gopro above sunset horse ranch from Quadroid on Vimeo.
here is a pleasant suprise while hovering above the tree tops in hollywood, CAAll Posts (11086)
Sort by
OK... It is only a doppler effect speed radar... but it is still a radar, with microcontroller. It is pretty light weight (3.7 onces) and not to expensive ($199). It as a range of half a mile when targeting a car size object (Maybe we can enhance that range...). If some potential is expected from you guys about that product, I may be willing to bail out some money for it.
Hope you enjoy the challenge.
I've just started my UAV project and budget estimate seems to be not that small
Hope this will be useful for newcomers.
That's what you'll have to buy to get the full-functional UAV, assuming you already have something that flies:
- ArduPilot Mega – $60
- IMU Shield – $160
- 3×8 Angle Connector x 2 – $4
- Servo cables x 8 – $12
- GPS – $86
- XBee-PRO 868 x 2 – $140
- Xbee adapter x 2 – $50
- XBee ground antenna – $11
- FTDI cable for ground Xbee – $18 (really, too much for that simple piece of hardware)
Reasonable minimum. Without directional antenna, camera or FPV. $541 without shipping.
Would be good:
- Airspeed sensor – $20
- Tubes for airspeed – $6
Another $26.
Would be really cool:
- Magnetometer – $45
sAbout $600 total. Quite expensive hobby, I'd say. Add another $100-$200 for shipping if you live somewhere far from the US. I'm in Russia and my shipping estimate exceeds $200 for airframe and ardupilot gear.
PIf anybody knows cheaper ways to do the thing, please, tell me.
I am almost sure about it, first venezuelan to use ardupilot (i hope so).
Ran my first tests in my workshop, turned everything on, including the xbee telemetry, and it worked like a charm!!!!! it is awsome....
The arduIMU works perfect, i am impresed of the sensitivity!!!!!! GPS locked in 1 minute!!!
Now i have to permanently install the electronics in the UAV and run a few more tests, one of them is to figure out how to make it work with my "V" tail, i have been reading the codes and it mixes only the channels 1 and 2, and my tail meeds to mix the channels 2 and 4!!!!!!
Still have more things to do, but i think that this weekend i will start to configure the ardupilot on the field...
I allready have the video tx working, still waiting for my Remzibi´s OSD!!!
Diego Colonnello
""" very happy"""
I was inspired by Ladyada's awesome Open Kinect hacking bounty, so I decided to have a little fun myself. I thought, "what's something else that needs hacking?", and it occurred to me that everyone has been talking about the Neato Robotics XV-11's sweet laser rangefinder (http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/30-laser-rangefinder), but nobody has hacked it yet (or at least talked about it) .
So, to get things started, I'm offering up $200 of my own money (plus RobotNV is offering another $100! http://forums.trossenrobotics.com/showthread.php?p=44058#post44058, and Matt Trossen of Trossen Robotics has offered another $100!) in order to get someone to hack it and publish open source documenthttp://www.trossenrobotics.comation/drivers for using it on a robot.
You can find more details here:
Tell your friends! Let's get this puppy hacking and getting useful data back.
Mikrokopter hexrotors by way of Aerobot; swimsuits from Hive Swimwear. (via BotJunkie)
enjoy...
Here is link: http://www.instructables.com/id/2-meter-flying-RC-starship-Enterprise/
I did not find any airframe building info here.So I think maybe we can build our own airframe .
Here :some 3D airframe built by Google SketchUp.
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=7587f37c3a2134363995fb119e59971&ct=hprm
This is a quick how-to to get going with ArduPilotMega QGroundControl Integration. Note that this is a work in progress and that the gains/ waypoints sent to the apm are not currently setting the values in the autopilot. I'll be working today to hook these up. I could really use help debugging and coding though so I've posted this to get everyone else up to speed.
- Get ArduPilotMega mavlink branch: svn checkout http://ardupilot-mega.googlecode.com/svn/ArduPilotMega/branches/mavlink "pathtosketchbook"/ArduPilotMega
- Get Arducopter libraries: svn checkout http://arducopter.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/libraries "pathtosketchbook"/libraries
- Get Mavlink: git clone https://github.com/pixhawk/mavlink.git "pathtosketchbook"/libraries/mavlink
- Get QGroundControl: http://qgroundcontrol.org/downloads or build from source: git clone https://github.com/pixhawk/qgroundcontrol.git "base directory"/qgroundcontrol, if you build from source you will need to copy "pathtosketchbook"/libraries/mavlink to "base directory" or create a symbolic link
- Set sketchbook path for arduino to "pathtosketchbook", then restart arduino IDE.
- Create an APM_Config.h file as seen below.
- Compile and upload code to board.
- Start QGroundControl, select network, add link, set to comm port (/dev/ttyUSB* on linux, COM* on windows) and then set the baud rate to 115200 (if using GCS_PORT 3)
Here is some documentation:
APM_Config.h file:
#define FLIGHT_MODE_CHANNEL 8
#define FLIGHT_MODE_1 AUTO
#define FLIGHT_MODE_2 RTL
#define FLIGHT_MODE_3 FLY_BY_WIRE_A
#define FLIGHT_MODE_4 FLY_BY_WIRE_B
#define FLIGHT_MODE_5 STABILIZE
#define FLIGHT_MODE_6 MANUAL
#define GCS_PROTOCOL GCS_PROTOCOL_MAVLINK
#define ENABLE_HIL ENABLED
#define GCS_PORT 3
#define GPS_PROTOCOL GPS_PROTOCOL_IMU
#define AIRSPEED_CRUISE 25
#define THROTTLE_FAILSAFE ENABLED
#define AIRSPEED_SENSOR ENABLED
I made my first autonomous flight today. I am very happy to achieve this result!
It is only a 30 seconds flight, but 100% autonomous! Lift and landing are still under manual control.
It is not perfect, the control goes wrong after 30 or 40 seconds. I have to work a lot to obtain better results, but this first flight is a big improvement in my project!
Reminder :
BOB4 estimates its position with only its onboard sensors : 4 sonars, one 3D magnetometer, one 6DOF IMU.
The computing is only onboard, without any external aid.
All computation is done on an “Embedded Master” motherboard with .Net Micro Framework.
I have designed this UAV alone. The hardware and the software is 100% home made.
Some pictures :
Previous posts:
http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/indoor-uav-3d-position
http://www.diydrones.com/forum/topics/bob4-indoor-autonomous
Leon – French hobbyist.
A UAV developed by the Japanese Ministry of Defence. The video's in Japanese unfortunately, but it does show some interesting concepts that I don't believe have been seen in many drones before.
The principle new concept is the single ducted fan that it appears to use. Unfortunately it's covered up in the close ups, but it appears to use thrust vectoring for stability and control. At the end (last 20 seconds or so) there's a video of the vehicle in flight, which clearly shows the four vectoring boxes twitching away.
Is a single ducted fan a viable method for a UAV? I understand that ducted fans have greater efficiencies than open propellers do, but do you think the extra weight of the duct would counteract that advantage? It's obviously something that works for these guys, and it'd be interesting to see how the concept could translate into DIY vehicles.
Now we're talking! As I Love Robots puts it, "This is the driver we have been looking for. The ability to the use the Kinect
RGB-D Sensor with ROS is a complete game changer. 3D robotics is here and now hobbyists can afford a range finding sensor capable of implementing SLAM. Welcome to the future!"SLAM stands for Simultaneous Location and Mapping, and it's the way to determine a robot's position in locations where GPS doesn't work, such as indoors. Who needs a $10,000 motion capture system when you can connect your Kinect to a laptop via ROS? Perfect for quadcopters and blimps...
I've just about wrapped up QGroundControl Integration for the ArduPilotMega. The code currently implements the majority of the common protocol for QGroundControl. You can successfully read raw sensor gps/imu/gyro data, read radio packets, check the system status, check the system heartbeat, get/set pid gains and other control parameters (note they have yet to replace the current values for the controllers). Tomorrow I hope to have waypoint send/receive complete and to do a ground test with an RC car and a flight test if that is successful. Thanks PixHawk team for making a great ground station!
some shots of the beta model
I have 20 units available @ evuas.com
new features : 94" wingspan , Flaps , rg-15 airfoil
custom cut EPP with iron on , ultra slick covering material .
"Three British amateur aerospace enthusiasts have successfully sent a camera-equipped paper airplane to an altitude of 89,000 feet (27,127 meters), where it captured images of the blackness of space before gliding back to Earth. Project PARIS (Paper Aircraft Released Into Space) involved getting the plane into the stratosphere using a weather balloon before letting it go via a release mechanism. " Read more at Gizmomag.
Not a UAV, per se, just a free-flight plane with a GPS tracker. But so cool!
APM/oilpan quad 1st build from Tolabus Stein on Vimeo.
Arducopter flying on a frame I built from scratch.. Thank you Chris! The new APM worked like a charm.
And thanks to the rest of the DIY DRONES community. This is a way cool..
