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I've came up with a customized development of a battery tracking system.

it is a kind of telemetry that will report voltages, temperatures and more data in the future.

my goals were:

• to be able to set the alarm at different voltages (sometimes 3.0v/cell, sometimes 3.3v)

• to be able to use a variety of batteries - different voltages.

• to be able to report that the signal is lost, - extremely important

• long range and high reliability -still to be improved:
  the "smart" modem modules are on the way - should do ~1km

Ground tracking unit (RX)

Air tracking TX (on vehicle):

welcome to comment !

Hi All,

My company Bask Aerospace has just recently become a DIY Drones Distributor in Australia. We have a brand spanking new website (www.baskindustries.com/aerospace) which we think is pretty cool.

Along with all the usual DIY Drones products, we have created a range of RTF (Ready-to-Fly) solutions (AeroPilot) that we hope will meet the needs of a broad range of people.

We would love you to head on over to our site, check it out (buy some stuff if you need it :) ) and post a comment below letting us know what you think. Any and all feedback is welcome.

My company (and myself) has a strong background in software development and engineering. We have some big things planned for the future of UAVs and I personally think DIY Drones is a fantastic community (who have helped me a lot... and I mean a lot)

The main reason for software GPS is a cheap base station, generating RTCM messages to correct altitude measurements.  The aircraft would use a standard hardware module.

#1 the MAX2769 front end is just an analog to digital converter.  It outputs a 1 - 3 bits per sample, digitized form of whatever is on the carrier frequency.

There's no schematic or source code for the MAX2769.  1 datasheet has I0 used as a clock.  Another datasheet has I0 as a differential output.  Fortunately, it has some preset configurations.

You can gather from the presets & reference designs, that only the I1 pin in 1 bit CMOS logic mode & the CLKOUT pin are needed to make a receiver.

#2 the minimum output rate is 1 bit at 16 Mhz.

#3 that requires a high speed USB microcontroller, which mercifully started appearing in 2010, for $9.

#4 the GPS front end doesn't capture WAAS information, so you wouldn't get far with absolute waypoints.

There are many GPS libraries, but fastgps is the only one we've found, which inputs baseband data.

Fastgps is part of a book you probably need to buy to get very far with it.

Sample baseband data files & some changelogs are on http://www.gnssapplications.org/chapter5.html

The book's $139 tag undoubtedly covers bandwidth & quantitative easing.  It would be only $20 if the data files were compressed & houses were free.

The data format is 1 byte per sample.  Dividing the file size by 16367574 gives the total seconds recorded.  The example files use 2 bits per byte.  Bit 0 is always 1.  The 2 bits are left shifted 1.

Converting the file to 1 bit made no difference.  Here we have altitude from a sample file.

Here we have position.

We supplied the .sp3 file, which should have made more accurate readings, but this was an urban environment with only 6 satellites.  It gave the same result without the .sp3 file, so it's probably only speeding up initialization.

Fuggedabout downsampling it to 4 megabits.

Tracking just 8 satellites, our 3.6Ghz computer runs fastgps at 2/3 realtime.  Tracking 6 satellites, it's almost realtime.

That's without acquisition.  It would take a 4 core 3.6Ghz laptop to make a roving station.  Fortunately, the base station's job is a bit easier.  If the goal is just refining altitude, there may be a way to skip samples to make just enough readings for refining altitude.  The processing requirement has still put us off from software GPS.

I have been doing aerial photography with a variety of RC Helicopters for a few years. The biggest problem is short flight duration and pilot work load.

I have decided to design and build my own fixed wing aerial photography platform.

Here is my project goal; A fixed wing aerial photography platform with the ability to fly semi-autonomously (take off and landing pilot controlled). The camera will be mounted on a self-leveling mount to allow for photogrammetry and 3d point cloud generation, with a 10 minute minimum mission time.

A secondary goal is remotely operated camera mount that allows 360 degree pan and 90 degree tilt with a video downlink for camera aiming. FPV operation is also an option.

An ArduPilot Mega will be used as the autopilot. The ArduPilot does allow for self takeoffs and landings.

I have built, flown, crashed, and re-built RC Aircraft for many years and enjoy the hobby. This time I am designing my own airframe from the ground up. I will be honest I will borrow from other designs during the progression to my goal, in the end the airframe will be mine.

For the moment my my primary building materials will be Foam Core, Blue Core (Fan Fold) and Depron.

Comments and critisim are appreciated.

I hope you enjoy the trip

p.s. I am behind in posts here, and have flown airframe #1

DealExtreme threw some gps modules on their site today. Most of them are GlobaSat SIRF Star III modules (at least, that is what DX claims them to be, check your facts by checking the datasheets) and there is one EM-411.

Prices are in the range of US$ 14.30 - 14.90 for the GlobalSat modules and US$ 28.30 for the GlobalSat EM-411. Shipping is free (or included in the price).

Here is a list of what is available:

ET-318 GPS Engine Board Module with SiRF Star III Chipset  PDF

EB-3531 GPS Engine Board Module with SiRF Star III Chipset  PDF

EB-365 GPS Engine Board Module with SiRF Star III Chipset  no PDF found

ET-314 GPS Engine Board Module with SiRF Star III Chipset  PDF

EB-3631 GPS Engine Board Module with SiRF Star III Chipset  PDF

ET-662 GPS Engine Board Module with SiRF Star III Chipset no PDF found

EM-411 GPS Engine Board Module with SiRF Star III Chipset  PDF

If you are in need of a GPS module in your product, it maybe worth your while to check these out.

Edit: Links to PDF manual added

Video speaks for itself...

HappyKillmore does it again! :P

Hello,

there was a discussion on how battery capacity should be chosen in another posting today. I therefore sat down and gave the problem some thoughts. After some time I had a solution and wrote the results down in a short report (see attachment battery_capacity.pdf ).

For those of you, not interested in reading the whole report, I found a very short and simple way to choose the battery capacity to optimize flight time. The calculations show that the battery should be twice as heavy as the airframe without batteries (but all other things installed).

I guess this rule gets as simple as it can :D

Regards,

Andrés

p.d. I added a new version of the report (just use link above)

Shrediquette MM6 FPV in Cameroon

http://www.vimeo.com/18873955

Shrediquette DLX autonomous indoor flight (no budget and not so aggressive autonomous tricopter maneuvers...):

http://www.vimeo.com/6347100

GPS position hold:

http://www.vimeo.com/15373694

Small tricopter: (Shrediquette DLXm):

http://www.vimeo.com/13949754

http://www.vimeo.com/11061240

Very small Y6 hexacopter (Shrediquette BOLT):

http://www.vimeo.com/20977475

More info can be found at http://shrediquette.blogspot.com

A semi-autonomous civilian UAV system designed for hunters and fisherman. The current
project is called The VULTURE System (Versatile Unmanned Lingering
Terrain Utilization and REcon ). It will be used to help hunters and fisherman find
game and schools of fish as well as to find the best areas to hunt in and paths to take.

The user will be able to unpack the system take off vertically and look at the view from the air and then circling areas of interest until the hunter, fisherman or team of eithar can reach the location. The system is not designed to be ultra portable from the ground, but more with someone dedicated to ground support at camp or on a boat to guide the team.

Key
Features:

VTOL Capabilities

Long range communications

Long flight duration (<30 minutes)

Autonomous loitering abilities

Waypoint navigation and return to user in the event of not receiving transmissions

Infrared camera for finding game, schools of fish and night time recon

Initial testing of certain functions will be done on a SkyHawk powered glider

Final testing and platform will be a modified Predator pictured above

I went to the first Bay Area FPV fly-in, met some people with really nice setups.  One person was using the iTelemetry app, from Immersion RC.  You can see he didn't quite make it back to the field (ran out of power), which could have been a pretty serious thing since we were flying in a hayfield and the plane was totally hidden in the grass.

He was able to take his iphone out to the field, and follow on google maps directly to the pin that was documenting the plane's location.  He also produced this nifty flight image, but I'm not sure if this was in the app or on his computer.

Does anyone know of a similar telemetry app in the APM world?

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=17926731&postcount=288

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/apr/09/jordi-munozs-scale-model-flying-circus/

Well done very cool.

(demo filmed by me at the Wired offices)

In an announcemnet today Rich Hanson, AMA Government Relations and Regulatory Affairs Representative said:

"an agreement on the proposed language was a little more difficult to achieve in the House than in the Senate, and we were unable to settle on the exact verbiage before the Bill was sent to the floor for a vote."

Either he is extrememly lost or can't read the Congressional record. Perhaps he meant to say that because the Nugent amendment only protected recreational sUAS and did not give the AMA a monopoly, we had to get him to withdraw it. 

Congressman Richard Nugent (R,FL) had submitted an ammendment to make all aircraft flying within AC 91-57 and under 55 pounds exempt from regulation. Note that his amendment had no mention of any CBOs (IE: AMA) being exempt.

The Nugent amendment was a great amendment exempting 90% of hobbyists (including FPV and autonomous use). I guess we know who was behind stopping it. What I don't understand is why they can't even tell their membership the truth, I am an AMA member and tired of being lied to.

Dear Friends,

today i upload last revision of ArducopterNG32 , I upload the code after my fly test doing tomorrow.

This is the video.

With this revision of code is possible to fly in acro e stable mode.

This is the link to the code. http://code.google.com/p/multipilot32/downloads/detail?name=ArmFox_V4_NG%2809-04-11%29-alpa2.rar&can=2&q=#makechanges

This is the tutorial for pre flight check : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/forum/topics/armfoxv4-ng-32-and

You can use all your standard Diydrones accessories with MP32 for assemble your drone.

MultipilotP32 ( http://www.virtualrobotix.com/page/multipilot32-1 ) is available in the stock if you need more information send a mail to

virtualrobotix@gmail.com

MP32 is next revision of CPU for Arducopter project based on 32 Bit arm microprocessor with 72 mhz of clock and a lot of innovative hardware feature as 2 i2c one for sensor , can bus , 512 kbyte flash and 64 kbyte ram. 12 bit analog input for more info visit discussion forum on www.virtualrobotix.com

Next step is testing advanced functionality on air : Gps hold ,altitude hold ecc

Some suggestions about my PID these is the standard available on Arducopter NG

P 4.0

I 0.150

D 1.20

I change also Stick_to_angle factor conversion for have more command available.

What do you think about ? In the next test i would put our VR ESC that use i2c bus and have 256 step of resolution this esc only 127 :( That's could be a problem for good fly ... :)

Best

Roberto

After the crash on yesterday I again rebuild the frame using new 12mm aluminium square pipe with same length of 14inch or 355mm with 10x4.7 props. Built the frame and mounted the motors and electronics. Reloaded the software with 4.5 + reboard firmware.

During the test it seems to be good. Trying to achieve a hover vehicle by adjusting the EPA and trims. Most of the the part did work well. But as soon as I finished testing I switched off the Tx thinking that I unarmed the Quad. The moment I switched off the Tx the motors started to full rpm and the quad flipped and two props were broken. BAD DAY for me.

I replaced one broken prop with the new one I have and I don't have anymore of them. Trying to get them locally from Chennai or Hyderabad. But I couldn't get any pusher props anywhere in Hyd.

What to do. Its in final stage and needs to be demonstrate on Monday.

 :(