A recent airing of Top Gear on BBC-America had a segment where the hosts presented Christmas Gift Ideas for the Motorist.
Lo and behold, Richard Hammond produces a Quad (the Parrot AR), and pitches the idea of using it as a drone to scout the source of a traffic jam. Things get a bit out of hand when Jeremy Clarkson insists on taking it for a test flight.
The Quad is introduced 4:55 into the video.
(My first blog post, so go easy on me!)
One of the top requests we get at DIY Drones is for ready-to-fly autopilots and UAVs. Lots of people aren't comfortable soldering, loading software and otherwise configuring electronics. Others don't have the time to learn the ropes. And everyone wants to avoid the risk of possibly getting it wrong and ruining electronics in the process.
All understandable. But we don't want to get into the RTF business. We're focused on making electronics components using automated pick-and-place robots, and our staff is oriented around R&D, QA and customer service, not hand-assembly. Plus complete autopilots are export controlled in the United States, while the individual electronic components we sell typically aren't.
But there is a solution, which I'm delighted to tell you about now. Building on our successful relationship with Jani Hirvinen at jDrones (formerly working under the FahPah name) in Thailand, we are now working with a new company called uDrones (pronounced "microdrones") in Tijuana, Mexico, which will be selling complete ArduPilotMega autopilots and UAVs.
uDrones was started by Guillermo Romero (we call him "Gigio"), an electronics engineer who formerly specialized in solar technology. It's an independent company, and the only formal relationship with DIY Drones/3D Robotics is that they're a retail partner (we work with lots of retail partners, who buy products in bulk from us at wholesale prices--contact Jordi at the DIY Drones store if you'd like to be one). But I wanted to highlight what they're doing because it's an impressive illustration of the processes and QA procedures needed to turn electronics parts into a Ready-to-Fly autopilot or UAV with confidence.
Here are some pictures from the new Tijauna factory, as they prepare seven ArduCopters for sale. Note that these are not sold as kits: they are fully assembled and flight tested. You should be able to connect your own RC gear and battery and just go.
Motor testing station (arrows show correct direction)
ESC and motor connectors are soldered, to avoid the problem of loose connectors that can cause quad crashes.
Here's how the ArduCopters are shipped, fully assembled (another layer of foam goes on top).
Because these are hand-assembled and flight-tested, they cost more than kits: $895 for a RTF ArduCopter. (JDrones in Thailand sells similar RTF ArduCopters, fully assembled and flight-tested for $860.). But if you're looking for a little less DIY in your DIY Drones, that may very well be worth it ;-)
Also note that uDrones sells the ArduPilotMega autopilot itself fully assembled and tested with GPS and latest code loaded (specify fixed wing or quad), for $349.
Here's a gallery of photos from the new uDrones factory:
Dear Friends,
after some time of evaluation of software architecture for Multipilot32 I decide to put on it a Real Time Operating Systems.
Instead of choose FreeRtos or other clone . I found this interesting operating system that yet support HAL .
Above there's an introduction of Chibi OS , what do you think about ? My idea is to rewrite the lib of our Arducopter project using a professional approach with a Realtime Kernel on low level OS call.
A video of Chibios User that develop his quadcopter ... :)
I'm waiting your feedback :)
This is official Discussion Thread : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/forum/topics/multipilot32-need-a-rt-os-what
Chibios Introduction :
This document will help you understand what ChibiOS/RT has to offer in a world with so many similar products.
Why another RTOS:
The first question to be answered is: there was really the need for yet another RTOS? There are several reasons:
How is different ?
Well, there are some design choices that should be explained and contribute to make ChibiOS/RT a peculiar design. Nothing really new in itself but the whole is interesting.
Not Just a scheduler.
While the ChibiOS/RT kernel can be used even alone, see the General Architecture document, the RTOS also offers other subsystems:
ChibiOS/RT is meant to be a whole operating system not just a scheduler.
Static Design.
Everything in the kernel is static, nowhere memory is allocated or freed, there are three allocator subsystems but those are optional and not part of core OS, dynamic services are built as a layer on top of the fully static kernel.
Safety is something you design in, not something you can add later, using memory allocation in the kernel is unnecessary and relying on that is just asking for trouble.
No Internals structure and tables.
The kernel has no internal tables, there is nothing that must be configured at compile time or that can overflow at run time, no upper bounds, the internal structures are all dynamic even if all the objects are statically allocated.
System APIs have no error conditions, all the previous points are finalized to this objective. Everything you can invoke in the kernel is designed to not fail unless you pass garbage as parameters, stray pointers for examples. The APIs are not slowed down by parameter checks, parameter checks (and consistency checks) do exist but only when the related debug switches are activated.
All the static core APIs always succeed if correct parameters are passed. Exception to this rule are the optional dynamic APIs that, of course, can report memory exhausted.
Each API function should have the parameters you would expect for that function and do just one thing with no options.
Note, first “fast” then “compact”, the focus is on speed and execution efficiency and then on code size. This does not mean that the OS is large, the kernel size with all the subsystems activated weighs around 5.5KiB (STM32, Cortex-M3), see the section ”Performance and Testing Data” for more details about performance and footprint.
It would be possible to make something even smaller but:
I think it is nice to know how an OS is tested and how it performs before committing to use it. Test results on all the supported platforms and performance metrics are included in each ChibiOS/RT release. The test code is released as well, all the included demos are capable of executing the test suite and the OS benchmarks. See the section ”Performance and Testing Data” for more details about performance and footprint.
As I am immersed in my coding for the pan and tilt it occurs to me that I have not posted code for just normal camera work yet. Having updated the wiki to include this post as well as writing the servo install guide.
WP_activity.pde WP_activity.pde
Within this sketch is the code for waypoint events (including the eggdrop challenge code). Simply stick the function you want into it and it will be executed on the waypoint you have listed. Numbers between those circled 2 to 17 will have the event you place in the middle. You can also use the = event below so it is for a single waypoint or special event.
Don't forget to add waypoint_check() to the slow loop case 2 code in ArdupilotMega as in this slow loop.png picture.
Camera.pde Camera.pde
Holds the code for operating various cameras. Currently the standard servo trigger method and my ArduCam are the only ones present but as almost everyone uses the its fine.
Hexacopter version or ArduPiratesNG code with GPS position and altitude hold, and ultrasonics low altitude hold.
More crazy stunts, including flips, in acro mode by Warthox
As always, follow the ArduPirates Vimeo channel for all the latest videos.
"After a very busy holiday period the Paparazzi developer team are very pleased to announce the initial release the Mac OSX port of Paparazzi.Although this release is a couple of weeks later than expected, the team is satisfied that this port will be easy to install and run. This first release still retains the look and feel of its Linux sibling as currently it uses X windows for rendering. This is due to change, as the graphics library used by Paparazzi (GTK+) is improving its support for the native quartz engine found in Mac OSX. This improved version of GTK+ is due for release at the beginning of March. The team are tracking this and expect a more native look and feel version of Paparazzi to follow this release."
Gary at sUAS news has an important story on what looks like the first blanket permission to use sUAS (in this case, a RC multicopter with a camera) by a law enforcement agency in the US:
Mesa County, Colorado— Recently the Sheriff’s Office received notification from the
Federal Aviation Administration of their approval to fly the Unmanned Aerial System
(UAS)—with some restrictions, anywhere in Mesa County. Previously, the FAA had only
approved a one year Certificate Of Authorization (COA) to fly within a one mile area at the
Mesa County Landfill.The UAS equipment tested at the Sheriff’s Office is a Draganflyer X6 model. The
Canadian made X6 is on lease at no charge to the Sheriff’s Office, which is leading the way
in testing UAS for law enforcement purposes. The Sheriff’s Office had submitted their
application for a COA, asking for county-wide approval to fly the Draganflyer, last June.We are one of only a few law enforcement agencies in the Country currently flying UAS
and this marks the largest flight approval for law enforcement to date.Quartermaster Ben Miller, who is one of two Draganflyer pilots for the Sheriff’s Office will
be on hand to fly the Draganflyer and do media interviews at 10 a.m. on Thursday,
February 10th. This media event will be at the Sheriff’s Office front parking lot. We are
doing this onetime event due to all local media inquiring about this new COA.
And of of course they had to put a gun on it.
Starts at about 22:00
After last weekend's fun San Francisco-area fly-in, I've had a number of requests to set up a local mailing lists for people who would like to get together for similar meetups. So I've set up a Google Group for the San Francisco Bay Area UAV Fliers. Anybody in the Bay Area can join that and coordinate their own get togethers, as well as hear of any that we organanize.
I'd encourage members in other regional centers to set up their own groups and announce them here.
I thought I'd share this impressive new way to get in the air.
Is it a Man ? Is it a plane ?
Bernard
This pan/tilt bracket consists of two brackets and all the hardware you need to attach them to make a pan/tilt mechanism using two servo motors. We recommend our small servo motors listed below.
I'm working on Super OSD at the moment. Super OSD is an open source (open hardware and open source software) on screen display module designed for FPVers, but also drone flyers. I have already produced PCBs (below) and I am working on some initial engineering prototypes. What I want to do is to put the boards into production, for an initial run of 20 I need about $850 (US dollars.)
The code, schematics and other related projects are here: http://code.google.com/p/super-osd
In more detail, Super OSD fills the gap I see between low cost text based OSDs (like Remzibi), and high cost graphical OSDs (like Eagle Tree Pro, RVOSD, Dragon OSD, and many others.) It's a fully graphical OSD, with a display of 192x128 pixels. It will sell for about $80, with plans to reduce that further.
Super OSD will support all the basic features FPV/drone flyers are accustomed to, including a standard HUD, with altitude, GPS position, variometers, and more. It does datalogging to a 2MB serial flash, too. But it will also support virtual games. These are games played as a single player, or with multiple players (coming soon.) A basic video of the game engine working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8CRxstJ_Z4
I also would like to know what features DIY Drones members would like to see on it, so if you have an idea, write a comment on the thread. :) Hopefully the end result will be a very powerful OSD module at a low price point.
You can contribute on IndieGoGo: http://www.indiegogo.com/Super-OSD-Lite
This is an abridged version of my original post here: http://www.diydrones.com/forum/topics/super-osd-open-source-osd
Many Thanks!
Float Documentary Trailer from Phil Kibbe on Vimeo.
This has little to do with UAVs, but it's lovely all the same. From BoingBoing: "These beautiful dragonfly-like model planes can float for up to half an hour under the power of one single-wound rubber band. Check out the trailer for Float posted by Phil Kibbe. Amazing craftsmanship and techniques!"
An Administrator (shawng) on the AMA forum posted that the recent AMA posted documents were incorrect.
Is the AMA backtracking or incompetent?
Publish stuff then tell people it is meaningless?
These guys want to run recreational sUAS regulation for the entire USA?
I hope the FAA realizes the current people running the AMA are incompetent and should be kept away from any position of control or regulation.
Here is the AMA's retraction statement:
" Below is a message from Dave Mathewson concerning these documents:
On Friday February 4th several threads began appearing on Internet forums concerning two documents posted on the AMA Website. The documents being referred to were created, in part, as position papers to help our lobbyist when creating awareness for our cause with elected representatives. They were created in late October, early November and came right on the heels of what we feel was a low point for us in the process - the September 29th meeting with the FAA’s Unmanned Aircraft Program Office.
Since that time, things have somewhat improved, and what was heard at the AMA/FAA open forum held at the AMA Expo in early January is more reflective of where we are today, making these documents obsolete. We do believe that some of the concerns expressed in those papers may still be issues that could appear in the proposed (default) rule, but we are working to address those particular issues in our standards.
For the most current, up-to-date information please visit the Government Relations page on the AMA Website at www.modelaircraft.org/gov. More detailed information will also be contained in the next issue of Model Aviation magazine due out in the next couple of weeks."
Dear Friends,
Ardupilot32 is Alive , I start to make some prototype , the first two boards assembled work fine , this week i don't prepare a video with a weekly update because i'm working on a lot of things .
I'm working on IDE , On Bootloader , I'm working on Wrapper for Arduino compatibility, I'm working on testing hardware , the OilPan interface ... a lot lot of things. ...
So I open a official repo with a raw code of my project ,some source code , ide that i'm using , some startup info ... I hope that for the next week i have some time to update doc and info on the board.
In the last two day I start t o upgrade the last revision of xduino for support Ardupilot32 , It'snt mature project .. don't support i2c , spi , pwm . But is a good point of start for my work.
if some one could help me That's is good , on the official thread you can found link to last code :This is only a 1/10 scale, but the suspension and wheels look pretty nice. Check out the website. I would have posted better pics, but it was too huge for the blog. $149.99
http://www.venom-group.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=8300GR
After waiting for so long (4 month), we finaly got a good deal on a vehicule that would permit experimentation.
We were looking for volume to accomodate the electronics and possible new hardware (FPV robot arm).
There it is, fresh from the box.....
Then.... we tried to make it move.
Desaster !
Noisy and loose slipping gears so ........ back to the seller.
Will keep you posted
