I'm the secretary for our local St. Louis rocket club: St. Louis Rocketry Association and decided to bring out my Jdrones frame/APM 1 to the launch to do some 2.5.3 testing and at the same time shoot video of some rockets with a GoPro Hero 2. I'm using the Jdrones stabilized camera mount - although I'm still adjusting the camera mount gains and dealing with jello video. The GoPro video was also sent to the ground with Remzibi OSD overlayed flight data for pointing the camera. I had 6 flights during the day on ACM 2.5.3 with good results in stabilize, simple mode, and altitude hold. Loiter was having I term runaway and I didn't have a chance to tune in the field.

We have an FAA waiver at Elsberry and had to call in an altitude window to Lambert field  St. Louis for the 11k ft altitude so I had to loiter 5 minutes or so until the launch actually happened. Luckily the batteries held out and I edited out the wait. 

This video is our last launch of the day - SLRA Dan Welling's  M powered rocket flying at the St Louis Rocketry's Association Elsberrry Launch on 3/31/2012. Dan calls the rocket Bits 'n' Pieces and is 6" dia x 9 ft tall. The motor was a CTI M1790 skidmark (with "sparky" pyrotechnics)  motor (98mm 4 grain) and reached an altitude of 11,140 ft AGL. Dan achieved his Tripoli level 3 certification on this rocket previously.

Nathan Siedle, the CEO of Sparkfun, has been one of the inspirations and mentors for 3D Robotics, and Sparkfun has become a poster child for the sucess of the Open Hardware model (along with Arduino, Makerbot, Adafruit, and others). 

Ahead of an Open Hardware session in Washington DC, he's put together some slides that show how well the model is working for Sparkfun. He writes:

I will be attending a nifty get together called OH/DC put on by Michael Weinberg of Public Knowledge on Friday April 20th, 1 to 5PM. I plan to be part of panel to speak to policymakers about open source hardware - what it is, why it's a good thing, etc. Michael assures me there is nothing to be worried about but I'm slightly terrified to breakout the one button-down shirt I own and head to the capital, so please come help!

The public is invited! For the Hill/policy people, this will probably be their first contact with OSHW. The best way to make this a success (and myself less terrified) is if we can get OSHW fans to attend. It will reinforce to the policy folks why people are excited by this new type of business model.

First flight of my solid-fuel, rocket-power SkyFun--Saturday at LUNAR Snow Ranch.

Motor: AeroTech E15-PW

Max Altitude: 339 ft

Max Speed: 122 mph

Flight Duration: 24.5 s

Next up: setting up the SkyFun with ArduPilot so it can come back on its own.

jDrones News: Updates on ArduCopter motors

In last 6 months we have been working directly with 5 different motor factory and finally it's starting to be "harvesting" time for all the efforts. Because of that we are happy to start share more about these upcoming changes.

First visible thing is that we are doing re-versioning on our original ArduCopter motors and working in generally on new multicopter motor product lines. We have changed all our motors to be Black. Original ArduCopter motors are the first one to get this coloring scheme and more will come.

To identify original AC2830-358 and AC2836-358 is always been easy as they had jDrones sticker/marking on them, now it's even more easier.

These new motors are in full production and old pink/yellowish motors are not available anymore from us. 

There are some other internal changes done too for these motors. 

Also after been working long and hard with our motor factories, we have been able to hit new record low rates on mechanical failure on our motors.

Next step will be releasing new line of motors in following weeks so stay tuned. 

Jani / jDrones

What does the title mean?  I was a Crew Chief for the Shadow 200 system over in Afghanistan.  It costs around 800K for one bird and I thought I'd gauge my ability to build a better bird cheaper.  Here goes:

April 7 2012

Today is the first real day of building.  For the last 4 months or so I have been researching parts, ordering them and patiently waiting for them.  I have all I need to get started minus the new 3DR Telemetry set.

I understand they will be an all around upgrade and I spent all last night reading the wiki on them.  I like them more than the Xbee just based on simplicity itself.  There are fewer parts, less weight and way more compact.  I've still not decided on any modifications to it.

I think for now I will do everything as default.

What I have:

Airframe:

A YAK 54 electric plane with a 45" wingspan.  Rimefire .10 electric motor with a 35A ESC.  I had this bird from my tour in the Philippines and managed to ship it home before it was built over there.  Nice aircraft and I wonder if it will be too squirely for the APM2.

I have 3 2200mAh 11.1V liPos - don't want to really buy more batteries so any airframe I use must use these batteries.

Futaba 7C 2.4Ghz radio with 7C reciever and 4 servos.

APM2 unsoldered board with minimOSD, air speed add on and the new 3DR telemetry boards in the mail.

I bought a 5 and 6 volt capable BEC with the thought that I'd want to keep the motor battery and the APM2 board power supply separate.

I've got all of the other minor supplies as well, think I've spent around TOO MUCH money so far, but I really want this to be my career.  I want to build these things from concept to mass production, so this is an investment and not just the inner child in me going OH HELL YEAH THIS IS FREAKIN COOL!

I've got a plan and maybe it will happen in this order, but probably not:

1.  Make the YAK 54 flight ready. - Finished

2.  Solder all circuit boards - Finished

3.  Fly YAK as traditional RC - soon*

4.  Upload and download all firmware and software for APM2 - Finished

5.  Make custom mounts for the YAK and APM2 - soon***

6.  Yeah...this list went right out the window a week ago.

April 9 2012

Today I discovered that I am a super genius when it comes to soldering.  Its like discovering your Batman.  I soldered the living crap out of those boards!  I'm going to buy some Batman underwear and use those when I maiden flight my YAK 54.  I'll post the pic of them soon***.

April 10 2012

Today I downloaded all the software and made a dedicated 4G thumb drive to keep all of the master files on.  I fired up the APM2 and low and behold she worked.  I can not get the GPS to lock on but I'm inside my house and I'm sure that is what is causing the problem.  On another note, I found out I need 7 female to female cables to use 7 channels.  Each cable goes from say, ch1 on my receiver to the corresponding ch1 input on the APM2.  Its a one for one basis.  I really only need 4 for my YAK but I might as well get the full capacity.

I was also able to wire up the BEC, I chose this one here.  Hooking it up to nothing but the APM2 and a watt meter I was not able to detect any current!  This is because the watt meter I am using does not measure anything less than .09 amps so all I saw was 0.0.  In that case the dedicated 11.1V 1300mAh battery I got for it ought last until the cows come home (actually* about 6 hours).  MOOOOO.  One last good thing about this particular BEC is that it has an on and off switch which means I don't have to remove a power pin from the APM2 itself, so less wear and tear!

April 11 2012

I finally understand how to hook everything up. The problem is I need more cables.  No hobby store around here has them!!  Soooooo since I can't find the pieces themselves I will just place an order for them.  So here I sit...waiting...

April 22 2012

Back in action!  Fedex is my second favorite Uncle.  Got a cable making kit in from hanson hobbies and right next to that was my new black 3DR box!  Order was spot on too!  The new 3DR Telemetry circuit boards are VERY small.  I'm really impressed at them.  My tiny motor will only haul 3lbs max so needless to say, the lighter the parts the better!  So, later on I will post a pic of fully functioning APM2 so others can just look at it and understand how its supposed to be hooked up.  My APM2 required me to slightly bend 2 pins to get the daughter board to snug up against the 2x6 pin rack.  After I did that the darn thing works like a drag queen at Madi Gras! (umm...look that one up)

I am getting nervous about making a nice GCS.  I want it to have a cool factor of about 9.7.  Anyone with pics of such an animal please point them out to me.  Past that I am understanding a hole lot more about how all of this works than I did just a few days ago.  It's getting close to the time I need to actually fly my YAK so I'll be even more nervous then.

And HOT DAMN! I got the bevrc's X8 flying wing kit on the way from China!  It has to be one of the sexiest flying birds I've seen in a long time!  Its MADE for amateur UAV making and I can't wait to fly that thing!  Good day all around for UAV building.

===Later the same night...

Solved the last few pieces of the APM2 puzzle and....ITS ALIVE!!!

Wife was just teeming with happiness as I commanded her to hold the laptop where I could see it as I paced our backyard.  The pride and excitement was just plain palpable!  Now if only I could just stop puffing Li-Poly packs testing this stuff out and attach a flux capacitor to the watchamacallit.....

Tomorrow I'll start on integrating it into the airframe and in the morning...I'm making WAFFLES!

May 1 2012

Now, I know you all have been in stitches wondering what's going on with my build.  I took some downtime is all, plus I had a few more goodies coming in the mail!  Now on with the updates!

I puffed a battery last week, let it drain too much...20 dollar lesson there, will have to order new ones.

I have also come to the conclusion that this Yak might not have the battery capacity to run separate power supplies for the APM2, the motor and the video transmitter.  Not sure yet but that is the way it is looking.  I'll make that decision later after I know the final weight.

I got a lot accomplished today.  I made a mounting board for the APM2 and my receiver.  Epoxied it close to the CG.  I also got the 3DR radios to both upload their software and load the default values.  I'm going to leave the defaults as they seem to be good for my application.  

With the APM2 correctly working I need to figure out a way to mount the air speed sensor.  It has to be in the wing to avoid the prop wash but since this was a pre built bird I'm going to have cut away some of the very nice monocote job.  I'll do that tomorrow.  Then I need to mount the 900Mhz antenna and I think I already know a way to pull that off too. 

The wiring is EXTREMELY important.  What connects to where and how the connection is oriented is sensitive enough that just ONE misplaced connection and the whole thing craps its pants.  Pictures coming soon.  I have been unable to fly this bird as an RC due to high winds even at night.  It has been raging here for more than 2 weeks. 

I worked on this bird until my brain was tired.  It has been a LONG time since I've done something technically challenging and I can honestly say, victory feels GOOD.

One more note, I am beginning to look into building an antenna tracker...as with most things about building one of these it at first, seemed daunting, then expensive, then I get some balls and just go for it...that will be coming soon too...the antenna tracker, not my balls.  Just sayin.

May 12 2012

Today I built the GCS box.  Cost was about $100.  Quick and easy assembly too!  I need some foam, but only after I figure out what I'm going to put into it and the arrangement within.  Here are some self explanatory pics:

Hello all,

Yesterday I saw this on sparkfuns homepage, part. I instantly thought about how great this would be in uav's.   My first thought would be for drone recovery. but the options are limitless.

You have to buy this, then take it apart.  Then the subscription pricing is $99.99 for the basic package which allows you to send unlimited messages of your gps location with one of 14 predifined messages.

For an addition fee ($50 for 500) you can send a custom message of up to 41 characters.

Anyway just thought i'd share.

I've been wanting an indoor-sized quad for a while, so when HK announced their new MicroQuad I sent off and got one.  I was having some motor problems, and Andreas suggested it that the problem might not be in the motor or ESC, but in the HK controller board.

We swapped out the board with an APM2, and as you can see it flew quite nicely modulo some PID tuning.  It's pretty neat that the APM2 is small enough to fit with no problem!

It's definitely the smallest APM-controlled thing I've seen -- any other tiny things out there?

As is customary and traditional, we celebrate every new 1,000 members here and share the traffic stats. This time it's 24,000!

There were 1.4 million page views this month, which is close to a record. It just took us just over three weeks to get this latest 1,000 members--we're averaging about one new member every 37 minutes.

Here's an amusing description of the site from Alexa, which ranks sites and traffic patterns:

Diydrones.com is ranked #57,230 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings. The site's visitors view an average of 3.0 unique pages per day. The site is relatively popular among users in the city of Kremenchuk (where it is ranked #230). While the site is ranked #23,678 in the US, where approximately 40% of its visitors are located, it is also popular in Australia, where it is ranked #17,127. About 15% of visits to Diydrones.com are referred by search engines.

I had to look that up, but Kremenchuk is an industrial city in central Ukraine. Maybe there are a lot of drone enthusiasts there?

Thanks as always to all the community members who make this growth possible, and especially the moderators who approve membership applications and blog posts and otherwise answer questions and keep things ticking here. We've got about 50 moderators now, but if anyone would like to join this group, please PM me. If you've been here for a while and have been participating, you'll fit in great.

I needed 3D printing capability to develop my Propeller Shroud Project

So, I conceived and print another kind of propeller shroud, and I 3D printed it. It is a kit made in ABS, consisting of 9 parts, to be glued around the hub, and screwed for the outer parts.

This shroud can be used as a blade protection, and could interact slightly with the airflow. Curious about the aerodynamics effect of it, the propeller blade tip can be very close to the inner wall.

This was my first 3D printed project, and result can be amazing.

So, I ordered a 3d printer to go on developing my initial shroud project, looking for quite large printing size.

With this capability, all parts (stator/duct, rotor, hub/vanes) can be conceived and printed in an easier way than manual prototyping and hand molding.

The model here is for a 13" propeller, but any size, any kind of arm are possible.

This week we adjusted the control surfaces on the Raptor to get it all balanced and flew it a few times to get more experience and test the airframe's performance. I've got to say, flying wings, and the Raptor specifically, have far exceeded my expectations... it flies great! 
 
Its very, very stable, has an excellent power to weight ratio that allows it to climb indefinitely, enough control surface and authority to allow a perfect balance of control and stability. I found myself flying it over and over until the battery died (about 20 minutes of flight) which is pretty rare, I usually get kinda board and quit.
 
Anyway, the Raptor is awesome. This could be the platform for the USA trip, we'll have to add an APM and see how it goes.
 
Next week we'll compare the Raptor to the Nova and see how they perform when compared to each other.
 
-Trent
 
Main Camera: Panasonic HDC-TM900K
Battery: 20C 2.2Ah Sky http://www.hobbypartz.com/77p-sl2200-3s1p-20c-3333.html
Servos: T-Pro 9G http://www.hobbypartz.com/topromisesg9.html 
Motor: Optima 450 2220-1800KV http://www.hobbypartz.com/75m55-optima450-2220-1800kv-2.html
ESC: Exceed RC Proton 30A http://www.hobbypartz.com/07e04-proton-30a.html

One of the priorities of the APM team is to continue to find new ways to make it easier to use. The Mission Planner is a big part of that, with it's one-click firmware loading, but author Michael Oborne has now done it again with a great installation utility (64-bit Windows here, 32-bit here) that not only installs the Mission Planner, but also detects which APM you have and installs the right driver for it. That's like five manual steps eliminated! 

Great work, Michael!

(As always, it will also check for updates at startup and download the latest version)

DIY Drones friend Gonzolo Martinez has a beautiful $12,000 Cinestar 8, which he used to image the Autdesk HQ, where he works. 

Gizmag has the story:

Take one piece of software that can stitch 2D photos into a 3D model, one camera-carrying UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle), and mix well to impress and inspire. This was the recipe used by Autodesk's Director of Strategic Research, Gonzalo Martinez, when he set about modifying an Octo-Copter UAV for use with Autodesk's 123D Catch software to simplify the process of making 3D models of large real-world objects, while also having some fun.

The Mikrokopter Octocopter is an 8-rotor flying platform which has a 2 kg (4.4 lbs) capacity to carry cameras. It can be flown using an internal camera to give the operator a copter-based vantage point on video glasses, or can be programmed to follow a GPS-controlled flight path. An Octocopter can fly autonomously at altitudes up to 1000 meters (3280 feet), or can be manually flown as high as 3500 meters (11,480 feet). In the Autodesk tests video was captured using a GOPro Hero 2 camera, and the still pictures from which the 3D model was later built were taken by a remotely triggered Canon SLR camera.

Autodesk 123D is a suite of programs which allow a user to create, manipulate, and construct 3D objects using a 3D printer. Catch is part of the 123D suite, and offers a standalone software package that helps you create 3D models from a series of 2D digital images of an object or a scene. The spatial resolution available using 123D Catch is about 1 part in 600, or 0.167% of the total size of the object pictured, so you would be able to accurately place individual windows on a 3D model of a Boeing 747.

The video below illustrates the process of developing the 3D model of Autodesk's headquarters building from start to finish.

Hi everyone, I'm very happy to announce something that 3D Robotics has been working on since late last year in cooperation with a few very talented developers. Today we are announcing the 3DR Radio telemetry system, an open-source alternative to XBee telemetry set-ups, with superior performance, great range and a much lower price (half the price of the equivalent Xbee kit).

This is a 2-way, half-duplex wireless communication system with a standard TTL UART interface, based on HopeRF's HM-TRP data link modules, and custom firmware that improves upon the module's original features and performance.

The SiK firmware includes a bootloader that permits radio firmware updates over the serial interface, and radio firmware with configurable parameters. Updates and configuration are fully supported in the APM Mission Planner (press control-A to bring up the window below), and also possible through AT commands.

From the wiki:

• light weight (under 4 grams without antenna)
• available in 900MHz or 433MHz variants
• receiver sensitivity to -121 dBm
• transmit power up to 20dBm (100mW)
• transparent serial link
• air data rates up to 250kbps
• MAVLink protocol framing and status reporting
• frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS)
• adaptive time division multiplexing (TDM)
• support for LBT and AFA
• configurable duty cycle
• builtin error correcting code (can correct up to 25% data bit errors)
• demonstrated range of several kilometres with a small omni antenna
• can be used with a bi-directional amplifier for even more range
• open source firmware
• AT commands for radio configuration
• RT commands for remote radio configuration
• adaptive flow control when used with APM
• based on HM-TRP radio modules, with Si1000 8051 micro-controller and Si4432 radio module

Kit price is $74.99:

• 3DR Radio kit 915MHz
• 3DR Radio kit 433MHz

Individual radios are $35.99 (USB) and $31.99 (pins):

• 3DR Radio USB 915MHz
• 3DR Radio Pins 915MHz
• 3DR Radio USB 433MHz
• 3DR Radio Pins 433MHz

Kits and radios are available for purchase today, and they will start shipping next week.

Coming soon: a 3DR Radio XBee footprint adapter for both frequencies, compatible with our USB XBee adapter and Sparkfun's XBee Explorer boards.

We will also be releasing a version of the radios on both frequencies with an Xbee-compatible footprint, so you already have Xbee adapters, you can use them. 

We hope you enjoy using these radios as much as we have during development, the simpler hardware and configuration tools compared to XBee provide a much smoother experience. We look forward to hearing your comments!

Huge thanks to the developers who made this happen: Team leaders Andrew Tridgell and Mike Smith along with Michael Oborne, Seppo Saario, Marco Robustini and others. 

But what is it?!

Just to let you folks know, if Facebook is your social platform of choice we have started to try and make the sUAS News page look a little better

http://www.facebook.com/suasnews

We would welcome any build images that you have or comments on the stories, we firmly believe that innovation is coming from sheds and back rooms not main stream labs that need meetings to decide when the next meeting is.

Looking at this post that banner picture needs changing for a less military looking one, any ideas? Post it to the FB page for me to pick up.

Also the timeline can go back years so I want to add historic UAS stuff, again any ideas?? 

Don't forget we are on

Twitter @sUASNews and my current I quite like, favourite of mothers and cake bakers Pintrest

If you would like our stories delivered daily by email you can subscribe here. Examples of what they look like and all the previous emails are here

Our ebook collection of all the Police Fire Rescue stories and KB's excellent aerial photography .PDF are linked form here. There are a couple of papers here from Brett our new man about town when it comes to training and education.

Oh and there is the group at LinkedIn  Some FAA players follow that one so be careful what you say.

Sorry if this is off topic, but sUAS News was created to spread the word for advocacy and happenings in our world and is there to help your small business rise above the noise generated by big business.

We are not expert writers or web wranglers, we are UAS nuts. Let us know your exciting stuff!

Oh and feel free to add your business to our free directory here 

Oh and lastly people don't seem to be picking up what the logo is on the Fire Scout in this post, it made me smile....

http://www.suasnews.com/2012/04/14365/fire-scout-team-takes-steps-to-arm-unmanned-helicopter/

Oh and finally finally

I hope everyone has a happy and safe Easter, plenty of holiday time for entering the T3 or HK Beer lift challenge.

Be careful on the roads if you have to be.

Hi, I'm starting a team at Embry-Riddle in Arizona to go to the UAS competition in Maryland this year.  We're using APM on a custom built airframe, but we're still learning the ins and outs of Ardupilot and Mission Planner.  I've got a few questions:

We're tuning the PID's, and the aircraft pitches down in stabilize and FBW A&B. Should I fix this with RC trim, one of the gains, or initialize the aircraft in a slightly pitch-up attitude?

We're building a pan/tilt gimbal, and I'm wondering- if Ardupilot can make a camera point at a coordinate, can it also tell me what coordinates I'm looking at if I move the camera manually?  One of the requirements for the competition is that we have to find targets on the ground and report their coordinates within 250 ft.  

Is there anyone in the Prescott, AZ area that could give us a hand with autopilot tuning?  We'd really appreciate it!

William Hertling, an HP strategist and science fiction writer, has a good opinion piece at IEEE Spectrum that argues that open innovation models, like those practiced here, are going to win. I'm quoted, and DIY Drones/ArduPilot is cited as an example. 

Here's the concluding passage:

Between the exponential growth of computing power and the work of groups like DIY Drones, the cost barrier to participation in robotics and AI is falling away. When that happens, open source robotics will take off.

And contrary to what some observers have argued, openness can be profitable. Every tech startup in the last 10 years has used open source in some way. Facebook and Apple’s iPhone owe much of their success to their open app platforms. Red Hat, one of the leading Linux providers, is an $11 billion company, with revenues of more than $1 billion. The trick for robotics and AI companies will be to figure out the right mix of what’s proprietary and what’s open.

From Hackaday:

In the world of model aircraft, Fubata’s SBUS system is a big deal. Instead of having one servo per channel, the SBUS system allows for 16 proportional controls and two digital channels for each receiver. Basically, if you’re building an awesome plane with retracts on the landing gear and bomb bay doors, this is what you want to use. [Michael] wanted to use a few SBUS servos for a project he’s working on, so of course he had to reverse engineer this proprietary protocol.

Each SBUS servo operates over a single 100kbps serial connection with a few interesting twists: the signal is transmitted as big endian, but the individual bytes are little endian, something [Michael] figured out after stumbling across this month old mbed post. [Michael] used a serial library written by [fat16lib] and was able to change the parity and stop bits along with a simple hex inverter. Everything worked perfectly when the servo was connected to a an Arduino Mini.

Even though the SBUS system requires special Fubata servos, we can easily see how useful [Michael]‘s work would be to outrageously complex robots or cnc machines. Check out the video after the break for a quick demo of [Michael]‘s breadboard controlling one of these SBUS servos.