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[UPDATE: I've now flown this a bit. A few tips, which I learned the hard way:

1) Don't connect the green wire (gain) to your Rx. That disables all the onboard buttons and the little pot. Better to set these manually when you've first starting. Later, once you've got it flying well, this may be something you want to control from Tx, but not at the start.

2) Make sure you check the little addendum (if you've got the old manual, like me) about how to set the ESC curve. Make sure the green wire is unplugged and the gain is at zero, then power on the quad when your Tx throttle is at high, then bring the throttle down.

3) CA glue all the fiddly little plastic retaining rings. They fall off all the time and you'll end up leaving bits of this quad on the field]

Now that we're getting into the quadcopter business, I thought I should get a better feel for the competition. First up, the new Gaui 330X quadcopter that we wrote about here. At $400 it's in the same price range as ArduCopter, but it doesn't come with a full autopilot. It's just an airframe, motors/ESC and a 3-axis gyro unit (no accelerometers, so it's not an IMU). No GPS or any ability to program it--it's just an RC quad, not a UAV.

They say you can upgrade it to GPS navigation someday, but there's no clue how.

It comes very nicely packed in an surprisingly small and stylish box:

That the gyro unit at left and the four ESCs.

Here are all the parts. Lots of bolting bits together.

When you're done, it's supposed to look like this:

If you want to upgrade to a bigger body (plywood and fiberglass), you can:

As promised ("take one for the team") I bought one of the Feiyu FY-3ZT autopilots from Hooks at FPVFlying.com, and it arrived today.

I haven't had a chance to test it (the software only runs on Windows XP right now, and I don't have any XP boxes), but here are the unboxing photos:

The instructions don't look too bad for a Chinese product.

Here are the parts:

--The three boxes in the middle are the (top) IMU, (middle) Remote Adapter and (bottom) Autopilot controller. Only the IMU and the Autopilot go in the plane. The Remote Adapter is for the ground station.

--Hooks also threw in a 433mhz 500 mW long range modem (black modules at left). I have no idea if they're legal in the US!

--There is also an OSD module (FY-OSD); I'm not sure if that's part of the basic kit or Hooks just being generous to me again.

--The GPS module is one of those very small Locosys deals (MC-1513). I'm not a huge Locosys fan, but we'll see how this performs.

--And the thing with the two red Deans plugs looks like a power/current monitor.

--All the rest is all the necessary cables, antennas and mounting bits.

Of course I took the boxes apart. Each one has an AMR7 processor. The IMU has the usual 3-axis accelerometer, a 2-axis gyro and a 1-axis yaw gyro. The controller board has a absolute pressure sensor. All the markings on the chips are obscured with black varnish so I don't know what kind they are.

I've got to fly off to Europe again tomorrow (Paris this time), so I won't get a chance to start testing until next week.

Hey Guys! (meant in the most gender neutral of ways),

I have taken my first real step toward building a DIY UAV! This will be boring to most of you, but to someone as far behind the curve as I am, this is HUGE. This community has come so far, and in such a relatively short period of time, that autopilots for RC planes are almost plug-and-play. However, I am determined to learn the basics of process control before moving on to an autopilot. After all, that's where you had to be a little over a year ago to even consider a DIY Drone.

I didn't start out with a LEGO Mindstorms, like this site's founder did, but I did get a Parallax BASIC Stamp Discovery Kit, which I believe was his next step. I don't plan to attempt to make an autopilot out of this controller--it's just for learning.

Now, I want you to pretend that the green LED to the right of the resistor (that's a 470 ohm resister, by the way) in the above photo is blinking once per second. I did that! Yes I did.

I'l like to say "stay tuned," but my projects tend to span years it seems. Maybe I can speed things up this time.

Paul

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle EasyUAV fully automatic takeoffs and landings from Krzysztof Bosak on Vimeo.

The new PixHawk quadcopter controller board has some serious horsepower onboard! From the team's post:

"Its two Intel Core 2 DUO 1.86 GHz cores run only at 10% CPU usage with our competition software. The system has been mainly designed for future Computer Vision on Micro Air Vehicles research in PIXHAWK at the Institute of Visual Computing of ETH Zurich. We will use it to localize the MAV with pure onboard processing based on natural features. The current working state uses artificial features to localize.

Regarding our competition entry, we now reached a state where our PIXHAWK Cheetah ALPHA system not only hovers autonomously with no wireless video transmission using ARTK / computer vision, but also starts, lands and follows waypoints while detecting objects along the path. We're now optimizing the system to make sure it works fine in the competition itself. Part of these efforts is to build BRAVO, which has an optimized frame and electronics design and thus reduces the all-up weight from 1200g to about 900g."

Firstly I wish to convey my highest appreciation to all the developers and members of this community.

For those who do not know us, i wish to make a small explanation as why i am posting this.

Im my/our line of work, i/we have worked (and still do when required) on high end Mil spec UAV/UAS, and we wanted to do a mission not dissimilar, to what is required in real world situations.

This is the explanation of our comparisons, capability of the DIY Drones AP/IMU (for the amature market)

In the past we have been asked to over land flights, without the return trip for reconnaissance/info drop, info sec.

Given that due to a multitude of rules and regulations, for the DIY`er we had to plan this very carefully and get permissions to cross places and property, not belonging to us, and thankfullly the people involved, were very interested in this project and wanted to see success (another thank you to those who helped, by making this easier). We also did not want to risk the UAV community byt doing somthing very stupid that could end in tears for all, the loss of the aircraft, being the lowest priority.

So, with carefull planning we came up with a route where we take off from a field on our companies grounds, and the idea was to fly to a close friends/associates field, where the aircraft was to lioter until told to land.

With this in mind, we planned to take off, get to altitude, switch WP1, which was over our field, once WP1 hit, off it goes.

We had spotters with a back up system to command the aircraft if it went south, given that we were flying between two places over a valley, this was to our advantge as spotter 2 was at the half way point and at the highest point on the other side of the valley could see the take off point with binoculars.

Spotter 1 could see the aircraft with another back up system at 1/3rd distance, take off point in view at our side of the vally.

MISSION:

So take off was performed, Auto hit, telemetry comming down to the car with GCS in nice and strong.

as soon as WP1 hit....off she went....wobbled a little at WP2 as cross winds were quite strong....(at this point i was running for the car (i wasnt driving just incase anyone wants to jump on me!!) as it was on its mission and doing well).

In radio contact with spotter 1 all was good, and telemetry was confirming this. As we exited the field it was was already clossing towards WP3, so i told my driver (asked nicely, as it was my wife :~)) to get to spotter 1 position, but as the aircraft was moving quickly and was already passing spotter 1 to keep going to spotter 2, all telemetry was confirming the feed back from spotter 2 now as it was about to pass him.....we then decieded to go striaght to landing point...

for me telemetrt dropped out 2 times for about 3 secs when we passed throught the woodland head, spotter 2 was confirming that it was dead on target. when we got to the landing points...the telemetry was telling me that the aircraft was liotering over head.....AND IT WAS!!!!!!!

So...in conclusion.....we did a 3 mile flight with no visual interaction from the primary pilot, in full view of spotter 1 and 2 just incase anything went wrong...

I NEVER saw the aircraft from WP1 to Lioter at WP7, but telemetry confirmed the flight.

In conclusion, to do this kind of flight we (in the past have relied on high end Autopilots with huge $/£ value attached) and NOT had this kind of success the first time attempted.

I would like to also point out that this the result of about a years work, from our end, and much much more combined from the community.

Specs for those interested:

AP - Ardupilot 2.6 with shield removed for this flilght.

IMU - IMV V2 with 1.7 code.

Telemetry link - Xbee pros x 3, 1 AP side, 1 GCS/laptop side, 1 ground station with spotter 2

Mil spec serial link for flight controls and AP switching (40km range)...(stolen out of a high end UAS for insurance reasons)

Flycam1 nailed to side (but crapped out 2 mins in - Grrrrrrrrrr!)

Twin-star with 2 x 2300kv motors with 5ah 3s cells (complete over kill, only used 2ah for flight)

back up 1800 3s pack for APtelem.

AUW 2.8kg

Other parts added to system, 4 sets of bicycle clips for trousers as fitted to all pilots and spotters, this was 10 minutes of abject fear for all of us.

Another thank you to all who took the time out of thier saturday to prep, re-prep, test, spot, and drive for me.

Closing thoughts....

The flight was flawless, never missed a beat,flight was direct and precise. There was no reason for fear or worry.

We had done our prep (many, many times before flight), the developers, designers adn contributors had done a magnificent job!

And in a no small was i feel very smug, that after hundreds of hours of personal work on tuning, testing, tuning, changing, tuning, testing.......its nice to NOT be wrong for once! :~)

A Sincere thanks to everyone from all of us.

Thoughts anyone?

regards,

Mike.

26-6-10crosscountrytogarys.kml

Aurora Flight Science's prototype VTOL Skate folds up real small (see below). From the official site:

"Aurora’s Skate UAS merges the simplicity and endurance of a fixed wing platform with the maneuverability and mission flexibility of a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) asset. Independently articulating motor pods allow the Skate UAS to rapidly transition between vertical and horizontal flight. Transferring from hovering to wingborne flight increases the endurance and range of the system to levels characteristic of a fixed wing platform and far beyond those of a traditional VTOL asset. The thrust vectoring provided by the motor pods also enables extreme maneuverability allowing the Skate UAS to fly both vertically and horizontally indoors, enabling rapid navigation of cluttered environments such as city streets or inside buildings."

(Photos from Wired's Danger Room blog)

NightFlyyer has some great flight and build videos for the new NitroPlanes 98" Reaper (which is supposed to start shipping again on 7/15 if you're backordered, as I am).

Other videos are below and embedded in the comments (thanks Morli--I don't know why I couldn't find the embed codes before!)

Flying video

Upgrade with bigger motor and nose gear/camera turret mods