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Rupert Murdoch’s ‘The Daily’ iPad News Shows Video Reports from Toy UAS

Rupert Murdoch's 'The Daily' iPad News shows video footage of tornado

damage shot using a camera equipped Parrot drone UAS.

Electronics arrived today :)

Glued the back wing and shaped the foam for the rudder ( Is there any other way to mount the servo rather than gluing it to the foam?)

Installed the motor , which is a turnigy 35-42B 1250Kv, mount needs some hot glue

Then the ailerons , all servos are the 1800A

That's all for now , if u have any advice or comments please let me know:)

Meanwhile it's a compact Nikon L22 pocket cam,

next one will be GoPro soon, then finally the big DSLR on the Hexa frame.

The  FAA has announced a meeting which is to focus on unmanned

aircraft systems

FAA Update

Electronics Path

Taking some advice, I have done some soldering practice.

I purchased a new soldering iron to replace my 10yr old 15w iron, it is a Weller WLC100 soldering station. AMAZON Linkage - http://www.amazon.com/Weller-WLC100-Soldering-Hobbyist-Yourselfer/dp/B000AS28UC
I also picked up a couple of tips.

A trip to Radio Shack found me with a protoboard and a handful of IC sockets about 150 soldering points to practice with. A delivery from Sparkfun provided a “Simon” kit for soldering practice. The Simon kit went together without any problems in about 40 minutes while I was in a conference call. The practice was good. I don’t think I will have problems assembling the ArduMega.

A week ago I ordered a Skywalker, motor and ESC from BEVRC, as a bonus I added a Falcon EPO (Flying wing) to the order to get Free Shipping. It was a simple choice, $50 for shipping or add $50 to my order to get Free Shipping. The Skywalker arrived last Friday and the Falcon arrived yesterday. I will not complain about the shipping from BEVRC.

I am going to pick up the FrSky Module for my radio (Futaba 9C) with my next HK order along with a 5.8ghz transmitter/receiver combo.

Airframe Path

I am waiting on 10mm carbon fiber tubing for my tail booms. Yesterday 3mm and 6mm square carbon tubing arrived. The 6mm tubing will be used as the main wing spar and will be the step at the 50% mark for the KF3 airfoil.

I can start work on constructing Airframe #2 and should have the main wing done in a day or two.

I'm currently copter-less and waiting on new motors to arrive from China, so I had some spare time this weekend to do a quick side project. It's a ground up re-write of the original Ardupilot using the latest Libraries for APM. The only difference is I had to use some tweaks to avoid filling up all the flash ram. With the Ardupilot GCS code, it's less than 1k from full. But it's all in there.

I could use some help testing because I can't get away to fly anymore. All of the systems seem to work correctly. The only trick is that the AP_config.h file needs your exact radio pwm values.

You can use the AP_RC_Channel example sketch in the Library to get those values.

Otherwise it works with HappyKillmore's GCS and the latest GPS modules.

RAM is totally freed up using the PSTR macro so no more code crashes...

For know you can leave a comment here for bugs and fixes. Then I'll do a Beta and start using the issues list.

Code is on the Ardupilot Trunk and called Ardupilot_2_8

http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot/source/checkout

Use the latest Libraries from Ardupilot Mega.

If none of this post makes any sense, I wouldn't bother downloading. Just wait for a Beta.

Jason

After spending the last year or so experimenting with the UAV devboard on my larger flying wings I decided to spice things up a bit.  I had a funjet with a gopro mounted to the nose that I used for FPV.  Last summer it took a nasty crash when I lost radio signal (2.4ghz) and smashed the nose up really well.  Over the winter I rebuilt the nose (yes the entire front from the wings forward is custom foam work...there is more pics on my RCG build log) and decided I would let my quadcopter handle the gopro and switch the funjet over to my dedicated FPV platform.

Not wanting to lose it again I switch control over to 72mhz and installed a lighter camera freeing up enough space to also install the devboard.  I've flown this both FPV and via the devboard and am extremely happy with how it turned out.  The only thing I have yet to sort out is a notch filter for my video TX as the 900mhz system with my custom 1/2 wavelength antenna isn't playing nice with my GPS.

This time I took a great deal of time to situate the UDB almost exactly on the CG and also cut a bed/housing for it from soft vibration damping foam.  In my last wing setup I could never get it to fly perfect, it always had a little wag but I only had to change my gain values 3 times on this platform to get a very smooth flying plane, this could also be due to the fact that its about 1/4 the weight and half the size as well ;).  

Tonight I just upgrade the firmware to the latest 3.0 and will testing it shortly and post back with my findings and possibly the options.h file to help others looking for guidelines to go off (I know I was).

Hello all!

Our honey do points tank as been filled and we are go to continue!

For you who do not know our complete story, here are the previous posts in order. Warning! Lots of reading!

Crazy part one

Crazy part two

Crazy part three

And here above, a small video of one of our first run up...

How about reviving T3 contest?

Must use only free processing tools.

Minimal distance to takeoff 1km or a mile. Must follow the plane and maintain visual contact as per actual laws. Electric winged machines only. Extra points for motor-off gliding over target.

Examples:

http://www.aerialrobotics.eu/pub/bezmiechowa-2010-05-29/

I'm delighted to announce that APM 2 is now out of beta! The current version is 2.1, and is both available in the downloads section of the code repository (for those who want to play with the code), or can just be loaded as normal through the Mission Planner.

This code largely reflects a ton of bug fixes, small enhancements, efficiencies and lessons learned from preparing for and competing in the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition (in which it placed 2nd). It should work well with the latest Mission Planner, HK GCS and Xplane simulation.

Huge thanks to Doug Weibel, Paul Mather, Michael Oborne, Andrew Tridgell, James Goppert and Michael Smith, who drove this version.

This version has had a huge amount of testing over many months, but as always, there may be some remaining issues or bugs on unusual hardware configurations, so if you find something, please post a report in the Issue Tracker.

Dear Friends,
in last month we're some great news from FoxTeam and Virtualrobotix community.
We are doing our first Gps hold , Altitude hold test.

http://www.virtualrobotix.com/profiles/blogs/armfox-v4-gps-and-altitude

Some user start to fly with his quad based on Multipilot32 with Ready to Fly firmware and hardware setup
With standard Oilpan IMU :

http://www.virtualrobotix.com/video/armfox-v4-rtf-altitude-and-gps?xg_source=activity
or with Custom analog sensor and neet so solve some iusse on his frame during fly broke a motor  :( ...

http://www.virtualrobotix.com/video/outdoor-test-with-mp32?xg_source=activity
or with retrofit gaui ...

http://www.virtualrobotix.com/video/multigaui-1
Now we're working on the sonar , altitude hold and start to work on ACM 2.0 library and firmware ...

I'm very happy of this first result ... some news for other people on our team ?

In the next week we will present the new Imu and MP32 RTF.

Thanks for your support

Best

Roberto

With the APM together, it can display much information on the screen, e.g. the attitude of the plane, GPS data, NAV data, etc. The details of displayed information can be found in the web site of Remzibi OSD and the ARDUmV1_71.txt. Blake Krone has done great works to integrate the OSD and the APM. However, due to the fast development of the APM, some source codes are out of date, and thus a few modifications are needed to make them work properly. In this article, we give a detailed instruction of those modifications.

Our work is based on

1. APM 2.12 source code. Arduino-0022 IDE.

2. The firmware of OSD is ARDUmV1_71.hex

3. The serial port of the OSD is connected to serial port 3 of the APM (i.e. Telemetry port). Because the OSD does not send data to APM, the TX pin of the OSD is not required to be connected. You can also connect the Xbee to the serial port 3 of the APM in the meantime. In such case, the RX pins of the Xbee and the OSD are connected in parallel, and You MUST NOT connect the TX pin of the OSD. The Baud rate of the OSD is self-adaptive, and it is usually below 115200.

Here are the modifications:

First, download OSD_Remzibi.pde, and then modify some parameters according to the definitions in the code of APM:

1. In function print_osd_data(void)

Original:                    SendSer(GPS.date,DEC); //Date

Modified：       SendSer(g_gps->date,DEC); //Date

Comment：     This parameter is the GPS UTC date

Orignal:             SendSer(GPS.time,DEC); //Time

Modified：       SendSer(g_gps->time,DEC); //Time

Comment：     This parameter is the GPS UTC time

2. In function void print_osd_ahrs(void)：

Original：         SendSer((pitch_sensor/100) * -1,DEC); //Pitch

Modified：       SendSer(dcm.pitch_sensor/100,DEC); //Pitch

Comment：   This parameter is the pitch of the plane.

Original：         SendSer(roll_sensor/100,DEC); //Roll

Modified：       SendSer(dcm.roll_sensor/100,DEC); //Roll

Comment：     This parameter is the roll of the plane.

Second, modify the source of APM (ver 2.12)：

① In APM_Config.h ：

Add following codes：

#define OSD_PROTOCOL OSD_PROTOCOL_REMZIBI

#define OSD_PORT 3

#define OSD_MODE_CHANNEL 7

These macros tell the APM to use the serial port 3 to connect to the OSD under the REMZIBI protocol. The channel 7 is used to control whether the OSD displays. You can change the serial port or control channel if it is needed.

② ArduPilotMega.pde ：

In function medium_loop(), add following codes before the break statement in case 3：

#if OSD_PROTOCOL != OSD_PROTOCOL_NONE

print_osd_ahrs();

#endif

In function slow_loop (), add following code before the break statement in case 1:

#if OSD_PROTOCOL != OSD_PROTOCOL_NONE

print_osd_data();

#endif

// Read OSD Mode Switch

#if OSD_PROTOCOL == OSD_PROTOCOL_REMZIBI

read_osd_switch();

#endif

③ defines.h ：

Add following codes after “//GPS type codes”：

// OSD type codes

#define OSD_PROTOCOL_NONE -1

#define OSD_PROTOCOL_REMZIBI 0

④ commands.pde ：

In line 251, add following code at the end of function init_home()：

// Save Home to OSD

// ----------------

#if OSD_PROTOCOL == OSD_PROTOCOL_REMZIBI

osd_init_home();

#endif

Now, all the modifications have been done. Copy the OSD_Remzibi.pde to the folder of the source code of the APM 2.12（APM Trunk\ArduPilotMega）, start Arduino, build the sketch and upload to the APM.

Uploads are not downloaded,Why?ArduPilotMega2.12+remzibi_osd.rar

OSD_RemzibiV2.pde

Thank LEE,hazy,Blake Krone's

So I finally got to do some testing without crazy winds, then THIS happens!

Oh well, it could have been very bad, but I was lucky and did not have any major issues.

I have some repairs to do, but in reality I was thinking of doing the mod I NEED to do now anyway, so... NBD!

That dark spot on the red wire is where it melted.

Views of the melted plastic/foam board with blind nuts for the motor mount.

The motor mount actually melted into the plastic/foam board. 

The plastic/foam board is scrap material left over from faux window blinds.

It works well, but can have issues...

Actually I use it often and this is the first time I've had any kind of failure.

I attended the first annual UAV airshow and was happy I did.  I learned OSU aerospace design team has been winning the AIAA contest for so many years, they dropped out this year to start their own contest.  They divided the students into two groups, the Black and the Orange. The goal was to fly as fast as possible from point to point and around pylons.

Photos Here.

This event was truly impressive. These small plains reached over 180mph. They where hand made of carbon fiber with off the shelf electronic components. I spoke to several of the students and they where more than happy to describe each step of the process. Besides the contest there where also flybys for vintage planes and some great models as well.

With over 700 attendees this first year I'm guessing next year there will be even more contestants and spectators in years to come.

Hello all,

When I started with my copter, I thought of making a Linux based GCS, as I don't run Windows. However, I decided that trying to duplicate all the work on the Windows GCS was counter productive. On top of that, my laptop is dying, so in the field it would be less than useful anyway.

I recently got an Android phone, in part for its programmability. Linking it up to a quad (or hexa etc.) seemed like it would be useful. Therefore, I've been working on an Android based GCS, and although by no means done, I thought I would share and maybe get some feedback on desired features.

The phone really only has WIFI and Bluetooth for connectivity, and my quad has neither of those as options. Finding a 802.11 link for on the quad proved tough, and the range on Bluetooth is not good enough for what I am looking for. To solve that I made a Bluetooth <-> XBee link: its small and just stays in my gear case while letting me use the phone at long range from the quad. When using my laptop, I can just use it's bluetooth connection and still use the standard configurator.

I needed a place for code, so if interested, its hosted at Copter-GCS Wiki. There are screenshots there showing features, but in a nutshell:

-Configure PIDs
-Calibrate Offsets and Transmitter
-Sensor graph for current outputs
-Map the quad GPS position, as well as the phone's

Like I said, its not done, and has some things to work out. Once I do I will make the code available (if there is interest). There are a bunch of things I want to try with this, like GPS following etc, but this seemed useful for in the field calibration/testing. When Arducopter 2.0 comes out, I will update so that the MAVLink protocol is compatible.

Cheers,
Bart

The CanberraUAV team did our first flights with our full onboard computer system (a pandaboard) on a SkyWalker test plane this weekend. This allows us to capture images of the IR lamp used in the outback challenge from the air, combined with the telemetry we need to start working on our image recognition algorithms.

In the above photo you can see our basic setup. We have the pandaboard, a USB hub (powered), a 64GByte SSD, a ptgrey chameleon greyscale camera with a IR pass filter, a UBEC to power it all, and of course the usual APM, GPS, magnetometer and XBee radio.

Rather than cutting a hole in the side of the plane as most people do for a SkyWalker, we cut the foam barrier out from under the wing (where some people put an extra battery), which gave a good top access hatch to the main compartment. The pandaboard and other electronics fit nicely down into the plane from there, and it provides easy access to the ethernet interface on the pandaboard for diagnostics, as well as all of the USB ports.

This is what it looks like when we put all the bits inside the plane:

One quite unusual aspect of the setup is that the APM is connected via USB instead of FTDI. The USB cable goes to the pandaboard, which runs a copy of mavproxy to gather the telemetry. The panda also controls the camera, which means the same clock is used for time-stamping both the telemetry and the images, which really helps in matching them up for image recognition.

The camera was fitted in the bottom of the plane, below the leading edge of the wing, pointing straight down through a large hole in the fuselage, with a large IR pass filter in front of the lens.

We flew several missions over the weekend. The first was a simple search pattern (the same 18 point pattern we flew last weekend), to ensure the camera system was working well. We captured over 3000 images (each at 1280x960 in 16 bit greyscale), and got some quite nice ones of the new runway at CMAC:

On saturday afternoon I concentrated on improving my flying skills. I flew over 90 takeoffs and landings that afternoon, which really improved my confidence.

On Sunday morning we flew a search mission again, but this time with the IR lamp in place to allow us to get a better idea of what 'Joe' will look like from the air. You can see the IR lamp in the picture below (circled in red with the circle automatically placed by our very simple search code).

You can also see the edge of the foam hole in the plane near the bottom of the image. The velcro we were using to keep the camera centered on the hole was not as good as we'd hoped.

At the end of this flight we had our first crash with this plane. The USB connector between the APM and the pandaboard came loose, causing mavproxy to reconnect, which rebooted the APM. The reboot process took 5 seconds, during which time the plane went crazy, flying upside down for some of the time!

I knew this could happen (as I hadn't found a way to stop the DTR drop on the USB serial link from the panda, the normal termios calls don't work), so I had the APM setup for air-start. Unfortunately I didn't realise the APM had rebooted until later, and at the time I thought a control surface had come loose. I switched to manual and tried to bring it under control, but failed, and it hit the ground. There wasn't much damage (the SkyWalker is tough!), but it is a shame I didn't just trust in the autopilot to regain control after rebooting, as it would have been a good test. The mavlink logs show the reboot took 5 seconds.

After that we added a bit more tape to the nose where it suffered some crumple damage and went flying again. Andrew and Steve had some time flying the plane to get some practice in, then I started some more serious practice as part of my long term goal of earning my MAAA wings. After practicing takeoffs and landings on Saturday I thought it was time for something more ambitious, and did some barrell rolls and loops. It sure is easier doing acrobatics with STABILIZE mode to recover! I did quite a few rolls and loops over a period of a couple of hours before calling it a day.

Overall, a great weekend!

Those below can be downloaded using MeshLab:Filter/Create New Mesh Layer/Import Photosynth data

http://photosynth.net/userprofilepage.aspx?user=kbosak&content=Synths

Bug Control

We're getting ready to launch the beta ArduCopter 2.0 (formerly known as ArduCopterMega, or ACM), and much has changed. First, it's our first real quadcopter UAV code, designed from the ground up for fully scripted autonomous missions as Jason's runs at Sparkfun demonstrated. It's also totally built on the APM code base, so sophisticated MAVLink mission planning and telemetry is built in and it inherits APM's mature navigation algorithms.

Replacing the LabVIEW configurator that we used in ArduCopter 1.x is a configuration utility built into Michael Oborne's fantastic APM Mission Planner. This both gives you command-line (CLI) access to the ArduCopter 2's interactive setup process, as well as a graphical display of all the sensors at work, so you can see at a glance that everything is working right. And because it's all MAVLink-based,  you can use it equally well on the bench via USB as at the field (or in the air) via Xbee. And it will work for any MAVLink-based UAV!

Unlike the old Configurator, you don't need to install LabVIEW to use this. Although the Mission Planner is Windows-only right now, you can use ArduCopter 2's built-in CLI to set up the board and software on any operating system, which will give you a text-based version of all the same data.  Our aim is to be totally cross platform, just like Arduino.

As with APM, the Mission Planner will also load the code, so there's no need for Arduino anymore (unless you want to tinker!). Our aim is to make ArduCopter the easiest quadcopter UAV setup on the market. We've still got a ways to go on that, but the progress so far has been very impressive. There are a lot of RC quads out there, which are increasingly easy to set up, but very few real UAV quads with autonomous mission planning. We'd like to make setting up a UAV no harder than setting up a RC aircraft. ArduCopter 2 is a big step in that direction.

As for the release of ArduCopter 2, we're very close. The dev team will review the last outstanding issues on Sunday, with the target of releasing the first beta next week, with documentation.