Blogs

The appearance i mean not bad but still not a uav it's a cookie cooker image.

Now that i got that out of my system let's move on. If you have not read my previous blog i suggest you do.

I recently sold my gaui 330x original version but i needed something to fly not too pricey and spare parts ready available. until i find a u-3d- ufo with funpilot too buy at a 30 percent savings. I decided to buy the walkera ufo 5 about 169.00 plus shipping. I was pleasantly surprised with this quadcopter it's easy to fly, very stable and excellent for beginners and i mean excellent. Unlike the advertising pros who trick consumer in to buying something that is marketed for beginner and is not ,leaving the consumer's pocket feeling a bit lighter.

The pros: Very easy to fly and stable, a good design, spare parts are easy to find,affordable and can be flown indoor , outside on calm days and it is pretty durable. The cons: Medium power ,the motor are brushed.

Oh and getting back to the appearance of the copter well i made a few changes and very soon i am doing the propeller mod. I had to make it look like a real quadcopter I thought the original appearance of the copter looked a little cheesy.

I've finally perfected the X-Plane HIL for Ardupilot. This will be a feature on 2.6.3 which will be in beta today.

Flying Waypoints:

Here is missed waypoint detection: (I nudged the plane at the last second with the radio to miss the WPs.)

Here is fully auto take off and landing:

Here is the video of auto takeoff and landing:

Xplane and Ardupilot from Jason Short on Vimeo.

If you want to try this out you have to use some software to glue this all together.

Serproxy - used to talk serial to Ardupilot

Perl - to link Serproxy and X-Plane using "X-Plane.pl"

X-Plane 9 (the free version works fine, but it time limited)

I've only tested this on a Mac, so if anyone can try this on a PC, please let me know of changes to make, if any.

In the config header you will see a new ground station called GCS_Xplane (3). You must also use GPS_protocol 3 for ArduIMU.

Here is the Perl file:X-Plane.pl

Here is Windows Serproxy - Windows

Here is Mac Serproxy - Mac

in the config set:

newlines_to_nils=true

comm_baud=38400

Then set the com port accordingly

Go ahead and download 2.6.3 from the SVN. I'll post a beta soon as a download.

Moving forward I'd like to replace the Perl/Serproxy combination with a single C or Python based solution. If anyone can help, that would make it so much easier to set up!

Bonus:

Here you are some photographs of my flying robot.

It's a chinese replica of the t rex 450 equipped with brushless motor and lipo battery.

As you can see, there's a CMUcam mounted in the front. It points the helicopter in the direction (yaw control) of a coloured object, and follows it when this ascends or descends, lowering and raising height.

The new arduPilot mega with IMU shield is mounted on the tail boom, near the body. Currently it works just as a stabilization unit with little code modifications. In the future, when I'll have some spare time, I'll adapt it as an autopilot with gps guide and indoor navigation techniques such as the Polly algorithm (CMUcam software) which recognizes wall edges.

The goal of this project is to demonstrate (or not!) that cheap electronics and models can lead to a "successful" and reliable robot, to use as a platform for sensors.

in particular, the major goals to achieve are:

-long flight time

-payload weight

-almost absolutely fail-safe hardware and software, reliability

-autonomous navigation

upgrades can be a controller such as the RoBoard, the roboRealm vision software and a camera

I'll post more as soon (long) as i have time to work

cheeeeeers

"Environment:

• New file extension to replace the .pde borrowed from Processing (issue #13).
• Redesigned toolbar icons (issue #291).
• Ability to upload sketches using an in-system programmer (ISP) from the IDE (issue #260).
• Simplifying the process of selecting your board and serial port (issues #223 and #257).
• Command-line compilation and uploading of sketches (issue #124).

Language (most of these are possibilities and still open for discussion):

• Creating events that can be called automatically, e.g. the serialEvent() as in Processing (issue #263).
• Adding specific functions for enabling / disabling the internal pullup resistors (issue #246).
• Modifying the behavior of print() on bytes (issue #284).
• Functions for accessing more of the low-level functionality of the hardware timers and other peripherals (issues #169 and #248).
• Optimizing the digitalWrite() function (issue #140)."

I just read a great post by Bill Sweetman on Aviation Week's Ares Blog about a publication of The Mitchell Institute over the history of UAVs in the US armed forces.

The author is Dr. Thomas P. Ehrhard and although I haven't finished reading it yet it certainly is very interesting.

You can download the full document (88 page pdf) here: Air Force UAVs: The Secret History

(in the photo one of the concepts covered on the document, the D-21B)

What's so special about 3D printers? They make it possible to create complex structures, such as wings that are warped to improve performance, like the manually curved wings of a paper aeroplane, says Richter. Their printer is capable of producing features just 16 micrometres wide, and thin films just 40 micrometres thick.

The other advantage of printing is speed, says Lipson. Once they have arrived at a new wing design, printing a set takes under an hour. With the exception of its motor and battery, their latest four-winged creation is almost entirely printed from polyester films stretched over carbon fibre rods, and weighs in at just 3.89 grams – a six-fold weight reduction on their previous version – and capable of hovering untethered for up to 85 seconds.

I haven't heard much talk about Jasons sim which is strange because the more I use it the more I realise how good it is.

It is certainly the best tool to use when building your own gcs. Auto mode works brilliantly and "fly by wire" is a bit of fun. The sim automatically returns to base and then loiters once all the way points have been reached. Switching back to "auto" mode starts the sim again.

Below you can see the turns which the sim produced. The telemetry included the correct lat, lng, pitch, roll, climb rate, and speed

Another great run by Brian Wolfe with his custom PicPilot autopilot, and he wins Round 7 of the T3 competition--the autonomous takeoff and landing round! Second place goes to Mark Griffin (Paparazzi), Third to William Premerlani (UAVDevBoard), followed by Riccardo Kuebler (UAVDevBoard) and Krzysztof Bosak (EasyUAV).

This was a tough round--not all autopilots can do autonomous takeoff and landing--so hats off to the winners. They're all real UAV pros, as shown by their consistent high performance in multiple T3 Rounds.

I'll announce the next round this weekend, and it should be a bit easier (and fun!) to encourage lots of entries. Plus it's summer--what else do you have to do??

Full list of winners and standing after 7 rounds below. Huge thanks to our judge, Gary Mortimer, who has handled the difficult task of reviewing and grading the entries (requiring the smarts of Einstein and wisdom of Solomon) with charm, good humor and constant encouragement. We couldn't do it without you, Gary!

Made a 19 Km 28 minute flight and made a video using 3 onboard cameras.

The mission was 10 Km but de wind and missing waypoints added 5 Km

the other 4 Km was flight time before and after the mission.

Setup was the same as the 7 Km flight;

http://www.diydrones.com/xn/detail/705844:BlogPost:175965?xg_source=activity