Blogs

From Hackaday:

[Jouni] sent in his quadrocopter build that was inspired by the Japanese spherebot we caught earlier this year. [Jouni] used a carbon fiber frame to  prevent the copter from bumping into things. Other things bumping into it are another story entirely.

After some test flights with strange inflight behavior and a first high impact crash, it's time to alter some of the settings of the Arducopter brain. To minimize the risks of damaging even more I decided to build a test bench.

The build's finished result is shown in the picture below.

The base itself is made from wood, with the pivot point around 19,5 cm from the bottom. This ensures for enough room to amplitude the beams, but gives a natural endpoint on the landing gear (as shown in the picture).

On the copter itself 4 brackets are mounted on the end of the beams. Those are milled from aluminum plates and fit exactly around the beams in order to prevent it from torch. The endpoints are also made from aluminum and milled on a lathe (3mm diameter).

Source: New York Times

"A new federal law, signed by the president on Tuesday, compels the Federal Aviation Administration to allow drones to be used for all sorts of commercial endeavors" . . .  see New York Times article entitled: "Drones Set Sights on U.S. Skies"

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1013469813/mygeekshow-get-into-rc-airplanes

This week I tested the Ardupilot's waypoint and autopilot functionality again, and this time, had a lot more success! I moved the GPS unit to have a better view of the sky, and it's performance improve markedly.

I also tried taping my iPhone 4s to my airplane and used it's 1080p HD video function to record the flight. Totally revealing how much better a nicer camera would look! I need to balance the prop to reduce all the waves and distortions, and of course improve efficiency and reduce damage caused by the vibrations.

Again, so far so good. I am really loving the APM and mission planner. Thank you again DIYDrones for the awesome equipment and software!

Equipment Used:

Airplane: Scratch-built Nova, see http://www.MyGeekShow.com for plans and build instructions

Main Camera: iPhone 4s

Airplane Camera: FlyCamOne2

AutoPilot/Stabilization: Ardupilot Mega from http://www.DIYDrones.com

Motor: http://www.hobbypartz.com/75m42-optima450-2220-950kv.html

ESC: http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=13429

Battery: http://www.hobbypartz.com/77p-sl4400-3s1p-30c-3333.html

Servos: http://www.hobbypartz.com/topromisesg9.html

Prop: http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idproduct=5437

Stats:

Weight: 32 oz

Thrust: 21 oz

Wing Area: 3.33 square feet

Wing Loading: 5.3 oz per sq ft

If you're interested in building the Nova, I've got free build instructions and plans on my website: http://www.MyGeekShow.com.

-Trent

Flying over the Hoover Dam with a custom-made Quadcopter. Entertaining the tourists until the po-po takes over. All in good fun, though, especially since we asked for permission.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1013469813/mygeekshow-get-into-rc-airplanes?

As I've progressed over the past year from making little foam gliders to making the APM Powered Nova, I've decided that when I "arrived", aka was able to design, build and fly my own RC airplanes, I'd make a series of high quality videos that would help others make a similar journey. These videos would provide a resource for new people to get started, and resource for experienced people to refer newer people to (if you're like me, while I enjoy teaching others the basics, it does get a little tiring explaining the same thing over and over).

To assist me in accomplishing this, I launched a Kickstarter project for the purpose of raising $500 to pay for an HD camera, lighting, micophone, and materials to build workbench that will allow me to create the highest quality tutorial videos.

Go to my Kickstarter project page to learn all the details.

I'm currently considering the following video ideas to get started (see below). In time, I'll move onto more advanced subjects, like FPV and autopilot.

If you choose to contribute (any amount will help!), I thank you! There are "rewards" (see the Kickstarter page to learn more) that I'm giving to contributors.

Video Ideas:

Common Questions:

How do I Get Started?

How Much Does it Cost?

How Hard is it to Fly?

What Happens if I Crash?

What Kind of Range do they Get?

How Long do they Fly?

Where and When do I Fly?

Where do I buy an Airplane?

Should I Use a Flight Simulator?

What Tools Will I Need?

Are there local groups I can meet with?

What are some online resources?

What does these RC Airplane terms mean?

If You're Building Your Own or Getting an ARF/RR:

Choosing the AirplaneChoosing a Transmitter & Receiver

Choosing a Brushless Motor

Choosing an ESC

Choosing a Battery

Choosing a Servo

Choosing a Propeller

Preparing for your First Flight:

Finding the Center of Gravity (CG)

Check your control throws and direction

Charge a LiPo Battery

Checking Thrust Direction

Your First Flights:

What Repair Tools & Equip. to Bring

Conduct a Range Test

Get to Know your Environment

Final Preflight Check

How to take off an RC Airplane

How to fly an RC Airplane

How to land an RC Airplane

When (not if) you crash, what to do?

Not sure if it was posted before, looks it wasn't. Enjoy.

(Click the picture for the Youtube video)

Some onboard video taken from my quadcopter in the Kalahari desert, South Africa, bordering the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. Sorry not GoPro quality and there's no sound.

Separate Mediatek GPS's on both ArduPilot Mega and the Remzibi OSD. A Hobbyking 420 TVL camera provides the video sent back to the ground via a BOB Fox 700 1.2GHz transmitter. Radio is a Hitec Aurora 9.

Some FPV videos to follow when I get to edit them.

Software is v2.3, with PID's fairly high.

And yes, that is a "kalahari-ferrari" in the beginning

This voltage protector offers 3,300,000 uF of energy storage in a small and lightweight package.

.

more powerful multicopters bring us the opportunity to use bigger cameras, very big and complex gimbals, and of course big and powerful servos.

a servo, being a motor, needs a big available "immediate" energy, which means high current, when it starts moving.

capacitors are used to store energy for fast discharge application, and most of us know the "voltage protector" devices for RC, which are usually about 10,000uF capacitors that are plugging in the RC receiver and will give more stability and stored energy,

with the latest developments of EDLC (electric double layer capacitors) and high energy capacitor,

the ability to use them in the RC field is now possible.

.

Hi Guys,

My new OpenLRS Rx Multi boards arrived yesterday.
It is most simple quadro system, because controller firmware working into the RC receiver's processor :)
No need to any wiring for sensors or controllers, just plug your ESCs and fly.

Circuit %100 compatible with our other OpenLRS Rx v2 boards and including extra 2 pot, 3 axis Gyro(ITG3205) and 3 axis Accelerometer(ADXL345). I will share the codes and schematics into the product page.

I used modified MultiWii v1.9 on my receiver but you can load other opensource projects that they are using Arduino Atmega328 base. OpenLRS Rx v2 including I2C for sensors, a FTDI port and  PWM pins as servo output.


I'm waiting to spring days for flying outdoor and writing some autopilot codes into the board for stabilizing my planes and RTH functions.

Have a nice weekend

Melih

It was an issues of time to build a 9-axis sensor in one chip, and Invense did it again.

http://invensense.com/mems/gyro/mpu9150.html

I read somewhere that people are working to build an Ardupilot with ARM CPU, so i'm thinking in image or video processing in a platform similar to Raspberry-PI, but this consumes 2.5W in Model A.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

Specifications

Came across a short article on a new low-cost UAV system:

http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/16/lehmann-aviations-lfpv-uav-packs-gps-autopilot-11mp-cam-1080/

John Robb has a great post which riffs on the Harvard work we wrote about last year on "pop-up fabrication" of micro flyers (shown in the video above).

The FAA currently estimates that there will be 30,000 drones licensed to operate in US skies by 2020.  It's a misleading estimate.  

Why?  

It only counts large, professional drones (and even that estimate is low).  It doesn't count all of the small/micro drones operating below ~400ft and at slower airspeeds.   How many micro-drones will there be by 2020?

Tens of millions (tens of billions if there is warfare or repression driving it  -- and given the problems we are facing, there will be) and they will look something like this (depicted:  The Mobee):

How do we get to that number?

Simple.  You print them by the sheet.

Here's the latest step in that development.  The microrobotics team at Harvard discovered a new manufacturing process that allowed them to go from

• assembling drones by hand a month ago with an 85% error rate to 
• manufacturing them by the sheet with nearly zero defects/failures in assembly.

Think about that for a second.

Modern tools for rapid prototyping are so precise (< 5 microns of error across the entire sheet), cheap (that a small drone lab can access them), and fast (design it on the computer lead straight to manufacturing) that nearly everyone can do this (or will be soon).  

Some more detail

One of the manufacturing breakthroughs was the use of  folding techniques (ala origami and children's pop up books) and hinges to cleanly assemble a 3D shape from a 2D sheet.  Very slick.  

Download Source Files for Printing

Ryan Calo, a Stanford law professor who specializes in the legal implications of new technologies, published an article the Stanford Law Review in December that I've only just now read. It's very interesting and worth reading the whole thing (it's not very long), but here's an excerpt:

There is very little in our privacy law that would prohibit the use of drones within our borders. Citizens do not generally enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy in public, nor even in the portions of their property visible from a public vantage. In 1986, the Supreme Court found no search where local police flew over the defendant’s backyard with a private plane.[5] A few years later, the Court admitted evidence spotted by an officer in a helicopter looking through two missing roof panels in a greenhouse.[6] Neither the Constitution nor common law appears to prohibit police or the media from routinely operating surveillance drones in urban and other environments.[7]

If anything, observations by drones may occasion less scrutiny than manned aerial vehicles. Several prominent cases, and a significant body of scholarship, reflect the view that no privacy violation has occurred unless and until a human observes a person, object, or attribute.[8] Just as a dog might sniff packages and alert an officer only in the presence of contraband, so might a drone scan for various chemicals or heat signatures and alert an officer only upon spotting the telltale signs of drug production.[9]

In short, drones like those in widespread military use today will tomorrow be used by police, scientists, newspapers, hobbyists, and others here at home. And privacy law will not have much to say about it. Privacy advocates will. As with previous emerging technologies, advocates will argue that drones threaten our dwindling individual and collective privacy. But unlike the debates of recent decades, I think these arguments will gain serious traction among courts, regulators, and the general public.

You can also read his related essay in the Huffington Post, which also adds the following:

One contributing factor here may be the impossibility of visualizing privacy violations in the modern age. What does a privacy violation even look like? Maybe somewhere, in some distant server farm, the government correlates two pieces of disparate information. Maybe one online advertiser you have never heard of merges with another to share email lists. At most one can picture the occasional harmful outcome; its mechanism remains obscure. This lack of a mental model for contemporary privacy harm makes it hard to inspire judges or spur legislative action.

The introduction of government and private drones into our cities will feel very different to the public and perhaps to the courts. What data there is suggests that Americans are nervous around robots. They may associate drones in particular with violence and the theater of war. The proliferation of drones in our skies could lead to a privacy moment, all of our amorphous fears about new technology watching us suddenly corporeal and immediate.

It is for this reason that I believe drones could end up being good for privacy law. The backlash against their use could unravel long-standing doctrinal presumptions against privacy in public, supporting a mosaic theory of privacy such as that on appeal to the Supreme Court from the D.C. Circuit in United States v. Jones. Moreover, it could cut against the argument that people have no privacy interest in contraband or that there has been no privacy violation as long as a person does not see anything s/he should not. These would become itchy-shirt arguments, no longer feeling quite right.

"Unmanned Drones go from Afghanistan to Hollywood". A few small errors, but otherwise pretty sound. Excerpts:

This past January, the Los Angeles Police Department issued a highly unusual warningagainst the use of drones by real estate agencies. The LAPD sent a letter to the California Association of Realtors, a trade group, warning that Realtors “who hire unmanned aircraft operators to take aerial photographs for marketing high-end properties” were in violation of FAA rules and local motion picture filming ordinances. Users were warned that the LAPD's Air Division intends to prosecute violators in the near future. However, the letter appears to be hot air: Unmanned aircraft flying at heights under 400 feet are currently unregulated by the FAA. [DIY Drones editors note: that's not true.]

What makes the letter even more interesting is that it was written on behalf of FilmL.A., a private corporation that serves as a public-private liaison between the motion picture industry and local government. FilmL.A., which is largely responsible for issuing filming permits, was founded as a result of Los Angeles City and County's privatization of their film permit offices. Amateur UAV aficionados have noted that filming via UAV does not require the costs incurred via a conventional film permit. In addition, FilmL.A. represents crane operators, who have a vested interest in restricting UAV use for motion pictures.

Meanwhile, drone filming for real estate and location scouting continues unabated. Boutique drone firm HeliMalibu specializes in photography and video of luxury real estate properties via drone aircraft. HeliMalibu uses a custom multirotor UAV which is equipped with multiple cameras and flies autonomously. The drone, which looks like an H.R. Giger helicopter, has filmed many of Los Angeles' ritzier neighborhoods. According to The Hollywood Reporter's Daniel Miller, HeliMalibu's services were used to sell the Bel-Air home of ex-Architectural Digest owner Bud Knapp, along with the Holmby Hills residence of Paramount CEO Brad Grey. HeliMalibu also provides services to the feature film industry, such as filming car races.

California-based Air Drone Productions, which advertises its work on reality show Gene Simmons' Family Jewels and Disney's Road Dogs, has a 45-minute battery life “Cinema Flyer” UAV drone aimed the film industry. The drone has multiple camera setups and a one-mile video transmission range.

....

Another manufacturer, German firm DroidAir, specifically targets the motion picture industry. The company's flagship product, the $6,500 DroidOne, is manufactured in China and targeted at both the European motion picture industry and police departments. Their drone is custom-designed for a stable camera mount and has a half-hour flight range.

The FAA has sporadically persecuted firms engaged in filming via UAV. One company, MI6 Films, which provides commercial aerial filming services, was apparently issued a spoken cease and desist order by the FAA. Users on industry bulletin boards have also reported similar troubles.

For UAV operators, however, domestic drone use is poorly regulated, and the possibilities are hypothetically unlimited. Drones that perch on building ledges can be used by private detectives and crusading magazines/blogs alike. UAVs mounted with cameras for low-flying aerial use can just as easily be used by legal forensic teams or location scouts trying to figure out the next Law and Order spinoff. FAA regulations for commercial, non-military or police drones are widely expected to be issued this year. Informed observers believe the FAA will formally approve six U.S. test sites where drones can share airspace with other traffic without the need for special permits. That strange new sci-fi world of camera-equipped, pilotless planes swooping through the air? It's here.

as reported in this Makezine article,

"The clever designers at Chicago’s Tanagram adapted code developed to recognize those little black-and-white augmented-reality markers..."

I'm thinking a smaller marker, ArduEye, and automated landing for multicopters.  If you can recognise multiple markers, you could have a small one inside a large one, giving extra precision close to ground.

It's done. U.S President Obama did sign the bill for full integration of UAS into the national regulatory framework by Sept. 30, 2015. Small UAS (under 25kg) will be cleared to fly by mid-2014.

Some reactions already: http://www.examiner.com/libertarian-in-west-palm-beach/presidential-candidate-concerned-over-u-s-drone-program-within-america

Read more on that matter on Diydrones:

- http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/transponders-shrinking-to-meet-faa-drone-demands

- http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/congress-passes-uav-bill

The "Happy Hacker Quad" :)

Frame - FR4, Aluminum arms, Carbon motor mounts

Motors - Turnigy 2217's

ESC - Trunigy 18A Plush

Battery - 3000/4000Mah 3S Packs

Arms - 450mm Motor to Motor

Weight - 1020g w/o battery

FC - APM1

Test fitting of the carbon CNC motor mounts.My "Happy Hacker" Quadcopter build.

Almost all painted ;)

Quick FPV gear flight.

- Frame inspired by some designs seen online. All components are designed in Solid Works, CNC cut, and painted.

Some flight videos and completed pictures (w/o fpv gear) coming soon...

Feb. 19 - 2012

Completed the HH-Quad, FPV quad in the background.

12 Minute flights on a 4A pack, 17:06 on a 5A Zippy pack.

Note: This video is available in 1080p. Use it!

I finally have an update on the object tracking software I started back in these two posts:

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/object-tracking-working-on-mission-planner-integration

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/object-tracking-proof-of-concept

Here is whats new:

1. Added support for the Pololu Maestro USB Servo Controller (Thanks Chuck!)

2. Added tunable PID controller that takes the X/Y error and converts it into an output for the USB servo controller

Todo:

1. Add zoom (this will be tricky)

2. Add option to select either 360 degree servo or regular fixed position servo

3. Test outdoors with real tripod mounted gimbal

4. Polish up the UI and provide a beta copy to you guys!

It is coming along nicely! I am really happy with the software so far. As soon as I have a field test I will post another video. Also, I am still planning on integrating it into the mission planner. Time has been scarce (it always is).

Anything you would like to see? Just leave a comment.

_____________________________

Adam Rivera

http://sentientdrone.com