Blogs

• tier structure - arduino == platform driver, android == command gateway, webgui == user interface
  
• as few soldering and custom parts as possible
• exclusively open source, and free software as far as possible (some might have forgotten - there is a difference)
  
• web-based (i really dont want to mess around with r/c electronics and reach and such)
• swarm-alike - each drone should be aware of all others, be able to communicate with each other and to help and replace each other (for example seamless drone replacement in POI mode)

Matrix Pilot Camera Targeting: Tree Test - Software Stabilized

Strategy: Have MatrixPilot / UAV DevBoard (UDB) point camera roughly in the right direction.

Take out the jitter movement using software stabilization.

The above flight was flown on a day with 10mph of wind, with a lot of turbulence (I included the landing in the video to show the turbulence).

1. The UDB is calculating its orientation 40 times / second using a 16 bit Direction Cosine Matrix

2. I use se Bill Premerlani's "High Bandwidth Dead Reckoning", which means MatrixPilot knows it's

absolute position 40 times / second, by integrating the accelerometers. The accelerometer positions are

corrected by allowing for the GPS delay and some of the GPS dynamics (GPS info arrives at least 1

seconds after the real event).

3. The camera code computes the target location from the above 40 times / second.

This guy knows how to rock that quad!

Motors: FC 28-22 1200kv

ESC : HK SS 25-30A

Props: 8 x 4.5

Late happenings at ArduCopter "Factories"...

Another milestone on releases, few weeks ago we had our first official Alpha software release and now saga continues..

It's been long and fast ride in past 6 months. It all started as a dream to create nice expansion for original ArduPilot electronics. Then Jordi and others created new even better and more compact electronics for IMU use, after that people started to create more and more their of flying devices. So finally we decided to take it to next level. Level of ArduCopter and it's full line of electronics, frames and other R/C equipment.

We on development group owe a bit thanks to the whole DIY Drones community and people who are playing key roles on it. Now we already have nice and rather well working ArduCopter software written for the latest hardware and well working fixedwing software so things are looking good on our users perspective. Sure there are still many things to develop, and new development happens every single day, maybe some of our users won't always see it but there are a lot of things done behind the scenes.

In totally on ArduCopter project it self we have around 20 people working with it, some as occasional commiters, some of us are more or less working as full time and some even all day around 7 days per week... Why, well we just like it a lot and we want to provide these good experiences to our users.

I should not need to tell that what we are trying to do here but let's say it anyways. Thing what we try to accomplish with ArduCopter and ArduPilots projects in generally is to create low cost and easy to use UAV platforms that can be extended easily to higher levels. We try to keep designs as simple as possible so people even with low mechanical skills would be comfortable to build them and enjoy of flying.

Naturally our platforms is not for everyone but at least we try to make it suitable for as many as possible. And you can be part of that process. So if you have any ideas just let us know. We are constantly looking new ideas and ways to do things.

ArduCopter KITs

Long waited time has come. We have been using hundreds of people to find all suitable parts and part providers for us, thousands of emails has been sent back and forth and now finally ArduCopter v1.0 release is at hand.

Also long waited prices for KIT's are here too. Our original goal was to create a multirotor platform with less than $1,000.00 USD, and yes Sir, we did it. Actually we did it way under of our first price goals. So here they finally are:

ArduCopter Quad v1.0 Full KIT price will be $499 USD
- ArduPilot Mega
- ArduPilot Mega IMU / OilPan
- MediaTek GPS
- Needed connectors for GPS and APM
- Motors (850kv), ESCs (20Amp), 10x45 Propellers
- Full Frame kit

You only need to add Radio/Receiver and battery to make it complete.


ArduCopter Quad v1.0 Frame KIT, $290 USD
- Full Frame kit
- Motors (850Kv), ESCs (20Amp), 10x45 Propellers

ArduCopter Quad v1.0 Frame itself $160 USD
- Just all frame parts

All frame KIT's have Fixed delivery price of $55 USD and it works most of countries. But due some countries can have high delivery costs, we will cover extras costs as long as they stay under 25%, if it goes more than that we might need to charge small extra for delivery. We are constantly looking better and more economic methods for deliveries.

Hexa and other frames will be available later after basic production is running properly on Quad frames. There also is going to be full range of extra accessories and spareparts for all frames.

Frame itself contains parts like in earlier Beta frame had plus some extras and upgraded parts based on our beta tester comments and proposals. Main changes are in Arches, Power PCB, MotorMount, New choices for arms, landing gear fins, spareparts and also some extra connectors are included on this new frame kit.


Originally we planned to have pre-orders and Asian/European orders under PhiFUN but due legal issues and taxation, we moved it to more official company to ensure that everything is done legally. So we are using Fah Pah Electronics new site that I have been building last week for all our deliveries. All PhiFUN operations has been moved under Fah Pah. (My working table is still on same place and full of tiny AC parts as always hahah).


After normal deliveries has started, ArduCopter KIT's and parts can be found from following shops:

http://store.diydrones.com (for US only)
http://store.jdrones.com (rest of the world)


There will be few local distributors, their names/locations will be announced later (edited to here)

Estimate to start deliveries is now on 1st week of November. Depending on how our Motor and ESC shipment is arriving from factory. We are keeping parts arrival records on our Wiki so check it out.

Now let's fill the world with ArduHappines :)


Cheers,
Jani / The headless ArduCopter man on Youtube ;)

Our IT guys found this in a closet. It's an old quadcopter that uses thermopiles rather than gyros for stabilzation. It's RC only, but it's got a big old webcam on a stalk. Like a Parrot AR.Drone from the dark ages!

The only identifying writing on the board says "Spectrolutions, 2004" and when you Google that it comes up with this site, which shows a very similar board with "Draganfly" markings. Maybe this is a prototype of an earlier version of the current DraganFly?

[Update: it looks like it is indeed a prototype of the DraganFly V, which came out that year. Here's a good pictoral history of that development]

Anyone out there have any experience with connecting a cellular modem to the ArduPilot Mega? My intent is to create greater/more reliable down/uplink range. If a radio modem has the capability, it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to think that a cell modem could.

JFK

This caught me out big time. And I thought it might be of help to someone else to post my experience even if it was foolish.

The scenario: I have two AP one with V1 shield, Thermopile sensors. Second one with V2 shield with IMU +V2 I only have one GPS EM406 that I swop around (waiting to get UBlox) for second AP.

The problem: I could not get the throttle to work on the First AP every ting else work fine, after rereading the manual rescan the discussions and blogs for similar problems I found some and try all the options only to end with the same problem –no throttle-. Now I started to swab shields around. I want to add that if I remove the shield the throttle works fine.

The result was and a good lesson not to take short cuts when building. When I soldered the pins of AP1 I have also soldered in Pin 13 so instead of de-soldering pin 13 I have just cut the pin flush to the plastic base. Everything was fine till I used Velcro to strap the AP to the base in the airframe it put enough force on the shield to make pin 13!! . I will not repeat the names I called myself.

The lesson Read the manual on the lines and between the lines and do not take any short cuts it will bite you!!

As part of my slow but sure attempt at entering the competition I have created a simple but effective solution to this part of the rules using a Ray casting algorithm and running this on a Netduino in C# (easy to convert to Arduino).

Here is the code to test if the current location falls within a polygon:

public static bool LocationInsideBoundry(Position point, Position[] boundry)

{

bool insideBoundry = false;

try

{

int j = boundry.Length - 1;

for (int i = 0; i < boundry.Length; i++)

{

if (boundry[i].Longitude < point.Longitude && boundry[j].Longitude >= point.Longitude ||

boundry[j].Longitude < point.Longitude && boundry[i].Longitude >= point.Longitude)

{

if (boundry[i].Latitude +

(point.Longitude - boundry[i].Longitude) / (boundry[j].Longitude - boundry[i].Longitude) * (boundry[j].Latitude - boundry[i].Latitude) < point.Latitude)

{

insideBoundry = !insideBoundry;

}

}

j = i;

}

}

catch (Exception)

{

return false;

}

return insideBoundry;

}

Pretty simple stuff and works a treat.

Here is a simple app in .net that shows if the current location is inside the boundary – drag the map around with the right mouse button add some points and if the location is inside the boundary then the group box background will be green – outside then red.

Hopefully it will be of some use.

Cheers
Justin

Pretty cool outfit with an out there idea

• IMAV 2011 "summer edition" rules