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With all the changes and improvements in ArduPilot 2.5, we decided to redo the manual as a wiki on the project's Google Code site. As with all wikis, it's a work in process, but it's now good enough that we have retired the old manual. All the manual links should now point to the wiki.
Please check it out, and if you'd like to make some changes or additions, PM me and I'll add you to the author list.
Here the fuse halves are joined with masking tape and the inch and a half seam tape is applied to the bottom.
Landing gear being molded into the bottom and will be sanded smooth after resin sets. The long brush on top will be used to apply the seam tape to the inside top portion of the fuse.
Rear wheel temporary fit test.
Rear belly hatch used to appy seam tape, later to be used as servo acess.
I realize that this isn't directly relevant to the development of uav systems, but here is a lucky shot I got last week of a red tail hawk in flight. I pulled this frame from a video using VLC player and the camera that I used was a keychain camera I bought on ebay.
AAC: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=330632997
MP3: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=330633212
RSS feed
AAC: http://feeds.feedburner.com/diydrones
MP3: http://feeds.feedburner.com/diydronesmp3
Find out what states you track in a 17 state extended kalman filter, what it takes to commercialize a UAV and what hardware object tracking involves.
Reed's profile on DIY Drones: http://diydrones.com/profile/ReedChristiansen
Just got a new camera (on right). you can compare that to the LTS wireless camera on the left.
more info on this at a later date, I don't have all the specs. maybe someone can identify it. draws 20mA at 3v, color video
Today we hit another milestone, with 8,000 members. Over the past year traffic on DIY Drones has grown more than 4x, from an average of 5,000 page views per day a year ago, to 22,000 today. We currently average 6,000 unique visitors per day. We are adding 1,000 members every 54 days (less than two months), or an average of 19 a day, a pace that is speeding up. Here are the comparable stats from Jan 5th, when we passed 7,000.
A few other stats: a little less than 10% of new members are spammers, who are usually caught and banned within minutes (the member total does not include banned spammers). 90% of people with hotmail.com email address turn out to be spammers!
Here's the geographic breakdown of traffic over the past year (just listing the top ten countries):
I been working "hard" and the fastest i can to finish this thing, theres only one step remaining in order to start the "mass" production of this board.
This is how the last step will be done:
-A unique assembled board will be shipped from California to Spain.
-Then Jose Julio in Spain will open his "Surprise Board" and make us the great favor to all of us of checking the board integrity and the harmony of all the components on it (thanks in advance JJ).
-That includes checking some new components i can't mention right now.
-If Jose Julio says 'Si", then i will start the mass production.
By now SparkFun is straggling trying to supply all the components and test bed for APM. It will be released soon.
The board is kinda of big right now. This board will be called the "huge" version. When the code becomes very mature i will create a an smaller version of the APM and APM Oil Pan without the multiplexor on the APM and without the bulky FTDI chip on the APM Oil Pan, so i can save 30% of the size. This one will be called ArduPilotMega "In my way" version. ;-)
Oil pan stands for the old shield name. The difference is that the shield goes into the bottom of the ArduPilotMega board.
Come 2:56AM!!
If you want to gain access to the pre-release source code as a tester or early adopter shoot me an email and I'll send you an invite → tim@dronedynamics.com
Please include your name and if you're on Windows, Mac or Linux (or anything else you want to tell me).
Invites will go out Tuesday.
Tonight we'll do podcast #18, which everyone here is welcome to participate in by listening to the chat live above and commenting and asking questions via the DIY Drones chat function. We'll be starting at 9:00 PM PST and will probably go about 40 minutes.
This week we'll by joined by Reed Christiansen, UAV Avionics Engineer of Procerus, makers of the famous Kestrel autopilot. We'll be talking about what's new in the field of small UAVs, and the prospects for a commercial civilian market.
As always you can subscribe to the podcast here. Tonight's livecast will be recorded and available as a podcast by Tues of the next week.
Starring ArduPilot GroundStation, MillswoodEngineering GroundStation and Flexipilot. Enjoy!
UAV mission simulation using MillswoodEngineering GroundStation and Flexipilot from Krzysztof Bosak on Vimeo.
UAV mission simulation using Ardupilot GroundStation and Flexipilot from Krzysztof Bosak on Vimeo.
Found at: http://www.army-technology.com/projects/skylark-II/skylark-II3.html
I Really like the simplicity of this one - though I'm not sure how it lands. Is there anything like it in the hobby market?
These are the bugs found:
--When ArduPilot is pulsing the servos after it's got GPS lock with the bind plug on, it will pulse the motor, too, on some ESCs. This can be dangerous! (FIXED)
--One some ESCs, ArduPilot will not allow the ESC to arm, even in manual mode. This was a weird one, since in manual mode the servo signal is directly passed through to the ESC without touching code, but it appears that we were mixing in some signal from the microprocessor by mistake. (FIXED)
--Stabilization gains were too high for those using the Z sensor. Porpoising and corkscrewing resulted. (FIXED)
--On some uBlox configurations, the GPS parser would fail to read position data in AUTO mode, leading to flyaway behavior. (FIXED)
--Problem reading PWM data from the newer, smaller Futaba 2.4 Ghz digital receivers, like this one. Weirdly, channel one would only read motion to the left, not the right. This is a timing thing, having to do with the order in which pulses are sent in these newer receivers. (Jason now has one of these, and will use logic analyzer to diagnose and fix this one)
--The default loiter/RTL radius of 30m is too small, leading to figure eights, rather than circles. [Expanded to 100m.]
Finally, one bit of very good news: We've finally got rid of the bind plug setup procedure for people with Z sensors. The reason we had to do it before is that the Arduino bootloader overwrites the Atmega registry setting that says whether the last reset was a cold or warm restart. As a result, we couldn't tell if you were starting the autopilot on the ground (cold restart) or whether it had just reset in the air (warm restart). Obviously, we don't want it to record a new "home" position in the air.
Doug Wiebel, Jordi Munoz and Jason Short talked about this and solved the problem with a little AI. Now ArduPilot will measure the GPS data for a few seconds to decide if it's on the ground or in the air. If it's moving, it won't record a new home position; if it's stationary it will. Bye bye bind plug!
Jason will be uploading some of these bug fixes in the next day (when he gets off a plane), and the tougher ones, like the problem with new Futaba digital receivers, in a couple weeks when he's back from a business trip and vacation. The bind plug process should be gone then, too. By then I should have the ArduPilot 2.5 documentation done, and we can formally launch this thing as an easy(ier) to use, more stable and better performing autopilot that works on a wide range of hardware configurations!
Excerpt:
"This year the Pentagon will buy more unmanned aircraft than manned, and train more UAV pilots than traditional bomber and fighter pilots combined. As Gen. David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, put it in January, "We can't get enough drones."
But neither can our adversaries—who don't need their own network of satellites and supercomputers to deploy an unmanned plane. Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson built a version of the military's hand-tossed Raven surveillance drone for $1,000, while an Arizona-based anti-immigrant group instituted its own pilotless surveillance system to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border for just $25,000. Hitler's war machine may have lacked the ability to strike the American mainland during World War II. But half a century later, a 77-year-old blind man from Canada designed an unmanned system that in 2003 hopped the Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland.
.....
"The United States has not truly had to think about its air defenses—at home or abroad—since the Cold War. But it's time it did, because our current crop of weapons isn't well suited to dealing with these new systems. Smaller UAVs' cool, battery-powered engines make them difficult to hit with conventional heat-seeking missiles; Patriot missiles can take out UAVs, but at $3 million apiece such protection comes at a very steep price. Even seemingly unsophisticated drones can have a tactical advantage: Hizbullah's primitive planes flew so slowly that Israeli F-16s stalled out trying to decelerate enough to shoot them down.
To succeed in this revolution, we need something many competitor countries already have: a national robotics strategy. That means graduate scholarships, lab funding, and a Silicon Valley–style corridor for corporate development. Otherwise we are destined to depend on the expertise of others. Already a growing number of American defense and technology firms rely on hardware from China and software from India, a clear security concern."
When the IMU version of AttoPilot (version 3.3) was first announced, the price was given as $3,000. Now I see it's $4,200. The IMU by itself is $1,500. I was kinda hoping the price movement would go the other way, but I know it's a quality product and Dean has to make a living...
The site is here, but because it's Flash I can't link to any pages. Just navigate to the store/shopping cart.
AUVSI, our industry trade group, took out a six page advertising insert in Fortune this month. Mostly UAVs, but also ground and water autonomous vehicles. You can read it here. Forward by Peter Singer, who wrote the book Wired for War.
MARCY 1 POV BEGINS
THE REAL MAJOR MARCY
THERMOPILES RIDE AGAIN
While many people regret burning up their lives & 401k's perfecting thermopile autopilots only to end up switching to IMU's, monocopters are 1 application where only thermopiles will do.
They give only a 0.5V change based on angle of attack. They're supposed to be used in pairs with a high gain op-amp amplifying the difference. Being weight limited makes it challenging. There are 3 arrangements:
1) Single thermopile without amplifier
2) Single thermopile with amplifier
3) Double thermopile with difference amplifier
So if she can't sense attitude indoors, why does she still use sonar instead of GPS + pressure? We often wonder the same thing ourselves. There's still hope for a pushbroom camera to replace thermopiles. Whether you go with a pushbroom or a single frame camera, it needs a really fast shutter speed. A really big lens or mirror would help.
Attitude sensing is moving in parallel between commutes with...
MARCY 1 POV BEGINS
Wanted to have some kind of UAV lightshow demo in case by some miracle we got the chance to fly for THE REAL MAJOR MARCY.
Marcy 1's payload is stupid. We're becoming another Kai. Kai built LED toys to impress heroines at nightclubs only to get stuck with a horrible snotty Asian bitch instead of a warrior & he hated life. Our LED toys are more expensive & aimed higher but still the same. Decided not to bother with flying music videos. Just simple star & mar patterns.
SMT LEDs were not bright enough to do the job.
So replaced them with 3mm LEDs before commuting time ran out. 3mm was all anyone had. Got to focus the economy on housing & SUV's.
Also, as much as She is the Great She Is, no-one but us is going to want to watch Her aircraft fly around for 5 minutes while listening to Blue Uniform or whatever the band is called.
Fortunately she has plenty of debugging LEDs.
THE REAL MAJOR MARCY
Major Marcy, that's right, THE REAL MAJOR MARCY saw this video & She
wrote "Speechless!"
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mind you, She didn't view our Goo Tube account since iPhones can't do Flash & She only uses an iPhone. It would be bad if She did. You would definitely go back to MQ-1 logos if you saw Her in real life. This is ridiculous.
Also snagged a manned copter taking off in this video. Obviously they fell in love & started chasing after the Mad Major like us. Crowded skies when She's around.We did see the real Major Marcy in REAL LIFE. She's so f**king beautiful, not sure about showing you Her photo because you might fall in love uncontrollably & turn into a blob of protoplasm.
