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Dear Friends,

X-Copter First test...... from StefanoXJX on Vimeo.

XCOPTER - Second flight test from StefanoXJX on Vimeo.

In these video you can see the results of first flying doing by Stefano that is a member of our community . He use MP32 + VRIMU , congratulation for this flight . This is the first example of Radial Hexacopter , this is only the first test but the results is very good :)

in questi video si vedono i risultati dei primi voli di Stefano con Multipilot32 + VRIMU , complimenti per questo volo anche perche' e' la prima realizzazione di un Hexacottero radiale , sono i primi test , ma se il buongiorno si vede dal mattino siamo a cavallo

Configurazione:


MultiPilot32+VRIMU
Motori Keda 20-22L
Eliche APC 10×4.7
Regolatori HobbyWing Pentium 30A
Stable mode : Active
Magnetometer : Deactive

Original Post : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/profiles/blogs/first-flight-with-mp32vrimu-in

Bravo Stefano

Roberto

With added weight to the front, our foam model flew very well. These pictures show our rudimentary model for our concept plane.

Just how important vibration isolation is with an APM become clear to CanberraUAV this week. We were testing flying Jacks SkyRaider (a low wing sports plane with a 0.5ci engine) on Sunday, and found that we got severe gyro drift. The first minute or so of flight was OK, but the plane quickly developed severe roll and pitch drift when it stabilize mode. We were recording the flight using a mavlink log which showed that the roll went from -2.97 radians to 3.09 radians, when in fact we were flying fairly level!

We tried swapping out various APM components with known good bits from my SkyWalker, with no luck. Chris Gough then suggested that the problem may be vibration, given that the SkyRaider has a glow engine,  and the only vibration isolation was some double sided tape between the APM and the fuselage. On Wednesday we tried again with a thick layer of foam beneath the APM (see the above picture), and it worked fantastically! We would quite surprised quite how much vibration isolation mattered.

I've mounted the APM for my Senior Telemaster with an even thicker layer of foam:

Dear Friends,

in last month we working on Multipilot32 platform , we develop library and porting ArdupiratesNG and Ardcuopter 2.0 firmware on this Arm Platform. It's compatible with standard Diydrones accessories ; Oilpan , Magnetometer Sonar and GPS.

But we're working on improve our Board this is the result of our work :

Mukltipilot32 "Build your Dreams" BYD support some upgrade the main is that can use two micro controller :

Stm32F103 72 Mhz 512 K flas 64 K ram or new revision of this micro STM32F205 , this is the first board available on the market that support this powerfull micro 120 Mhz 1 mega of flash and 128 kbyte ram.

You can reserve your sample and join us to port library and ACopter firmware on it. In the next week will be available a limit serie of board with 32F205 , for more info about this micro this is the link :

http://www.st.com/internet/mcu/product/245093.jsp

For more info contact me at : lasernav@gmail.com

On the board there is a new micro but also a secret pod :)

We change the position of SD card and now it use SDIO bus not SPI , more powerfull with dma and parallel bus.

On the board there are some pad with Label DON'T TOUCH , with this pad is possible to setup for STM32F103 or STM32F205 micro controller.

Original Post : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/profiles/blogs/multipilot32-build-your-dreams

This is what I found . The Spectrum radio seems to be very similar to the JR. the PWM values needed are here, the centre ones are what I came up with.

Flight Mode # -- Min. PWM -- Ideal PWM -- Max. PWM

#5 -- 1750 -- 1763 -- >1815

#4 -- 1620 -- 1683 -- 1749

#3 -- 1490 -- 1507 -- 1619

#2 -- 1360 -- 1428 -- 1489

#1 -- 1230 -- 1251 -- 1359

#0 -- <1165 -- 1172 -- 1229


The way I acheived this was as follows:

Go to servo set up, set Aux 1 to 65%-65%

Set gear to 100%- 100% (default)

Go to mixing , select mix 3

Select GER >AUX1

Set rate: to 19% and 31% ( these are the rates for gear sw pos '0' and gear sw pos '1')

Set Sw to gear 1

Leave Offset at 0 %

leave Trim: set to Inh.

Then to check go into mission planner, connect the arducopter .

Go into Terminal

Type in 'test'

Hit enter

Type PWM

Hit enter

The numbers will start streaming, Channel 5 is the one to look at .

select each mode and check the PWM is between the upper and lower limits.

You then need to hit enter ,come out of terminal

Go back in to terminal and type set up

hit enter

type modes

hit enter

With both gear and aux 1 away from you this is mode 5 ( down 1) this should be set to stabilise this way in a panic situation it is easy to remember to push both switches away from you to get control of the copter.

Set the switches to the down 2 position

Push the aileron stick to the left to scrol through the modes when you reach the required mode for that sw position select the next sw position and so on.

The way I find it easy to remember the six modes is to think of it as down (gear) Aux1 1,2,3 and up (gear) aux 1 1,2,3.

This is only what I have done I hope it is useful, feel free to tell me if there is anything esier to do.


Best regards Nick Wadman

So here the setup;

• Jakub's quad frame,
• 950 kv Super Tiger motors, with Arducopter ESCs.
• 10x 4.5 props
• full set up including sonar, gps, and magnetometer.
• 5000 mah battery 
• DX8 Tx, Rx system.
• 900 mhz killer cam osd system, (future upgrade to GoPro)
• Custom 3d printed motor mounts
• Carbon fiber + Pool noodles for shroud (because I didn't want to break the props or hurt anyone)

I just graduated from Aerospace Eng, at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. This was build for the UAV team to compete in the USC UAV competition. At that time we were runing PiratesNG code.

Pictures from the competition:

http://www.unmannedsystems.ca/content.php?doc=169

At the competition

The first day was very windy(35 kmh!!), yet for some reason we decided to take off. and we had a scary water puddle landing, where the battery was partially submerged in water. We were lucky that the Lipo was undamaged.

The second day we learnt of a very important flaw in our system. I had a 20 amp rated switch on the main power line.... which lead to a serious power drain and a crash. Luckly, the night before  we had created a frankinstien of a landing gear using carbon strips.This saved the crash (the carbon strips too most most of the impact and broke). So we removed our switch and beefed up the wiring.

The third day the weather was gorgeous, and all was looking good. We took off and went off into the wilderness. Our pilot has never flown the copter out in the open for too long so this was his first time. after we did a few circles and failing to see any targets. ( we were limited on the range for the camera) . A sudden gust forced the quad to loose altitude and plummet into some trees. But we quickly recovered it and found that we had a branch stuck on the quad. so we had to do an emergency landing and that was the end of our adventure. 

Unfortunately for us the arducopter 2 code released the week after the competition, so we missed out on the autopilot code.

Here is Carlton University's Videos of the event, our quad copter is in it,

Unmanned Systems Canada Student UAV Competition 2011 from Rob Williams on Vimeo.

Arducopter 2

After we got back from the competition, I started to upgrade the firmware to 2.0.xx. During the water puddle landing we busted up our sonar. So right now i have no sonar. Our frame has warped. Jakub's frame uses very thin G10 plates so there is some serious flexing on the legs. The aluminium legs are pretty good though. Our department just got a laser cutter so I'll be busy building a new frame in the next few weeks.

Have only flown in Stabilize mode, simple seems to go crazy with yaw.  

Does it need to get a gps lock for simple mode to work? and should my magnetometer show north correctly without a GPS lock? 

The 2.0.28 code was really good. I was relying heavily on the auto trim flight to get it to stop drifting. With the old labview based configuration the accel offsets were changeable through xbee. That feature has been removed which is making it hard for me to get the quad level.

If i save the parameters using the planner, will the offsets also be saved?

I'm having a lot of fun working with the ArduQuad, even though sometimes i feel like is should throw it at a wall. As for the Ryerson UAV team, we are building a Fixed wing plat form, as well as a tricopter, to engage more students into the world of UAVs and ardupilot. hopefully we'll have a fleet of arducopters, helis, and planes within the year.

I'll leave you with a funny video of us trying to fly the Arducopter through a coat rack... feel free to LoL.. 

there are more videos of us at on our you tube channel.

Cheers,

Madhuran. 

We are making quick progress on design, feature, and purpose ideas for our new autonomous concept aircraft. After sketching 4 possible models of planes that we could build, we have decided on one design that we are currently building out of insulation foam. After testing this much simplified version of our plane, we will propose changes that should be made to the design which should improve our final product.

The design we selected for our concept plane (picture of the sketch is attached, and more to come) can be described as a blended wing body aircraft. The plane has a wide front that narrows towards the back and looks similar to a raindrop shape. We will use one vertical stabilizer, 2 winglets (one for each wing), and one propeller for the rear of the aircraft. To add increased stability to our aircraft, we hope to include canards at the front of our fuselage; they may have to be removed if they don't seem to aid in the stabilization of the plane. 

We are designing this specific plane to fly autonomously utilizing the ArduPilot Mega. With this feature, our concept plane could have practical, everyday applications. If real, our plane would come in many variations: an autonomous multi-personed taxi for short flights, an autonomous cargo deliverer, or an autonomous sight seeing vehicle. Although our model can not have any solar panels on it due to material limitations, this option would be kept available for any companies interested in utilizing the new plane. We hope that our design incorporate fuel efficiency so the jet is more appealing and reputable to aircraft companies. 

Some very interesting research done by Rick Cory that uses a single control surface to land a glider on a cable.  Check out this link for more information and videos:

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/perching

The DIYDrone Blimpduino's have been MIA for some time. A new version is promised so it will be interesting to see what those guys come up with next.   In the meantime some buddies and I have been building up our own arduino based  blimp drone. 

ACM2-logs-2011-06-30.zip

ACM2-Tricopter-Config.param

ACM2-logs-2011-07-02.zip

I set the altitude to 18 - 28 meters high but it went to near 100 meters high,

I was a little nervous since I almost can't recognize how it's flying.

All I can do is trust ACM2, I have both sonar and compass on it.

I felt the throttle control response in ALT_HOLD mode is not sensitive enough.

I used the latest ACM2 code which was downloaded today.

Logs and config files are attached FYR.

We are a group of 5 students attending the New Jersey Governor's School of Engineering and Technology. The Governor's School is a prestigious program at Rutgers University offered to students the summer before their senior year exposing them to many different applications and varieties of engineering. Students are nominated by their schools to apply for the competitive program, which is provided at no cost to them due to funding from multiple companies, Rutgers University, and the NJ State Government. This year there are 88 students attending this program. For more information on the New Jersey Governor's School of Engineering and Technology, please refer to the following link: http://soe.rutgers.edu/gset.

Based on interests, students are broken into independent research groups which address modern engineering issues. The 5 of us were grouped based on our mutual interest in aerospace engineering. The title of our project is: "Winging it: the Plane of the Future". During the course of the 4 week program, we will design, prototype, and build a radical modern airplane that incorporates an autopilot feature. We will utilize ArduPilot Mega to aid us in our autonomous flight goals and can't wait to start!

The distributors finally got in some of the new ST Micro STM32F2 series uControllers and I grabbed a few.  I was able to "shoehorn" one into a ver5 board as the pinout is close to compatible with the performance STM32F1 series.  Spent a few days rewriting the device drivers and am very impressed with this controller's performance.

I was able to bump up the sample rate to around 276.8KHz for all 12 sensors for a total of ~3.32 million samples per second.  Despite this more than doubling of work load, I ended up with around 70% idle time, up from 60% of the STM32F1.  Keep in mind that at a 120MHz clock rate, this 70% free cycles represents more than twice as much free number crunching capability than the STM32F1 at 60% idle.  I also found that the DMA to be much better with full FIFO available on each DMA channel and an easier to use triple ADC.

The result is a much cleaner interpretation of the sensor data which translates to a smoother and more stable platform.

MatrixPilot 3.1 is released. The project continues to mature, with a fantastic IMU that is still moving ahead with deep research from William Premerlani. Ben Levitt continues to add amazing features such as the built-in firmware for the OSD hardware that can be attached to the UDB3. This means the UDB3 can display it's internal thinking (such as next target waypoint, direction of next target, and maximim G-force being pulled) onto the video screen of the pilot.

Anyway here is a quick summary of the latest changes ...

What's New in MatrixPilot 3.1

• Major IMU improvements, including "dizzy-proofing", automatic inflight gyro calibration, and compensation for magnetometer latency.
• Live camera tracking of one UDB from another.
• User-configurable OSD layouts.
• Full support for the DIYDrones MediaTek GPS.
• Maintain minimum ground speed. The speed control loop is now based on the smaller of ground speed and air speed.
• Improvements to inverted stabilization.
• Improvements to the Flight Analyzer tool.
• More bug fixes.

There is a lot of talent and development occuring around MatrixPilot at the moment, and I look forward to working with all the newer developers to integrate their new features into MP over the next few months. Thanks everyone.

Best wishes, Pete

I found this picture of a quite unusual quad. This model has no counter rotating props, it uses some kind of servo controlled levelers on two sides of the booms. Never seen this before!

This heavy weight quad doesn't come cheap, prices starting at 29.542,90 EUR excl. Tax and camera mount.

...well, in my dreams and in X-plane only so far.

It's been quite interesting trying to get a flying wing to fly at such high altitudes.  There are all manner of complicated instabilities to overcome.  So far, the biggest improvement was adding a motor and propellor, not as any form of thrust device, but as a gyroscopic stabiliser!

Making the elevons operate only in the outer third or quarter of the span was also another leap forward in stability.  The image above is just a flying .STL file and hidden behind that is a rather crude series of aerofoils to simulate the aerodynamics of the thing.

The APM can control it sometimes very well at altitude with it being nice and stable, but other times it seems to always go into some form of unrecoverable spin.  I haven't figured it all out yet, but I will be doing so a fair bit more before committing to the foam.   Operation at <400' (yeah, right!) is nigh on perfect in all but my most ham-fisted efforts!

Now that I got a couple of weeks' vacation from the army I finally had the time to work on some new hardware. Last week I made directional antennas for my UAS: thanks to IBCrazy for his fabulous BiQuad tutorial on RCGroups. Only an antenna tracker was missing.

Paparazzi GCS includes an antenna tracker -controller but as I've recently been thinking about possibly moving to some other autopilot(s) I decided that I need a more universal antenna tracker: an "ArduTracker" in this case.

It's based around an Arduino Uno board and uses a DIY laser-cut pan/tilt -mechanism. Essentially the Arduino hijacks the GPS coordinates from the autopilot data stream so it's very easy to modify the source code to work with pretty much any autopilot system available.

The source code to the project and the CADs for the pan/tilt-mechanism are all open source if anyone's interested.

Hardware used:

• Arduino Uno (+ optionally a proto shield)
• 2x Futaba S3305 or similar servos
• 2x 5*11*4mm or similar ball bearings
• M5 bolts, nuts and washers.
• CA glue
• Two directional antennas
• Bits and pieces...

EDIT: Here are the links for the CADs and the source code. For now the source code is only compatible with PPZ until more autopilots are added (this is very easy).

STA3X Autopilot's Semi-physical simulation consisting of JSBSim flight dynamics model and FlightGear flight simulator.

 http://www.uavstar.com/flash/UAV%20Semi-physical%20simulation%20demo/UAV%20Semi-physical%20simulation%20demo.html