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I met some new industrial robots in the flesh at ATX West (Automation Technology Expo).  Nothing particularly groundbreaking here, but the speed and dexterity of the latest generation is remarkable (many were too fast for my phone's camera frame rate). There were a ton of these 4 and 6-axis delta robots (ones with 3 skinny steel arms). Also saw the very cool Festo adaptive gripper (first clip holding Cadbury egg) and some giant 3D printers.  Like a kid in a candy store.

Last Thursday, February 9 was dedicated to the Day of Science in Russia. I was invited on meetup to present ArduCopter project. There were journalists from television, some of them were really interested in quadcopter, therefore, they made a small report. Unfortunately, I had to speak in Russian, but, I hope, you'll catch the idea from the video. You can find more videos and photos from this event below.

Here is a short demo in the hall:

This is how my booth looked like:

Flying in Death Valley with the Zephyr and a HobbyKing RadJet. (verbal permission from a ranger on site! normally R/C is banned in Death Valley be sure you get permission!). Death Valley is an amazing place for FPV. The salt flats and surrounding area are pretty challenging RF-wise. We managed to reach 5km, then the video link started to deteriorate. R/C was still within a reasonable safety margin but surprisingly weak too.

From the Times and Democrat newspaper in South Carolina:

A remote-controlled aircraft owned by an animal rights group was reportedly shot down near Broxton Bridge Plantation Sunday.

Steve Hindi, president of SHARK (SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness), said his group was preparing to launch its Mikrokopter drone to video what he called a live pigeon shoot on Sunday when law enforcement officers and an attorney claiming to represent the privately-owned plantation near Ehrhardt tried to stop the aircraft from flying.

"It didn't work; what SHARK was doing was perfectly legal," Hindi said in a news release. "Once they knew nothing was going to stop us, the shooting stopped and the cars lined up to leave."

He said the animal rights group decided to send the drone up anyway.

"Seconds after it hit the air, numerous shots rang out," Hindi said in the release. "As an act of revenge for us shutting down the pigeon slaughter, they had shot down our copter."

He claimed the shooters were "in tree cover" and "fled the scene on small motorized vehicles."

"It is important to note how dangerous this was, as they were shooting toward and into a well-travelled highway," Hindi stated in the release. He said someone from SHARK called the Colleton County Sheriff's Department, which took a report of the incident.

The Colleton County Sheriff's Department filed a malicious damage to property incident report.

The incident report went on to state that "once shot, the helicopter lost lift and crash landed on the roadway of U.S. 601."According to the report, Hindi told the responding deputy the group's remote-controlled aircraft "was hovering over U.S. 601 when he heard a shot come from the wood line. The shot sounded to him that it was of small caliber."

The deputy noted in the report that he was unable to speak to anyone at Broxton Bridge Plantation following the incident.

Hindi estimated damage to the drone at around $200 to $300.

Hindi said he will seek charges against those who shot down the drone.

"This was SHARK's first encounter with the Broxton Bridge Plantation, but it will certainly not be the last," Hindi said in the release. "We are already making plans for a considerably upscaled action in 2013."

(Above Assembled jDrones Hexa)

jDrones ArduCopter goes color

Original ArduCopters made by jDrones have been getting several upgrades and upgrades will continue to come as promised. First series of upgrades are new and fine looking Black and also Carbon ArduCopters. Kits are now on packing area and after packing process is ready,order pages will be updated with new options.

On picture above is one of our Assembled Hexa ArduCopter with black and slick look.

Not only Hexa was updated also quad has been going through several changes. Our Quad kits have now too several color options along with different materials. You can have quad in black too and even with colored arms.

If you want even more cool looking birds, don't forget our Carbon frame. 

And for people who loves carbon we can provide nice little closeup from central frame. Now that looks cool doesn't it :)

And as everyone knows jDrones high quality frames these all frames follow our original quality packing and cutting requirements that we always been having. You won't receive parts that does not fit, all parts have been manually checked and tested before packing.

There are several other frames coming too on Q1, stay tuned and fly hard but fly safe. 

Jani /jDrones

From Makezine:

Forbes blogger TJ McCue sent us a link to this awesome Kinect project with gesture-controls an S107 RC Helicopter. The builder, cdoughty29 on YouTube, writes:

The Kinect detects my hands, head, and hips. This information is translated into X, Y, Z coordinates, processed with some 7th grade Algebra, and then sent to the Arduino Uno over the serial port. The Arduino receives the signal and converts it to a 38 kHz Infrared signal that the S107 can understand.

We know you love DIYDrones... so here is the Valentine's gift from the Dev Team! Yeah, we love you back. LOL =)
Anyway, in fact the title of this post could also be "ArduCAM OSD Project meets Michael Oborne"!!!

This tool makes setting up the awesome MinimOSD board super easy!

You can also buy from your local distributor, like JDrones.

Now you can:

• enable and disable panels;
• positioning panels by drag or numeric input;
• save and load layouts from file;
• save and load layouts from board's EEPROM;
• test video mode switching with adaptive layout;
• update firmware;
• update character set;
• customize background picture;
• set grid on/off;
• test the layout with telemetry logs from Mission Planner;

If you want to know more about each feature, check this wiki page.

To upgrade your MinimOSD board just went to our download area and grab the "OSD Config" and "MinimOSD 1.9 Pack".
An update pack contains two files: the Firmware (.hex) and the CharSet (.mcm).

Pay attention to the right update order. The tutorials are linked below:

1. "Update Firmware" (it adds support to upload the character set);
2. "Update Charset".

I'm super happy with the progress of ArduCAM project.
Now with Michael aboard... the sky is the limit just the start!

Enjoy your new toy! ;) There is much more coming out.

Note: The battery remaining icon was temporarily disabled due it's a work in progress on APM code.

Hello fellow UAVers,
dronemapper.com
My UAV partner (Ross) and I have been working on a project that we'd love to get some feedback and additional ideas for. Our intention is to allow free access to this web based tool and also a really cheap subscription model per month (think $4 range) to support hosting costs and the large amount of cpu processing power needed to generate maps. The free users will get all the same features but lower resolution imagery and possibly less accurate georeferenced tiles/tiffs/added watermarks to support the site. No ads.
 

Our software and backend servers use tons of different open source packages to complete the process of georeferencing and building image mosaics. We are also trying to offer an "easy to use" UI to view each flight and all the associated data. We really hope you enjoy our ideas! We are planning to open the site up to beta users by request in a month or so. Please keep an eye out for more information on that.

We've been having some problems getting our own flight systems up and running, ranging from a bad MUX on an APM 1 (thanks for fixing!), APM2 delays, and code issues with the Tri-Copter platform. This has prevented us from getting amazing imagery on our own at this point. :( Lucky, the awesome guys at Petryx UAV posted a ton of sample imagery which is so cool! Pteryx FTP Sample Imagery

We can't wait to open the site to beta users so you can test your own imagery and flight paths, hopefully at that point we will have our own platform up and running!

So, here we go -- some screenshots and comments:

Upload your flight imagery and Ardulog/GPX/Petryx/CSV log file.
Imagery and Flight Processing Queue
Imagery Dashboard w/ Flight Path, GeoTIFF served via Geoserver, Blended and Georeferenced Mosaics

Same as above, different flight.

Georeferenced View w/ Google Earth API - Shows Tiles, Flight Path

Second Part of Georefenced View - Shows GeoTiff Mosaic Preview and Metadata

Third Part of Georeferenced View - Shows Additional Maps
 

Blended Mosaic

Our Tricopter platform. Quadcopter and also Skywalker platforms we've been testing!

Quadcopter w/ IR Powershot a490 Camera
 

We would love to hear some questions and comments!

Thanks for reading and thanks for your support,

DM Team (JP and Ross)

I have been working on a two axis camera gymbal, results have been pretty good.  I even devised a vibration damper by attaching a small tube inside 2 larger tubes with silicone, first attempt is too soft.  Will have to go to use longer outer tubing to stiffen things up a bit.  Motor vibrations have been eliminated but camera jiggles a small amount on shorter tubing.

Also have not been able to get stable enough flight out of the APM2 to use on this craft or my quadcopter to fly with confidence.  Quadrino and Paris boards have been working very well for testing this setup.  Waiting for things to settle down with APM2 production to pursue help from DIY Drones, I know they are busy at this time.

Ed

It is on Design Stage...

tell me yours opinions and what i could improve.

only the frame will weigh 348gr.

Thanks,

Found this project on the kickstarter like site Makible.com. It´s a 3d printer project called MakiBox A6 that's going to cost $350 including int. shipping. Its supposed to be able to print with the same quality as the reprap, 

I like size of the machine and its perfect for printing parts to my arducopter, like motor mounts and landing gear. Hopefully are they able to develop the model within the time limit since its still in early development. Look at the video of the X and Y axis under.

link to site

Famous author and public intellectual Francis Fukuyama, ("End of History", etc) is now a DIY Droner! He's blogging his project here. He's just doing a RC quad now, but no doubt now that he's got the bug he'll be shooting for more "real drone" things soon ;-)

The Robbe during Nuremberg toy fair 2012 has presented the new version quadricopter RO-Copter A-Frame with Acrylic Frame and P-frames, laser cut plywood. To complete both versions will be purchased separately the set of four brushless motors , receiver, radio and battery. Both versions of the parts are provided for the support of a compact camera.

http://www.robbe.de/ro-copter-a-frame.html

Paul.

Many might already know that congress recently signed the Federal Aviation Administration Re-authorization Act, which orders the FAA to make way for drones in the National Airspace System (NAS) by 2015.

It seems that the rules will remain the same for recreational drones flying below 400 feet (which constitutes the vast majority of activity on this site). But for those seeking higher altitude, it's likely that your drone will need some kind of "sense and avoid technology."

From the bill, H.R. 658:

SEC. 322. CIVIL UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEMS INTEGRATION PLAN.
    (a) Integration Plan-

r the operator and pilot of a commercial unmanned aircraft system, including standards and requirements for registration and licensing;

To create a small Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS) with sense and avoid technology, you need to make sure that the equipment is small. sUASNews.com recently made a post about the world's smallest FAA-spec transponder. It measures 3.5" x 1.8" x 0.7", and weighs about 100g - which is 30 percent lighter than an iPhone.

The transponder is based on Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) technology, which compliments the FAA's switch to the GPS-oriented "NextGen" system. All aircraft in the NAS must be equipped with ADS-B transponders by 2020.

It runs on 10-32V, and consumes about 8 watts during normal operation. Not sure about the cost, but I'm attaching a nifty PDF with more info about the device.Sagetech-XP-Family-Transponder-Brochure-v3.1.pdf

Lacking on technical details, but has an interesting quote and image regarding mini UAVs

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17014808

The H-King Darkwing is a huge composite flying wing designed specifically for FPV, with its sleek design and menacing lines, this is one fantastic looking model!

Specifications:
Wingspan: 1727mm
Length (fuselage): 762mm
Wing Area: 49.3dm2
Dry Weight: 1400g

Required:
Your own 4 channel TX/RX with delta mixing
42mm Brushless Outrunner motor
60A~80A ESC
2 x Standard size MG servo
3700mAh~5000mAh 4s Lipoly battery
FPV Equipment

Price is US$ 167.44

More information on the Hobbyking site: http://hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=20276

Not being overly chuffed with the battery mount on the 3DR and wanting somewhere to mount a camera, I decided to make another layer to the quad. A third plate below the quad seemed idea. 

I fished out a scrap of unused fibreglass PCB I had in my goodie box. I took the quad apart to get at the bottom plate to copy as a template.

The normal plates have a series of 3 holes in the middle of each edge which seemed a perfect option to mount stuff. I drilled the same hole patter in the new plate.

Using M3 * 30mm screws built up my new platform. it is suspended under the quad and allows for a snug fit ot my 2200mAh 3S lipo. It simply slides in and is held there by itself. I might look at putting a strap in for safety to stop it sliding out.

The underside of the  board is the copper clad which I was going to etch off but decided against it. It would make a perfect  solution to adding more stuff like a camera gimbal because you can solder it :D

I did not take any pics during the build but it was pretty straight forward. The copper clad board is very easy to work with and rather strong. 

The only think I am concerned about and will be changing is the screw length. I think the battery is a very tight fit and apparently lipos expand as they (dis?)charge so this might be an issue. 35mm will be ample.

The battery in place (above)

It seems there are methods to increase accuracy of the GPS location to cm using a reference station network.

Real Time Kinematic (RTK) satellite navigation  is a technique used in land survey and in hydrographic survey based on the use of carrier phase measurements of the GPS, GLONASS and/or Galileo signals where a single reference station provides the real-time corrections, providing up to centimetre-level accuracy. When referring to GPS in particular, the system is also commonly referred to as Carrier-Phase Enhancement, CPGPS.

Check this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Time_Kinematic

I have been invited to do video broadcasting from anti-ACTA demonstration that happened on 11th February in Tartu, Estonia - one of many protests of this kind that took place in Europe this saturday. Of course, I took hexa (arducopter based) with me - idea was to make some photos from above, if that would be possible..

Friday evening however I decided that actually I can "spice it up" a bit...

On saturday it was really cold - I'd say about -15C degrees.. Event was planned to start at 1pm, so at noon there was nobody on site (above)

25 minutes before event start square looked like this:

then it started, and it looked something like that:

So, you ask where's the "spice"? Spice was that video from flying hexa was streamed directly to the web, and people around the world could see the video, and I personally think that this is very very cool :)

People were incredibly friendly - when asked by organizers to "make some jumping for the copter" they all started jumping (I will make some video a bit later, there are some cool shots in it..) :) Of course I know that people love our hobby, but so many people at the same time.. It's great feeling to get so much positive feedback :)

thx,
jk

p.s. Yes I know, it wasn't safest thing in the world to do. Yes I know, many will consider it dangerous and irresponsible. But sometimes you just disregard rules and do something insane.. I wasn't "over the heads" for too long, most of the time behind the stage (you can see it on last screenshot), but ... - yes, I know... But it was special day and I took that risk, that's the only excuse.

p.p.s. Now it came out that someone thought there have been a "military" drone, conspiracy and stuff, and even tweeted about it.. But actually it's just a little hexa running arducopter :) Someone, let the guy know he's wrong :)

I came across this video on my youtube feed today. How is this kind of endurance possible with standard LiPos? The last best flight time of 45 min was achieved by Holger Buss with his hexa mikrokopter if I'm not wrong. Can anybody shed light on how microdrones managed in excess of an hour?