cole      APM           5 pt

All five entrants deserve a prize: they can choose a MediaTek GPS module or a DIY Drones magnetometer board, with Marcus, in first place, getting both. Winners: please PM me with your choice and address.

The next round of the T3 contest will be announced at the end of this month.

Screenshot from Sys-Ak's cool run shown below:

If Jason's onboard view of the fly-by-wire mode in the ArduCopterMega alpha code made you dizzy, here's a view from the ground. It's really cool: you fly north-south-east-west, and the code reads the magnetometer to figure out what that means in terms of quad orientation. So you can have the quad spinning and still fly it as if it were stationary--no more worrying about orientation and where the "front" is. You fly the compass, not the quad!

Here is the test rig in Flash:

Just a reminder for those who aren't following ArduCopter development closely: ArduCopterMega (ACM) is the code name of the next version of the ArduCopter code being developed by the original ArduCopter team. ACM is based on the relatively mature ArduPilotMega code on fixed wings, and is designed for full UAV functionality (missions, waypoints, ground stations, etc). There is also great work in ArduCopter development done by the ArduPirates, but that's a different code base. Choice is good!

Right now the ACM code is in private alpha, but it looks like it may be ready for public beta in a couple weeks.

acp quad - night flight from warthox on Vimeo.

The latest APM planner has full pid/planner/gcs while under hil/real using mavlink. Some new features since the last major release are a

simple GCS

Planning via Xbee

HIL via Xbee if you so wish

And the ability to do all the above all at once.

This latest version can be download from the SVN at http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot-mega/source/browse/Tools/trunk/ArdupilotMegaPlanner/bin/Release OR by using the Update feature in the menu.

America’s fleet of 11 big-deck aircraft carriers just got a lot closer to becoming a lot more dangerous.

On Friday afternoon, Northrop Grumman’s X-47B, a prototype for the Navy’s first carrier-capable killer

drone, flew for the first time from Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Killer drone takes off

Gary at sUAS News reports:

"sUAS News recently asked FAA Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety, Peggy Gilligan about the First Person View flight undertaken in New York by Austrian Raphael Pirker.

As Associate Administrator, Ms. Gilligan leads the organization responsible for setting, overseeing, and enforcing safety standards for all parts of the aviation industry – airlines, manufacturers, repair stations, pilots, mechanics, air traffic controllers, and any person or product that operates in aviation. These programs have a direct impact on every facet of domestic and international civil aviation safety.

We are very grateful that Ms Gilligan took the time to answer, heres what she said.

“This event remains under investigation by FAA as well as by some law enforcement organizations in the NYC area.  We do intend to notify the operator of the investigation — although I understand he is not a US citizen and we believe he is not in the US”

It will be interesting to see which particular rules may or may not have been broken during Trappys flight."

Here's some of the flight footage taken during our scrutineering flights at last years (2010) UAV Outback Challenge.

The airstrip is at Kingaroy, Queensland, Australia.

After a rough start last month, my ArduCopter CindiLou showed what she could do today. See the attached video for four flights. In the first three the camera is pointing at the Cindi, and in the fourth I have mounted the camera on the forward landing gear so you get to see a rather dramatic crash from the quadcopter's POV. The wind was blowing quite strongly to the south the whole time.

I re-read the section on GPS / altitude hold and realized that I had misunderstood how altitude hold works; that was probably the cause of the crash. I'm looking forward to being competent enough to this thing reliably and am going to repair the quad and get back to flying it as soon as possible. I'm quite happy with the way I mounted my Countour HD camera on the front the landing gear. There's no stabilization and yet the quad video is steadier than the human-captured video!

It still needs some work, but I thought I'd share this new flight mode. It's intended to simulate position hold using the stick input to generate a GPS offset from home. The really fun side affect is you don't need to be pointing a certain way to fly in that direction. You just point north and it flies north. To demonstrate that here is a video of ACM flying around with full right yaw. I was able to fully control it in a 5-10 mph wind even though it was spinning. The wind got the best of it for a moment there, but it recovered well. Still a little more work to do before alpha.

Jason

Hi all,

I would like to inform everyone that a flight control engineer/software developer position currently exists at Martin Aircraft Company.

Martin Aircraft is a small R&D company based in Christchurch, New Zealand which is currently in development of the Martin Jetpack. The Jetpack has been featured in the media all over the world, including being named in Time magazines “Top 50 Best Inventions of 2010”.

Essential qualities:

• A Bachelor of Engineering
• C/C++ programming experience
• Proven microcontroller and electronics experience
• Practical experience in control algorithm development and implementation (at the very least a thorough understanding of PID implementation/tuning)
• A thorough understanding of, and practical experience with autonomous UAV and/or fly-by-wire systems (inertial sensors, GPS, software, communications etc)
• Proficient with MATLAB
• Must be willing/able to relocate to Christchurch, New Zealand

Highly desirable but non essential qualities:

• GUI development experience (preferably using Qt)
• C# programming experience
• Some understanding of navigation algorithms (Kalman filtering etc)
• Experience with Simulink
• Proficient with Solidworks
• PCB design experience
• Some knowledge of ducted fan and basic flight dynamics

The successful applicant will effectively be my replacement as I am leaving to begin a PhD in March.

Applicants from outside of Australasia are invited to apply but will be subject to immigration/work permit rules and regulations.

If you have any questions, feel free to PM me, otherwise email your CV and expression of interest to dan.wilson@martinaircraft.co.nz.

Here is another autonomous flight. The UAV just tries to hold a fixed position.

Remember that this UAV is 100% autonomous with its own sensors (sonars + IMU + magneto).

The autonomous part of the flight begins at 0'09" and ends at 2'20".

I plan to take part to the IMAV2011 competition with it.

Do not hesitate to ask me question about it. 

Leon - French Hobbyist.

With apologies for the late notice, I and a few other DIY Drones developers will be flying in Concord, in San Francisco's East Bay, starting at 2:30 pm. Any Bay Area folks who want to spend Super Bowl Sunday outside in gorgeous weather, rather than watching a football game on TV, are welcome to join us. We'll be testing the latest ACM code on quads, and testing the latest APM code on Skywalkers and other aircraft, to check how various GPS modules behave in auto mode.

The location is in the large open public park at the end of Court Lane in Concord, here. Anyone from this community is welcome to join us. You can bring something to fly or just watch UAV development up close. Crashes are likely!

In a distant continent far far away...  Futaba clones are back on stock.

Some weeks ago, I bought my OrangeRX Spektrum compatible ones (main RX 6ch and the satellite).

It seems to work fine. The price... you know, is the best part.

Now is the time for the generic Futaba ones too (since October of last year).

If you have a Futaba TX and if this clone is as good as the Spektrum clone/generic ones, should be a great deal. Don't you think?