Blogs

Arduino 0022 is now out. Mostly bug fixes and optimization. A few additions/improvements of interest to us:

• Fixed EEPROM library on Mega 2560.
• Adding an SD card library based on sdfatlib by Bill Greiman and the MemoryCard library by Philip Lindsay (follower) for SparkFun.
• Building the user sketch before the core or libraries, so errors appear faster.
• Hardware serial receive interrupt optimization.
• Remembering serial monitor window size and line ending selection.
• ....and a bunch of others you can see here

450 tube`s .

the new setup.

the parts are orderd.

Hi Guys,

I received the OpenLRS PCBs and we start to working about firmwares.

This is the Tx module of OpenLRS, It gives 100mw 433mhz RF power and its penetrating behind 5-6 concrete building!, we will test it on flight for range. System can controllable by any PPM signal or over RS232(bidirectional)



This is the Rx of OpenLRS,

It is very small receiver that supporting I2C (for IMUNext) and RS232 Telemetry.  It sends the RSSI level over telemetry and RSSI output (PWM).


And our killer 7W Booster for very long range oneway RC control.

All Atmega328 processors including MegaLoad bootloader for firmware update over rs232. All AVR programmers are welcome.

They will in stocks before 2011.

You can follow the OpenLRS project from here

Cheers and Mary Christmas

Melih

Pretty cool. This Syma gyro-stabilized coax heli is the #1 toy at Amazon this year.

Here's an excellent HBR article about the company behind this toy. I can imagine that in a few years, they could be making autonomous helis, essentially MAVs. These guys have serious hardware skills.

Here's an excerpt:

"In the midst of the [2005] downturn Huang, Syma's vice general manager of product development (and the owner's brother-in-law) took a business trip to Japan and brought home a new model airplane. Intrigued by its
components, he took it apart, wondering if a helicopter made up of
separate, replaceable parts could be economically produced. Three months
later, he and his people had worked it out, and the new model that
resulted became an instant hit. "He saved Syma," Kevin Cheng, Syma's
sales manager told me. "And he saved the whole toy helicopter industry
in Chenhai."

If that's not quite innovation, it's still more than imitation. It's the kind of achievement celebrated by Oded Shenkar in Copycats, involving borrowing and combining inputs from multiple others and integrating them into a distinct, cost-beneficial, and continuously
improved package.

Syma isn't an aggressive new product developer; it prefers to succeed through determined focus. Its team might produce six to eight concepts over the course of 12 months, but the company gets behind just one as its "Product of Year".
Much of its effort goes into continuous improvement of a few existing
series. Take its Apache Attack series, for example. First developed in
2007, it featured three channels of radio control, and a simple body
design. The year 2008 brought details to its appearance, such as wheels
and mini-cannon, and in 2009, a more refined fuselage. This year, a gyro
was added to the main rotor to increase stability in flight.

As testament to its success, Syma, born of imitation, now has many imitators. There are over 40 other companies in Chenghai offering toy helicopters with essentially the same functions, same structure, and
same appearance — some of them even in the same packaging, save for the
logo. "They are waiting at our gate," Cheng told me. "As soon as we
launch a new product, they take it and copy." But he insisted that Syma
is not afraid of the competition. "Our quality control process is strict
and costly," he explained, "and they are not willing to pay for this."

We now have the ability to make the APM boards ourselves, so we can offer the full set of ArduPilotMega gear from the DIY Drones store. APM boards are now in stock (we'll be replenishing supply daily, so check back in a day if the current supply runs out). Starting next week, we'll be offering all-in-one packs of APM electronics.

Note that this is the new 1.4 version of the board, which makes several improvements/changes:

• RC ports are now numbered according to RC convention: 1-8 (rather than the previous board's 0-7)
• Now comes with right-angle connectors for your RC and servos at no extra charge!
• New protection circuitry should make it impossible to blow out a MUX, not matter how wrong you plug in your cables.
• Because of this new protection circuitry, the USB cable will not power the RC/servo rails. You MUST supply the board with its own power (an ESC or other power source) on the benchtop if you want to connect a RC receiver or servos. This is not an issue in an aircraft, where the whole board is powered by the RC connections.
• The onboard regulator was replaced with a better one (more power handling, lower dropout voltage, better heatsinking). If you are supplying power directly from a battery (and removed the SJ1 solder jumper), you should supply between 6 and 9v. A two-cell (7.4v) LiPo will work fine.

In the video, you can 'see the show that I made at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo. I used Fox Drone my own implementation of AR.Drone to which I added a ground station that allows the management of the aircraft through the PS3 gamepad and transmitting video on Video Wall for live performances.
In the show you see that Logan is the Magician 'conjure FoxDrone and explains it to the public.
The presentation explains how the use of drones you can create spectacular video applications for tourism promotion.

This is the promotional video of the province of Bergamo, made by : drones, helicopters and computer graphics ... come to visit Bergamo from all over the world ... come people will look at us:)

website : http://www.turismo.bergamo.it

Happy Chrismas by Virtual Robotix and FoxTeam

Original Blog Post : http://www.virtualrobotix.com/profiles/blogs/fox-drone-magic-show

Roberto Navoni

Due to the usual string of code bugs and dumb thumbs, I've dinged my ArduCopter up a good bit in the testing phase. You can get a good crash repair kit from FahPah that has the most commonly-broken parts, or you can make your own. Thanks to Sandro Benigno, at least some of them (the easy-to-crack dome headers) are now very easy: just have them laser cut at Ponoko.

Just click here and add it to your personal factory. Then when you go to have it made, select the following (you'll get four pairs, which is all you'll need for life!):

Acrylic - Clear

Hi all and Merry Christmas,

On the video you can see some issues you would encounter during wintertime.

UAV photomapping in winter from Krzysztof Bosak on Vimeo.

I've integrated all the hardware and am currently in the process of setting up the software.  I seem to be having problem with intermittent resets at the moment - not sure if that's power related or something else.

It doesn't have a motor or ESC yet - I may even fly it off slope before putting a motor on.

Well after the near great success of our 3rd year university, self made quadcopter based on the Adrucopter design, it is now time to start thinking about our 4th year university project!!

We were recently given our high level objectives for our newest endeavor. To make a simple quad system architecture (one quad and one computer) and implement this system to perform practical maneuvers (object tracking/following, sense and avoid, etc) with multiple quads (at least 2, possibly more).

The project will be completed by 4 Queensland University of Technology Students finishing up their BA of Eng in Aerospace Avionics. We'll be working closely with ARCAA (Australian Research Centre for Aerospace Automation) and utilizing a lot of their facilities for the project.

The boys are excited about this project and we're (possibly a little over) confident that we're going to see some fantastic results.

We intend to keep you guys out there in DIY Drones Land updated on our progress and possible source inspiration and guidance.

Keep on drone-ing!!

These are the guidelines for DIY Drone's moderators, of which there are currently about 30, although we add them all the time (PM me if you'd like to be one). I'm posting them publicly because they also include some tips for posters, especially on what should be a blog post vs. a discussion topic and how to make blog posts effective and good-looking.

FAQ:

How to become a moderator? The best way is to just spend time on the site as a positive member of the community, both contributing your own ideas and helping others. Eventually I or one of the other admins will notice (we watch the leaderboards, too, although that reflects a lot of things beyond simple participation) and we'll invite you to become a moderator. People can also put up their hand and volunteer, at which point we can review their history and approve. If you accept, we'll upgrade your permissions on the site so you can do the following:

What do moderators do? They can approve/reject new member applications, approve/reject/edit blog posts, add/change tags, delete content that violates our site guidelines and ban spammers.

When should a moderator reject a membership request? Typically this is only done when there are pretty clear signs of a spammer. The most obvious is an off-topic subject in the description and link to an off-topic site. (ie, "I sell insurance and love meeting new people! Here's a link to our insurance site"). Also, if the submission has no information (or just random characters) in the required field, that can be seen as a warning sign and justification for rejecting the request.

How to moderate a blog post?

First, ensure that it's appropriate. Blog posts should be informational, and of broad interest to the community. Questions or tech support requests should be posted in the Discussion Forum instead. If someone has posted something as a blog post that should have been in the Forum, copy it and paste it into a Friend Request to the person, asking them to repost in the correct area.

Second, ensure that the post is the correct form. It should have a clear title and begin with an image or video. The image should be set to 500 pixels wide, full width. Often people will include an image or video, but not at the top of the post. If that's the case, feel free to move it to the top of their post before publishing it. This will ensure that the image shows up on the front page of the site and  will encourage more people to click through (you're doing the poster a favor!).

Videos should be embedded (not just links to YouTube, forcing people to leave the site to watch). If the user is having trouble embedding video, make sure they're not using the iFrame mode in YouTube. That doesn't work with Ning. [Update: Ning can now support all YouTube embed codes.]

Also, if it's a Vimeo video, they have to use the "old embed code" to work with Ning: [Likewise, all embed codes are now supported]

Common errors include copy-and-paste formatting garbage in front of the image that prevents it from showing up on the front page of the site. If you see this, switch into HTML mode and delete this before publishing. You may also see crazy formatting issues, like huge spaces between paragraphs and funky type sizes. This is almost always due to posts being copy-and-pasted from other sites. Try to clean them up a bit before publishing.

When should a moderator ban someone? This is most often done for spamming (clearly off topic posts with links to off-topic sites). Ban on first offense--no second chances. For cases where you think a user is violating our site polices regarding personal attacks or otherwise behaving uncivilly, you should privately warn them via a PM and tell them that they can be banned if this behavior continues. Let me know if this doesn't solve the problem.

I've been doing some experiments to evolve PID control values in X-plane using a genetic algorithm, with some success. I posted a description about the experiment on my blog. I didn't want to reproduce the entire post here, but thought I would link it and post a video of the experiment:

Blog post:

http://www.1011ltd.com/web/blog/post/evolving_pid

Enjoy!

Benjamin

One of my side projects has been to develop an open-source visual motion / optical flow sensor that may be usable in all sorts of devices, whether robotic related or not. I've found though that one of the most difficult parts of developing tiny vision sensors is finding the right optics. Ideally we want something that is cheap, easy to mount, has a decent field of view, and yet creates a reasonable image. For higher resolution images (hundreds of pixels across or more) and image sensors four or more millimeters wide, there are many excellent lens assemblies available from companies like Sunex. (We've used and still use their products in higher resolution sensor designs, always with success.) However there is really nothing available for image sensors a millimeter wide. Printed pinholes do work, but don't let through as much light. This post highlights a little project to design a decent lens for the Faraya64 image sensor, whose focal plane measures about 1.1mm across.

The basic concept (shown below) is to make a simple "plano convex" lens, with the curved surface (e.g. "bump") facing outward and the flat section resting on an image sensor. I decided on acrylic as an optical material, since it is light, easily formed, and for our purposes is as good as glass. An opaque "stop", perhaps made of paint or a piece of black plastic, would fit over over the lens and allow light to reach the image sensor through only the center of the front bump.

For the front surface I decided to use a spherical shape- this is a pretty traditional shape for 99% of all lenses out there. I used the ray tracing and optimizing capabilities of Zemax, a commercial optics design software package, to find an optimal shape. I found that to provide the 1.1mm image sensor chip with a 60 degree field of view, the dimensions shown above were optimal: The front bump would be a sphere with a radius of 0.61mm, while the total thickness would be 1.6mm. I also allowed the optimizer to try aspherical conic shapes (e.g. parabolas, hyberbolas, ellipses) but found that I did not gain much performance over that of a sphere and so decided to keep it simple.

The two figures below show two plots generated by Zemax. First is the lens layout, showing the 0, 10, 20, and 30 degree off-axis rays. Second is the spot diagram showing how the image would be blurred from ideal, for red, green, and blue rays! The pitch between pixels on the Faraya64 image sensor is about 17.1 microns, so the RMS blurring shown here was not quite optimal but was good enough for me to go on.

I decided next to first try forming a lens by hand by stamping it. This technique won't match the precision from the Zemax simualtion, but I thought it would be fun. Using Alibre, I designed a simple stamp that would produce a lens of the above shape. I had this stamp CNC machined from aluminum by the company FirstCut.

The stamp came back, but it needed more finishing. Basically the part of the mold that forms the spherical lens bump needed to be polished to "optical quality". I didn't really know what I was doing, but I did manage to find a way to polish this area! I used a Dremel tool, a toothpick, and some polish (Simichrome Polish by Gesswein), put a dab of polish in the hold, and used the Dremel tool to spin the toothpick. After about 5-10 minutes of spinning and moving the toothpick around, I managed to get the spherical surface polished to a decent quality, as shown below. I also cut channels to let the plastic escape as the stamp was being pressed down. The result is shown below.

Now comes the fun part- the pressing! I don't have any photos from this step, but I'll try to describe the technique that worked best. I placed a pyrex dish on a hot plate, and set the heat to low-medium. After a few minutes I then placed a piece of aluminum foil on the hot plate, and a tiny piece of acrylic onto the aluminum foil. A few minutes later the acrylic piece got soft, and I pressed down onto it with the stamp. I lifted the stamp out, and the pressed acrylic piece (and the aluminum foil) came up with it. The picture below shows the business end of the stamp, the pressed piece of acrylic, and a U.S. Quarter for size comparison. If you look carefully, you can see the spherical bump in the middle of the piece of acrylic. You can also see extra plastic around the outer side of the lens- I cut that away with a utility knife.

I'd say that about 40% of the lenses I pressed turned out OK. Below and at the very top of this post are front and back pictures of some of the final lenses produced.

The next step is to mount the lens on a chip. Basically I used a UV curable optical adhesive (Norland 63) to glue the lens directly onto the chip. Then I used black modeling paint to form the "opaque enclosure". Finally I added more optical adhesive to encapsulate everything (except for the lens bump). The result is shown below- you'll see the lens mounted onto a Firefly chip (similar to the Faraya) and that mounted on a small 9mm x 9mm PCB. If you look closely you can also see the wire bonds that connect the chip to the PCB.

How was the image quality? Actually much better than I expected, especially since the flat side of the lens was not perfect. The optical adhesive's index of refraction is similar to that of acrylic, so I think together they helped smooth out some of the imperfections. Below is a screen shot- the quality is certainly good enough for 32x32 images, and I think with refining can be further improved.

So now the final step is to automate this process. Rather than press molding by hand, injection molding is the way to go for quantity. Below is a family mold with four slightly different variations of the same lens. This is currently being fabricated by Protomold. I should get parts back in the second week of January. I'll report back on this in a few weeks!

- eight 1/4" spacers (I bought at the local hardware store)

- four bolts similar to the 20mm in the kit

- four wing-nuts or threated spacers that you can grip (for the four bolts above so you can finger tighten them)

With the current kit design, the Arms are secured by a two guide bolts at the front to prevent lateral movement, and single metal bolt tying the end of the arm at the center of the Main Frame. But because this bolt attaches to a threaded spacer, and onto the battery holder, it is not easily removed.

My Solution: Add a finger-accessible bolt closer to the outside and a pin at the interior.

First, with the Arms mounted normally, mark the Arms at the existing frame hole. This is the only hole that is on top of an Arm. Mark all four arms.

Create the Pin:  With the Arm removed I added a 1/4"spacer to the existing Arm-to-Battery-mount bolt and tightened. The spacer become the pin and insures the Arm will still fit snugly between the Main Frame boards.  I also added a 1/4"spacer to one of the two front posts and tightened. This keeps top-to-bottom tight, and also pinches a little on the Arm when inserted. i found two spacers (a left and right) to be too tight.  This picture shows the 2 new spacers: On eonteh Battery mount, one at the outside left plastic bolt. You can also see the retaining bolt in its new location (the bright silver bolt) 

Next I measured, centered and slotted the end of the Arms with a dremel to match the thickness of the battery-mount-bolt spacer. I then drilled a hole in the Arm where I marked the outside frame hole. Repeat for all four Arms. 

Now you can mate the slotted Arms to the main frame

Secure with a new bolt and threaded spacer or wingnut/etc. You'll still need to secure the acrylic GPS/Top ring in the standard fashion.

I mounted my ESCs on the Arms to simplify the leads - 1 power and 1 servo cable on each and I'm good to go.  Because the ESC is on the Arm, the extra cabling length can be tucked into the Arm's precut slot and tie-wrapped securely.

Now I can dis- and re-assemble the Arducopter in about 5 minutes and hit the road.

Paul

Spent the last number of months building  a quadcopter.  I though I should share the results. Great fun with a number of crashes, broken props and motors. The bottom link is a 4 minute youtube flight video.

You'll notice in the video, the first half the motors are red, but later on they're blue. In one test flight,

we lost power to one motor, the quad flipped over and did a power dive into the ground. That took out a pair of motors and props.

Top view of power board.  The top lead I use as a motor power switch. The four sets of connectors around the board

connect to the ESCs. The two leads on the left are for battery power.

Bottom view power board.

YouTube test flight.

     quadcopter flights

Yesterday some of the DIY Drones team spent the afternoon at Willow garage.  Here Guillermo Romero (who is setting up the Tijuana operation of Udrones, a 3D Robotics partner, and Jordi Munoz with the Willow Garage PR2 that's been travelling the halls of the company for more than 100km (it plugs itself into a charger every two hours, which is what it's doing here).

What were we doing there? Well, mostly just geeking out with the engineers there, but there is an interesting project to link Arduino with the Willow Garage Robot Operating Systems (ROS), for swarm coordination. Or, as I hinted on Twitter:

Hi all. Several of us working on the ETH Flying Machine Arena have been watching DIY Drones for a while but we've never really participated in any way. Since our work is somewhat related and might be of interest, we thought we'd post something:

So, it's been a busy year. Many new little quads as well as people joining our team. Many projects, many crashes, many improvements, probably as many new bugs :-) I'd love to give you statistics on flight hours, distance, etc, but we don't keep track of it. Like Drew Carey said on Whose Line, "the points don't matter". :-) (*whoosh* goes the reference)

For Christmas/New Years we decided to do something fun -- take a random absurd idea and see if we can make it fly -- something that people would look at and wonder "why???"... here's our shot (don't miss the ending! :-) ).

This was done on a late Friday night in about 3 hours from placing a piano in the Arena to the final shot... it's *not* a serious research project :-) (at least not yet!!). As it turns out, the keys are quite bouncy, and the quadrotor is quite light, so it was difficult to get it to hold the keys -- this is the main reason for the slowed down tempo.