Click the link above if you're interested in reviewing some of the better
High Res cameras which are available, just make sure to hold onto your
wallet. One model, made here in the US bya firm named Imperx runs
$4,700. Of course the image quality is a lot better than you're apt to
get using a plastic lens pinhole model from China.
Evan at BotJunkie has a thoughtful piece that brings some much-needed perspective to the growing crop of poorly-informed articles that we're starting to see in the media by journalists discovering amateur UAVs for the first time. (Actually, most of the time what they're talking about is just RC/FPV, rather than autonomous UAVs of the sort we do here, but this distinction is almost always lost in the popular press). He's responding to a particularly egregious example of the form, this TechCrunch article.
Excerpt:
Essentially, my point here is that with any new technology, you can come up with worst-case examples of how it can be used that are guaranteed to scare people. Pick anything you want: cars, airplanes, electricity, medicine, the Internet… In each case, it’s possible to take some aspect of that technology and focus on how dangerous it is.
I won’t beat this to death, but let’s use cars as an easy example. Imagine for a sec that it’s 1900 or thereabouts, you’re used to walking around and riding horses, and people are starting to talk about these big metal things that move around super fast by using controlled explosions. I bet it would be pretty easy to convince people that they’re just going to run them over and blow up, especially since to some extent, it’s true, that happens. But imagine what it would be like now if people had believed that stuff and stifled the development of the car. It would have set back society as a whole, not just that technology.
Quadcopter Evolution with the QRO v6 and a GoPro HD wide on board
Fun Quadcopter Evolution with a GoPro HD wide on board
The flight tests of my Quad Rotor Observer (QRO) v6 are still on track in spite of the cold winter. Above you will find some flights videos recently done. The flight of the QRO is really fun and very stable as you may notice in the on board videos and the piloting of the QRO very easy...
I have tested successfully on this frame various KKmulticontroller boards:
- KKmulticontroller Minsoo's "blue board",
- KKmulticontroller "Jakub" version upgraded with an Atmega168,
- and my home made KKmulticontroller with an ATMEGA168 20PU.
The flight controller firmware used is the XXcontroller_KR_v1_4a and based on assembly code by Rolf R Bakke converted by Mike Barton modified by Minsoo Kim and Jean-Louis Naudin
The basic setup is:
- 4 brushless motors 750 Kv RCtimer 2830-14
- 4 ESC 30A
- Lipo battery Turnigy 3S (11.1V) 2650 mAh
- receiver Corona CR6D 2.4 Ghz
Video Camera: GoPro HD Wide
More videos and tests results are coming soon,
Stay tuned on: http://diydrones.com/profile/JeanLouisNaudin
Hi,
I'm a reporter with NPR and I'm looking for a someone who is currently building a drone and wouldn't mind showing it off to me. I am in Culver City and would like to talk with someone in the LA area.
I'm doing a story about how personal drones are being used for many different activities beyond military uses.
If you are interested in talking with me, please call me at 310 815-4280 or e-mail me at ckahn@npr.org.
Thanks!
Carrie Kahn
Correspondent
NPR
Edit: Added plane photo's below.
I'm still using the original ArduPilot v2.7.1 & thermopiles mainly because I have them, don't like throwing anything away and they work pretty darn well now that they're setup properly after many, many test flights! I've also recently got my FPV (First Person View flying) setup sorted too so time to combine the two and fly a bit further away...
The ArduPilot gives a real sense of security to FPV as you have the stabilization option as well as the Return To Launch/Navigation function should anything go wrong (like getting lost, a real problem without a Ground Control Station or On Screen Display).
Sorry there's no video or GPS tracks (the GPS logger switched off after the first test flight!)
The plane is my own design electric twin boom pusher of 148cm span.
Battery: Turnigy 3S 1500mAh or Rhino 3S 2550mAh depending on duration required
Motor: Axi 2212/12 or EMax EF2812
Video system: BOB Fox 700mW (on 1080MHz), IBCrazy's Inverted Vee Antenna on Tx, supplied whip antenna on Rx, 7" car dvd screen and video goggles.
RC system: Hitec Aurora 9 Tx and Optima 7 Rx
I was a very nervous about doing the longer distances as the fear of losing/crashing the plane was quite strong. I had tested the Aurora 9 Tx to 2.65km on the ground so felt fairly sure of it, however I had had some interference from the video transmitter shortening the range of the RC system to around 40m which was totally unacceptable. After trying various frequencies of the VTx (1040-1280MHz) I settled on 1080MHz. Other changes were rebinding the Rx's with the video system switched on and moving the VTx out onto the wing of the plane. Now it seemed that the range problems were sorted I could go fly.
Out at a flying club north of Johannesburg we setup everything. I decided to do GPS navigated flights rather than full FPV to test both the AP and the FPV range fairly safely. We did a 750m "There & Back" flight at 100m altitude, no problems. Next a 1.5km flight, here the plane got very small and if you look away for a sec you can't find it again, however I had a friend watching the plane with binoculars and I watched the screen. The plane turned reliably at just over 1.5km and came home fine.
The camera (with wide-angle lens) was angled fairly level which caused a few visual issues as the sky was very bright, and the ground appearing pretty dark as the camera's iris closed down. Thus landmarks and features on the ground were hard to see.
Anyway next came the 2km (2045m to be precise) test. All went well although the turn was disconcerting as I got disoriented and wasn't sure the turn was successful and initially thought the plane was heading off in the wrong direction on it's own (perhaps it thought so too). After a few nervous seconds I determined that it was going the right way after all and then switched to RTL to test that. The plane came back fine and circled over home. What a relief!
I know, the world probably has enough flying machine projects, but here is yet another one. AutoQuad's original design goal was high precision autonomous flight. It took five prototypes before I was happy with the hardware. The current prototype, AQv5, is showing very promising results. In fact, there is little left to do before this first goal can be checked off the list. Using this as a solid base, I intend to continue research, design and experimentation toward vision based navigation for indoor and outdoor use.
Hardware:
- 2" x 2" board with same mounting pattern as the MK FC
- Input voltage ~7.5v => 18v
- High efficiency DC/DC converters
- STM32F103 32bit Cortex M3 microcontroller @72 MHZ
- standard ARM 20 pin JTAG header for real-time debugging
- up to 8 PWM ESC motor control (prefer Turnigy ESC's with custom firmware)
- 2 powered payload servo controllers
- optional ultra sonic range finder
- Spektrum satellite (remote receiver) 2.4Ghz RC radio
- uSD card slot
- optional onboard uBlox LEA-XX module w/battery backup & timepulse capture
- optional female SMA connector for active GPS antenna
- optional external GPS via standard 6 pin connector (EM406, EM401, uBlox, MTK)
- optional onboard xBee module - up to 300mA (2.4Ghz, 900Mhz, bluetooth, etc.)
- optional external radio via standard 6 pin FTDI connector - up to 1A
- I2C bus connector for I2C ESC's
- modular sensor board (SBv5) - 100% analog sensors, EMI hardening:
+ 3 axis acc (ADXL335)
+ 3 axis mag (HMC6042 & HMC1041Z)
+ 3 axis gyro (IDG500 & ISZ500)
+ 2 temperature sensors
+ pressure sensor (MPXH6101A)
+ battery voltage
Software:
- Fully threaded RTOS design written in C - 60% idle
- All sensors read at 113KHz (~1.4M sps total)
- 450Hz motor update rate
- 200Hz attitude, 3D velocity / position solutions
- Full downlink telemetry
- Detailed system state dumps @200Hz => uSD card w/FAT32 FS
- Quaternion based attitude filter additionally producing rotation matrix and Euler angle outputs
- All math in single precision floating point
- Temperature compensated and calibrated sensor suite
- Custom ground station software w/bi-directional command and control API
- Cascading PID control system, velocity based for smooth transitions
- Auto land / takeoff
- Hover position / altitude hold
- Autonomous waypoint mission navigation
- Precise altitude hold indoors
Example of current capabilities:
Design philosophy:
- High performance
- Efficiency
- Ease of development
- Consistency / Repeatability
- Low cost
There is always room for improvement. For instance, I would like to see how much of a benefit using a SPKF (Sigma Point Kalman Filter) would be over my fixed gain navigation filter. Looking forward to the new Cortex M4 uC's with a hardware FPU so that any such math intensive solution can be more easily handled. As I mentioned above, there is a lot of room for work with vision navigation and SLAM. Also interested in propulsion efficiencies which with an eye toward higher endurance. Although the PID based control system works extremely well, I'm interested in exploring different types of MPC (model predictive control) to reduce control costs and increase precision.
I'm wondering if there is anyone interested in joining forces to work on some of the above mentioned or anything else along these lines that presents itself. This is only a hobby for me and I currently have no profit motive. This is definitely not a beginner's project as you can see by my sloppy SMD hand soldering job.
Comments?
OK, I was going to make something much nicer but ran out of time. There's a few funky bits and I gave up on getting the auto take off and landing to work. I've had them working previously, but not this time, so I guess I'm not on top of the APM command language yet.
I used the latest APM release, Xplane 9 and the APM Planner simulator link. I just followed the instructions and it worked, so I figure I might as well post an entry.
Flight Path: 22-01-11%2001-56%201.kmz
FPV View: 22-01-11%2001-56%201%20fpv.kmz
After 6 months of watching the rest of you, I finally had a free weekend to begin the build of my own ArduCopter. I really was inspired by Markus's H-design of his eight engine quad copter.
When I checked the store, they only had four of the 2836's but after I ordered 30 more showed up instantly so I purchased 6 more for a total of 10. (in case the first flight went south). I was hoping the 6 would show Saturday morning but they didn't. So, the above picture is testing throttle with the 4 in an X flight mode. This didn't work too as the apm is at 0 degrees and the motors are off alignment. I plan to change it to + flight mode and just double up on the motors and escs like Markus did. I have GWS 3 blade 9030 props and a 6000 3s battery. At 1/3 throttle, it really lifted off quite well and I had difficulty holding it down at full throttle. I don't know the weight of it right now but it's pretty light. I can only wonder how much it'll lift after the other 4 motors are installed.
Using the H design gives plenty of space to mount esc's and run wire, plus it keeps the central area clean for the brains. I had two 8' lengths of aluminum moulding that held garage door water barriers. I cut them into 12" pieces and used them for the central beam and some foam tape to lessen the vibrations of the copter.
I can't find any square aluminum in town but we have tons of the U stuff at the local big box store. I just found thinner sized and "doubled up" to make the motor mounts. I was really hesitant on the U aluminum as it's a little less rigid but it seems to work just fine.
The 25amp Turnigy "Basic" ESC's I ordered didn't come with 3.5mm barrel ends so I had to solder 3 for each ESC *10 esc's I ordered. I discovered an easy way to do this quickly, not sure if the rest of you have done this but it worked very well.
Just drill 3 holes, put in your barrel plugs (will also work with the male ends), heat, dump in some solder and hold the wire in till it hardens.. piece of cake. I did 10 esc's in about 15 min..
Here is my power distribution, I made one for the left and one for the right, they'll connect together of course and be fed from the 6000 miliamp nano tech battery.
That's it for now. I plan to have it carry my go pro for aerial photography. Perhaps my DSLR in the future after I know this is rock solid.. It's looks promising.
More to come.
Hi,
in this test I check a new software management of coaxial propellers.
It seems that everything works well, no micro-oscillation
Danilo
After some months of development this is the first flight of ArduPilot32 platform.
Hardware :
For this flight I using Arducopter 32 NG firmware. This is my porting of original code to Arm 7 Cortex A3 platform. With this micro will be available more power , more flash and ram resources
This space and performances its very good for improve performance of our Drone. The Era of our ARM Drone's Started.
original thread : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/forum/topics/multipilot-20-ap32-building
Regards
Roberto
When we started to make DIY Drones ArduCopter frames and parts we could not foresee the surprisingly strong market demand that existed for this product and the very positive response of the DIY community. Almost from the beginning, we have had a difficult time keeping up with the ever-larger orders and responding to the many requests for parts, technical information, etc.
We are pleased to announce that we are now taking steps to improve the situation.
We were originally operating within the structure of an existing Thai company, Fah Pah Electronics. This allowed us to “hit the ground running” and worked well enough for a while. Now, however, it is clear that DIY Drones ArduCopter project has outgrown its relationship with Fah Pah and will be doing business on its own.
Specifically, we have established a new company in Thailand, jDrones, which will be working solely on DIY Drones and UAV-related technologies and products.
We are confident that this structural change will enable us to work more effectively and efficiently and give our customers even greater quality and higher service levels.
The establishment of jDrones is being “fast-tracked” and so should be ready for business in the next 5 days. We are sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause you and kindly ask for your patience. In the end, we know that jDrones will be able to bring you affordable, reliable drones and UAV's based on the very latest technology.
Looking forward to working with you soon.
-Jani
Seen this in one of the latest R/C mags...
Claims to have flight modes to aid R/C beginners...
Fly by wire, Loiter, Autonomous Landing, Panic Mode
Doesn't appear to be open source..seems to have some familiar components though,
Pictures and Article:
http://www.modelairplanenews.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=17F3E50B054A4C1C9FDD81B36E52B522&nm=Site+Features&type=news&mod=News&mid=9A02E3B96F2A415ABC72CB5F516B4C10&tier=3&nid=C377848E9D574EC0BBA1A218ED172E51
Product Catalog:
http://www.uthere.com/products/products_index.html
Inspired by John Arne's post, I got a Redcat Rockslide, which is totally cool and a great robotics platform. As you can see, it's really easy to add a mounting platform for electronics (that's APM with GPS and Xbee mounted above) and there's LOADS of room. You could even have it carry a laptop if you wanted. BTW, that's the 1/8 size Redcat shown above, which is $236. I think the 1/10 size Redcat would probably be just as good for most uses, and it's just $159. [Update: the 1:10 isn't big enough. See this comparison]
I've registered the ArduRover name, and am now just looking for the best starting point to modify the APM code for ground rovers. Since James Goppert is part of the APM dev team, we'll probably start with his rover code, which you can see at work here. But if others have code or sensor additions to the basic APM set that would be good to add to a rover, this is the place to discuss and share.
Ideally, we'll get this done in time for the Sparkfun AVC contest, on the hope that APM can have a decent chance of placing in all of the categories--ground, plane and quad. Which would be awesome.
A Brigham Young student team is working on their second solar-powered UAV. The first one, shown here, didn't have enough power to climb, but now they have better solar cells.
Here are the detail:
"Power system:
Mega 16/7/17 motor
MPJ 3.8:1 Gearbox
18x13 folding prop
Airframe:
Fuselage-Magellan E-XL
span-3m or 2m
airfoil-SD8000
So we are just researching and trying to make a plane that will work. We currently have two wings being built.The high aspect ratio wing is the 3m which has a cord just big enough for the solar cell array. The low aspect ratio wing will have a chord length to fit two solar cells wide and span will be closer to 2m.
Solar array:
24 A-300 cells
~3W per cell"
Reduced Yaw Drift / Fast Gyro Sampling with the UDB / MatrixPilot from Pete Hollands .
[Note: Apologies for the low sound volume in this video. Please turn your volume up.]
This is a demonstration of the reduced Yaw Drift which is possible when sampling the gyros at 30,000 times / second (Thanks to William Premerlani for this R&D and code). Using QGroundControl and the MatrixPilot MAvlink implementation, I show a real time graph of the resulting negligble yaw drift in the UDB IMU.
In the demo I do refer to the accelerometers quite a bit. I should really have been focussing on the gyros. It is the high sampling of the gyros, and the integration of the resulting data which leads to the low yaw drift. So please ignore my comments about the accelerometers.
Demonstration uses Revision 790 of MatrixPilot_mavlink branch at this address
code.google.com/p/gentlenav/
Hey All, with the outback challenge preparations for 2011 about to heat up, the upcoming Australian air show ( http://www.airshow.net.au ) might provide us a great opportunity to meet up for some pizza/hot-dogs and a catch up.
If anyone’s interested we’ll organise a time and place, hopefully sometime during the week of the air show (1st – 6th march), whether it’s inside the grounds or just at a local restaurant.
Post a reply if your keen and we’ll see what happens.
(Also posted at RCGroups)
Matt
uavdev
In a year that marks the centenary of the professional firefighter in Victoria, CyberQuad sets the standard for innovation in firefighting.
MFB believes CyberQuad has huge potential for delivering information from difficult incidents where an aerial perspective would greatly help manage and coordinate the emergency effort. Two of the flying eye-in-the-sky fan-driven aircraft have been purchased; one equipped with a high definition camera, the other with a standard definition camera as well as a thermal imaging camera.
Full story http://www.suasnews.com/2011/01/3597/melbourne-firefighters-deploy-quadrocopter/
Back in 1979, there was Newton... the land drone and faithful companion! Invented by Steve Hodges, a serial entrepeneur here in Boise, Idaho (where I live). Steve just recently sold M2M, an irrigation communications company for $33.3 Mil.
Now all we need to do is get him interested in flying robots!
Check out the youtube video of Newton from 1979... it's super cheesy yet admittedly ahead of its time!
I have been working on an improved altitude estimator for a while here but have been having issues with implementation.
The theory works fine but as seen above in the FFT of the accelerometer data, there is a significant ammount of vibration/noise in the sub 50Hz range. This is due to out of balance props etc. Needless to say, this proves to be very detrimental to estimating altitude and velocity changes when these vibrations are an order of magnitude greater than the actual accelerations felt by climbing and descending. You cant really low pass filter or band pass filter this because you need everything below 60 Hz or so.
So here is what I need from you guys:
Flight data that includes the following:
make sure you notate units etc. The more information on the data the better. Thanks for the help and I will post the results. I'm really hoping to get some data from guys with slick clean vibe free quads.
Thanks
Beall
