A couple of weeks ago I have made a presentation at university about multicopters on the whole and ArduCopter in particular and showed a little demo flight.
You can download .ppt file here. Maybe it would be useful for someone.
Later I post a video of that demonstration when it will be ready.
Here a video of a full autonomous navigation in AUTO mode of the QRO (Quad Rotor Observer) with the firmware Arducopter v2.0.56a. The waypoints have been recorded in flight with the Switch on Ch7.
Successful tests of modes: ALT_HOLD, LOITER, AUTO, WP_SAVE, STABLE, SIMPLE.
The heading is locked with the help of a 3 axis magnetometer, the altitude is only locked by a barometric pressure (no sonar and no optical flow sensor).
Avionic setup:
- Ardupilot Mega (Atmega 2560 @16 MHz), 32 Mips
- Full 9DOF IMU,
- Built-in 16 MB Data Logger,
- Absolute pressure sensors (Bosh) for altitude,
- triple axis magnetometer HMC5843,
- 10Hz Mediatek GPS.
- firmware Arducopter V2.0.56a (JLN updated)
- Receiver: Turnigy 9X8C v2
- Transmitter: Turnigy 9x
- uBec 5V @ 5A Turnigy
Hardware Setup:
- four brushless motors RC Timer BC-2836/11 (750 KV)
- two CW propellers 12 x 4.5
- two CCW propellers 12 x 4.5
- fours ESC 40A RC Timer speed controllers
- one Lipo battery 3S Turnigy Nano-Tech 2200 mAh
- Take Off Weight (TOW): 988 g without payload
- Flight time: about 10 min
more infos at:http://diydrones.com/profile/JeanLouisNaudin
A Google translation of the text (I have no idea what "the process several times to no avail was fired from the pistol" means):
December 10 in Moscow at the Swamp area held a protest rally in the all-Russian action against the rigging of elections to the Duma.We present the aerial photographs of the rally. It was made by means of radio-controlled model helicopter, which in the process several times to no avail was fired from the pistol.
(Via Andrew Rasiej)
Hello everybody,
My name is Adam Miłosz and I'm on of the guys working on Rock ESC.
Just to give you the idea of the ESC that we want to develop, here are the highlights of the planned features:
• super fast motor response time,
• overcurrent protection,
• open source software,
• high current handling - up to 50A or 85A (with additional FETs),
• 3s-6s capable
• hardware capable of handling advanced control algorithms,
• MK compatible - the same basic I2C protocol,
• PPM, I2C, UART and CAN interfaces supported,
• USB interface - connect it directly to your PC, no need for additional converters,
• custom startup tunes.
So basically Rock is a high performance, easy to use ESC that is designed for heavy lift aircraft.
The project is being financed through a crowd funding campaign at IndieGoGo.com, so for more details click here: http://www.indiegogo.com/Rock-ESC?a=314216
We need your support!
The way it works is through a reward system. By the time Rock ESC is finished everybody who will contribute will get a reward, based on the donation amount. So what's it in for you?
To put it simply, by backing this project you will get:
• fine ESCs,
• badges,
• t-shirts,
• open source software
• a wiki page
• artistic value (?!) - see perk 2 on the right at IndieGoGo,
• updates on our progress
• future products,
• your personal satisfaction.
By backing Rock ESC you are helping us manufacture the first line of ESC. We also want to use the funds to get the equipment needed to finish this project - an oscilloscope, an ammeter, different motors and batteries.
There is no risk for you as a supporter - if we fail to raise a sum that's sufficient to complete the project, your donations will be returned.
BACK IN THE RACE! for those considering UAV airframes for their aerial photography and photomapping applications we now have available the AeroMapper UAV. A high performance electric glider integrated with a UAV Payload Bay Module that offers great room and protection for electronics. We are trying to contribute to the community with a high end and airframe but solving the problem of not having enough room for electronics by adding our UAV Payload Bay Module. More info at www.aeromao.com.
About us: since 2003 we have been doing aerial photography and photomapping in Colombia and other Latin American countries for government institutions, private organizations , and other mining and oil companies. From our beginnings and to the year 2008 we travelled a lot, flying here and there and we had a lot of fun. During this time we achieved more than 280 flight missions and probably some history firsts without knowing: we produced the first UAV-made orthophoto that is officially on Google Earth approved and added to this software by Google Inc. (We have a document from Google Inc. that certifies it is the first in Google Earth made by an UAV).
Also we made several flight missions for road planning projects, in which we flew the Genesis (our first UAV, a 21 Kg beast) over the course of many kilometres. The longest single flight was an spectacular UAV flight operation along a very curvy road, going down the mountains to a big valley. We took off the plane from the road at 1500 magl and ended landing at 200 magl, 80 Km away, after 2 hrs of flight time. Due to the topography and curves of the road, and the altitude at which the flight was to be performed we had to fly manually the airplane during the whole mission, trying to keep it on top of our heads while controlling from a moving vehicle in the road..... We will be posting what we call "history UAV videos" on youtube soon about this adventures...
Now being in Canada, we'll continue pursuing our dreams, now that we are settled down in this amazing and beautiful country. That`s why we are BACK IN THE RACE!
Questions and comments are very welcome!
have fun!
Finished the Nova this week! Everything went as planned, CG appears to be a little further back than I planned, but I'll have to wait to get it in the air to really determine its location. I'm not totally sold on the way the wing is held down (with velcro tape) and I've got a few ideas on how to improve it...
Not sure what else to say! It's going to be a great FPV/AP platform!
-Trent
Many of you probably know about this. Jason explained it's about removing the low pass filter from the ESC firmware. Pretty fiddly procedure, but looks to be very worth it. See links under video.
Most stable, responsive Arducopter vid I'm yet to see...
ArduCopter Factory update: December
Again it’s been really really exhausting time here at jDrones in past 6 months. Earlier this year we moved to our new location at BangNa area in Bangkok. When we moved to our current location there were only 3 people working and now we have total of 5 full time people and also 3 part time. It looks like that we will have 1-3 more in next 3 months.
Also we are planning to move our current office location to another building close by on current one as walls are getting too small for us.
Top picture is from gates gate at jDrones and just like Chris have been introducing 3DR staff, it will be our time now to introduce jDrones staff.
From left to right there are: Gap, Thee, Yao, Jani and Nin. This picture still misses Penny who is our latest enforcement for customer relations (some of you have already talked with her). And with help of her we finally try to get all email traffic in order.
As a small introduction of who is doing and what: Gap is the main man on assembling our kits and doing electronics, Thee runs some of our in-house CNC production along with packing issues, Yao is the lady who keeps things running at our office along with the packing. Jani (do I even need to explain my role…) the beast that kicks everyone and tries to keep things in order, Nin is our 2ndin command and takes care of shipping and all daily operations.
Location, location and location…
Our current area we have nice flying area close by where we can test all our equipment and even have nice evening dinner at our “AirPort Café” as we call it in here. Could it be better, yeah it could like to have own electric jDrones Office-Airport shuttle service (I wish)
Our office is rather easy to find, just take SkyTrain to Udom Suk Station and taxi to our office (5 minutes).
So if you and/or your friend are ever coming to this corner of the world, please do stop by and we can go to our flying field to do some test flying and others. You never know, if you are lucky enough you might see even Airport Café on it’s full evening glory.
Flying field size is about 300 x 200 meters and no high-rise buildings close by. So air is smooth but hot as out average temperatures in here are around +32 C all year around.
So come’on and come to fly with us.
Man him self and doing/testing video installations for heavy lift jD hexa
I wish I could still have enough time to play with all those nice little thingies but like Nathan from SparkFUN said earlier, after hobby becomes your professions it’s all about hard work and long days. How right we was on that…
Snapshots from daily life at jDrones
Gap, running one of our motor testing rigs. As many of you know, we are constantly working several many motor factories and always trying to improve the motors what we are using. Just as an example on November 2011 it self we tested different motors and motor/propeller combinations worth more than 2.000 running hours. Results of these tests allows us to better modify our motors what we are using here at jDrones and this way all our users will benefit from our findings.
Currently we are testing all motors with 3S and 4S batteries, propellers are starting from 6 inch all the way to 16 inch carbon propellers.
Test rig is custom build for our use along with all the electronics that runs it and software.
From the test rig we can see idle, full load amperages, used milliamps, vibrations, thrust values with different propellers/motors/batteries, rpms of the motors, temperatures of used ESCs and motors.
And as safety is our main concern, operator is always sitting behind blue safety net and having goggles when motors are running. We have been even having some propellers breaking while running them at full speed.
Usually final test of the motors is to see how much they can actually take punishment so we run them as long as they start to smoke out. Poor motors... It's not easy to be in here.
Highest light what we have ever been getting out from our test motors is close to 3kg. Naturally those motors needs huge batteries and big ESCs so they are not really suitable for multirotor use.
Nin at her desk doing bookkeeping and handling all shipping related issues. She is in charge of our daily operations here at jDrones, it’s not always so easy task to do as you might imagine but we all here are giving our best. Looks like it’s been a quiet day today according the amount of the paper at her desk. (I wish my desk would be so clean too).
Assembly area, Thee, Yao and Gap in action. Checking packet contents and doing packing. One of our most common daily routine is to do packing. Some of the products we pack in-house and some of them are packet at our nextdoor company area. There are currently several hundred products that we are packing here starting from the smallest screws and nuts all the way to fully assembled and tested kits.
Just small portion of our daily stocks from where all those boxes are filled up that we are shipping:
That's quick peak on daily life at jDrones main office. If you are visiting Bangkok, please send a message to us and we can give better tour to our office and to let you know what all other things we are doing in here. But before you come, let us know in advance when you are arriving so I can make sure that I will be here to guide you around.
As the New year is closes there are still many things to do before we can go on our Christmas vacation and beginning of next year we have a lot of nice updates coming to all of our users around the world.
jDrones will be closed 22nd Dec - 3rd Jan. Shipping continues on 4th. Packets still ordered before 20th will be delivered before 24th with our 3 day DHL express delivery. Last packets will leave on 22nd but before Christmas delivery is not guaranteed.
Stay tuned, fly safe and we wish Merry Christmas and Happy New year to you all.
Jani / jDrones
In the last two years i fly my electronics with different kind of frame :
This was my first frame Fox One:
My second frame wasFox TWO :
Then with my Friends Franco develope FOX III This is our Pro Carbon Fiber Frame :
Then with AleBS i develop low cost frame :
And this Summer with Antonio I work at VR Dragon ...
Now is the time of new frame generation ... With the help of Roberto74 that doing a great job We working on new frame produced using 3D printer technology. We waiting the first prototype in the next week stay tuned :)
So we have better Electronic and better approach for design our future frame directly from our mind ... :)
Check our store on shapeways ... after we doing some check on prototype will be available here :
http://www.shapeways.com/shops/virtualrobotix
Original blog post here : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/profiles/blogs/first-concept-frame-proposal-for-mp32f4-from-idea-to-ready-to-fly
Dear Friends ,
I'm happy to present the new revision of Multipilot32.
This new revision of product use STM32F4 as micro controller. This is the most powerfull Arm Cortex M4 available on the market . The Benchmark in Coremark is 469 . Standard Arduino is 18 . A lot of power for your new design.
The VR Ide Pro is available and downlodable here :
http://code.google.com/p/multipilot32/downloads/list
In the framewark is available :
The library available for MP32F1 are :
Maple first revision and last revision that support DMA and new timer functionality as timer capture.
The library available for MP32F4 are :
ST std library and ChibiOS operating system complete with an example of makefile and firmware.
We open a developer group on virtualrobotix website:
http://www.virtualrobotix.com/group/armcopterdevgroup?xg_source=activity
the next step is porting all available APM library for MP32F1 to MP32F4.
The board is available for pre order :
MP32F4 95,00 euro
MP32F1 85,00 euro
* this revision use STM32F103 the firmware is yet available.
The MPU6000 Option is available as option at 35,00 euro
send a mail to virtualrobotix@gmail.com for info.
We integrate on same board the MPU6000 that use SPI bus and DMA to transfer data between the micro and imu sensor.
in this sensor is available:
Check this link for more info about the product :
http://invensense.com/mems/gyro/mpu6000.html
For MP32FX is available the VR Navi Board :
VR Navi board Option :
Input Output:
Price 70 euro.
Complete Kit STM32F4 + Navi Option 199 euro.
Preorder Open Today !!!
Original link for more info : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/profiles/blogs/arducopter32-and-multipilot32-11-11-project-update
The frame set and some other goodies arrived today!
1x MK okto XL frame.
1x Altigator dome
2x bubble levels
10 x glass fibre 12x4.5 prop sets
1x 5A BEC
and a few other thingys.
Im very impressed with Altigators service!
They even included some altigator stickers, a battery strap and a Chrismas hat! lol
The altigator hood is a little bit flimsy to say the least... But other than that, alls good.
Also the MK riggers are only 1cm square, so considerably smaller than the AC.
They are however slightly thicker walled.
As soon as my PDB and camera mount/LG arrives from photoship one, I will start the initial build.
Also waiting for motors and ESCs from Hobby King...
G:)
This is a heading hold test for the ArduPilotMega based (ArduBoat) sailboat autopilot. The boat is sailed manually on a reach and then heads downwind holding a heading of 0 degrees and performs a jibe.We have waypoint guidance working in hardware-in-the-loop, so we expect to do waypoint testing soon. We might have to figure out a better solution for our digital wind vane as the potentiometer from radio-shack is too sticky to detect light winds well. The digital weather station from sparkfun might be a good option.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4eJ9zJ3Adk
I've finally got the interference bugs out of my wiring and I'm happy with the picture from front all the way through to DVR and upload, and in the goggles as well.
This OSD firmware takes its info from Mavlink, just like the upcoming Minimosd.
I believe the MinimOSD will feature a similar (optional) artificial horizon.
I've done some more work on the stability code in my Propeller-based quadrotor and gotten significantly better flight performance. It still needs some tuning, but all my oscillation problems are gone.
In the office:
Walking around outside the office:
After some delays in sourcing components and setting up a good test procedure, we now have the PhoneDrone Android/RC interface board in production and available for purchase ($99).
If you've been wanting to experiment with connecting Android phones or tablets to the world of RC vehicles, this is the board for you. It's the only Android ADK board on the market designed to work with RC equipment, and it can interface with APM (1 or 2) via serial, too.
From the product listing:
"The board has 8 channels of RC in and out, with PWM-to-PPM conversion and multiplexing between RC and Android control. You just plug the Android's phone USB connector into the board and you have two-way communications with RC gear and any other board, such as APM.
That means that you can switch between RC control and Android control or mix the two. An example would be "fly/drive by wire". You steer your vehicle via RC, but an Android phone does the actual control using its onboard IMU. On a car, that would allow every turn to be a high-speed controlled drift, for instance (we may show something like that at Maker Faire).
Or, with a UAV, you might have the Android phone doing high-level image processing and object tracking, sending mission commands to an autopilot board such as APM. You might also want to use the phone's long-distance wireless instead of an Xbee for two-way telemetry.
This can either replace APM if you've got equivalent code running on Android, or compliment it with the Android device doing image processing or long-distance wireless comms.
SPECIFICATIONS:
Just got my DX8 + a second receiver for free!
Iv read more TX/RX reviews than I can stand and finally settle for this combo.
I have to admit its alot better than my turnigy 9x. Thank God for rechargeable batteries and no #%$#$ beeping!!!
The features are great and the telemetry for me was the biggest deciding factor.
Dont get me wrong, I trust the voltage monitor on the Ardupilot, I just wanted something stand alone that could tell me the voltage level and temp of my batteries. All things considered im going to be up in the air for 20+ mins per flight.
Also it has a nice throttle cut feature, where if the throttle drops below a specified level, you can set it to automatically switch to a pre defined mode, eg RTL! Hence, if I loose TX signal or the copter flies out of range of the TX. It should automatically RTL. This can also be setup on the APM firmware. Always a good idea to have double backup!
I like to be safe. Be prepared for everything, or as much as possible!
Theres no kill like over kill. ;)
Pretty amazing, a package sent from China via DHL on Monday.
Arrived this morning.
After unpacking and reading the not too good english manual, but much better than most.
I attached it to my Nikon. Simple, straight forward.
Iv attached a couple of geo-tagged images with the addition of compass bearing!
On the way to my field theres a san-pedro cactus outside our front gate. With an unusual amount of flowers on it.
That is the 1st pic, the 2nd is the field and the 3rd was the same cactus on my way back. Half an hour and half a million bees later. I couldnt get closer without getting stung...
The only slight problem I might have is I have to use the electronic shutter control on the nikon for triggering with that ppm relay board from DIYD. Problem is that the GPS cable and shutter cable are the same damn cable.
So I either need to get a Y splitter or I have to carefully splice in a 3 wire cable for the shutter control...
G:)
Spent a lot of time trying to low noise overclock audio preamps. The main factor affecting you as you get an extremely high gain transducer into subterranian levels of noise is the power supply. Every consumer gadget encounters some humming noise before it encounters thermal noise. Even a DSLR has banding noise from a power supply ripple.
Power supply banding noise on an obsolete EOS 5D.
You would't believe how sensitive a primary microphone stage is to power supply noise. Merely toggling a pin on a microcontroller or driving an LCD panel would cause enough ripple in the power supply to generate a hum. 2 hums of different frequency would mix & create a harmonic within human hearing.
The whole affair made us wonder if our obsolete sensors couldn't be improved with more power supply filtering. Everything that makes money has loads of decoupling caps near each sensor, but we always flew with 1 cap for the entire autopilot & just the reference design caps for the sensors.
EEVBLOG's video on RC filters for smoothing PWM inspired us to look more at the subject. More importantly, he showed a dual cascaded RC filter squashing the ripple more than anything else, which conflicted with our tradition of using the fewest components. So we applied some RC filters to the king of noise: the SCP 1000.
It's an obsolete barometer, but it's all we can afford. Tried 10ohm + 480uF, dual 10 ohm + 480uF, & 100ohm + 480uF.
The curves reflect the board cooling after soldering. The noise decreased dramatically with the RC filter & is now in the 1/2 meter range. The reference design obviously left a lot to be desired & a lot of noise is coming from the microcontroller itself.
The 100ohm + 480uF did slightly better than the dual 10 ohm. So in matters of cost & weight, you're probably still better off leaving the dual cascaded RC filter at home.
Our obsolete GPS module wouldn't work at all with an RC power filter. That has transients at too low a frequency to dampen out without an active regulator. The barometer most certainly has its own transients, but still benefitted.
The gyros didn't benefit at all. They're probably frequency dependant. Left the cap on, to dampen vibration.
Maybe the transient voltages of polling a radio receiver can reduce its sensitivity? Maybe using the interrupt pin on our 900Mhz radios would increase their sensitivity, but as soon as the 1st byte of data came in, the device would lose sensitivity for the rest of the packet, as we clocked out the data. Maybe if we used the analog pin as a raw UART instead of the digital FIFO, it would be more sensitive.
Remarkable that 2 years later, radios haven't gone anywhere in terms of capability or parts. There's been no major effort to go outside the 2.4Ghz band.
To our amazement, Ning now limits blog posts to 7 photos, so the rest are on blogger. Everyone's cutting back on the freebees & firing everyone as the stock market booms.
Vika 1 flew again, after 1 year. Her adhesive tape had settled with the propellers facing forward after all that time. Round carbon fiber is unbreakable but impossible to build with. The RC filter got the altitude much more stable, but heading without a magnetometer was worse than we remember.
Someone gave us an AKM8973 almost a year ago. The datasheet seemed to have some errors in the pinout & it never did work.
Being a chronically unemployed programmer doesn't allow us to fly very often or buy the latest autopilot instead of hacking on the ghetto autopilot. Actually pursued the LA aerospace idea for a year, but never got any interest. The big thing these days for making money is making web applications with Ruby on Rails, but our analysis says it won't last any longer than J2EE.
We are interested in putting together a technology summer camp for HS (10-12) students where small teams actually build a working drone of some sort using existing designs/components. What low-cost designs would this group suggest? A multicopter would be really cool but I am not sure if we could come up with a truly affordable/survivable solution. Could we build a small AR.Drone sort of craft for $300? Would a rover be best to start with? Has anyone developed any sort of HS curriculum around drones? Is anyone interested in helping with this project?
Recently the Chinese ESC design utilizing the ATMEGA which we have been flashing with Bernard Konze's firmware has been disappearing from the market. This was the push I needed to finally decide to design and build a replacement. Collaborating with a friend, we worked on it over the summer. It is finished and I think it came out pretty well. I call it ESC32:
Design goals:
- Extremely fast implementation of requested throttle setting
- Ability to take high rate input
- Multiple input protocols
- Ease of programming, real-time debugging
- Efficient
- Inexpensive
The final specifications read:
- STM32F103 72Mhz MCU - 32bit ARM
- Firmware written in straight C
- SWD connector for real-time debugging
- Input via PWM IN / UART / I2C
- 1KHz PWM update rate capable
- All N-FET design with gate drivers
- At least 40A continuous with proper cooling, maybe much more
- 2S => 5S battery
- Option to power logic side via UART or PWM IN +5v
- Command Line Interface for testing / parameter modification / back channel
- 8KHz => 64KHz PWM out
- Current sensing / limiting
- Regenerative braking capable
- Closed loop control mode - experimental
- Lots of RAM and CPU cycles available for advanced control techniques
- BOM cost < $20 at quantity
* image courtesy of TC Pictures, LLC.
It is a drop-in replacement for the ESC's that I have been running with AutoQuad and will take standard PWM input up to 450Hz. I will eventually design new high rate PWM timing which will bring this rate up to 1KHz. It is a definite improvement over the ATMEGA design. Your flight controller can ask for large, quick changes in throttle and it is able to implement them very fast. This allows PID output to be tuned to be more aggressive and results in much smoother control.
Start ups are very smooth and I have not yet found a motor it could not start. It uses oversampling techniques which allow it to accurately control a BLDC motor down to 200RPM. Early indications based on some initial head to head testing with other ESC's show the it is very power efficient. This comes from the fast switching of the N-FETs due to the use of gate drivers. Less time is spent in the on-off / off-on transitions, so less power is used, less heat generated. No special heat sinks or cooling should be necessary for typical 10 to 20 amp usage. This also means that you can use higher PWM output rates without too much of a hit to efficiency.
* image courtesy of TC Pictures, LLC.
As the ESC is an extremely important component of multi-rotor UAV's, it is critical that it keeps running, no matter what. So you can imagine the amount of testing necessary before you can start to trust a new design with your expensive machine. There are a handful of people flying the ESC32 now and I myself have perhaps 10 hours without incident so far. There may still be problems, but I am fairly confident that it is trustworthy. It's all I fly now.
