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Easy Star Fiberglass Fuse

Posted by Dr. Stewart Pid on February 7, 2010 at 3:37pm

I'm in the process of making a mold for a easystar fuse. I used the replacement foam fuse from the local hobby shop and mounted it to a board, filled the pushrod channels and servo holes on the outside. Fuse plug is painted and waxed.

I must decide where to install hatches (if any). I still have the removable canopy as a seperate part, and will mold the wing insert seperately.

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Transverse Rotor UAV: Bell-Hiller CONCEPT

Posted by Jeff on February 7, 2010 at 11:30am



I have been moving forward with my project to build a transverse rotor UAV. Here is a quick overview of this Bell-Hiller concept. (Oh, btw this is only a quick sketch done in Google Sketchup, it isn't totally to scale nor have I drawn in the entire structure)


1) Single brushless motor will drive conter-rotating rotors
2) CCPM swash plate will provide additional level of control including roll-control w/o gyroscopic affects.
3) I am using a Bell-Hiller mixing instead of mounting rotors directly to motors (no swash or flybar) and using large servos to control pitch and roll. This will allow for added inherent stability, and I will be able to use much smaller servos

Next step is to verify this design with the community (you), decide how much I can buy off the shelf vs how much I need to build myself, and then start building and working on the electronics portion. As soon as I know how many servos/sensors I'll need, I'll choose a microcontroller and start that parallel project. Stay tuned, I've told too many people about this project to give up now... :-)


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DIY Drones - South African Chapter first general meeting

Posted by Tiaan Roux on February 5, 2010 at 10:49am
Hear ye! hear ye! On this 5th day of the month of February in the year 2010 it happened, the first get together of the South African Chapter of DIYDrones!

I would say it turned out very successful, starting off very informal then quickly turning in to a storm of ideas lasting quite a few hours. Hopefully the first of many!

Sarel will post some more info on ideas and decisions made.

Thank you to Sarel and Gary!


From left to right: Gary Mortimer, Sarel Wagner (RSA big kahuna), Tiaan Roux.

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Admin

New AP with many ground barking tech. What category of autopilot is this?

Posted by Morli on February 5, 2010 at 4:30am

CC-24w.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1262958482290


Guys , should we have some thing like this( caption contest) going? Any way , diy AP cannot get any better than this , High lights/salient features.
>4 point landing gear, self retraction, auto flaps, self healing too
> no GPS required ,"tail wagging" is automatic (most of the times)
>RTL Works in air and on Land too!!
>Find me is built in. You will never loose it, and if you do , it will come back eventually or high pitch sounder( built-in) will alert you of it location
> Pan and tilt does not require additional channels
> FAA and other regulations do not apply to this airframe operations( conditions apply)
> No spl software or programmers/interface required. Unlimited memory, etc etc
> Voice activation and command language
> Rx is interference proof
> Can win any contest any day any time
What do you think guys?
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THIS WEEK IN AEROSPACE

Posted by Jack Crossfire on February 5, 2010 at 12:39am
MARCY 3 REVEALED, MARCY 2 REVEALED, MARCY 1 RADIO DISASTERS

MARCY 3 REVEALED



There's the current Marcy 3 plan. Unfortunately not enough space to build her. Basically install a fuselage aroundVika 1. It's obsolete but it was the real Major Marcy's plane & we canuse the tail fins as landing gear. No-one knows if She actually flewone or if She just managed it.

The idea with this is to have panels which bolt onto carbon fiber rodsso she can fly with or without the fuselage. To speed up yaw response,the aft propeller tilts inside its shroud without actually moving theshroud. The aft shroud is probably going to be permanently tilted tosome neutral angle & probably tall enough to cover the propeller atnormal angles.

Forward landing gear is removable for hand launches but notretractable. There's a dome under the nose with a slit for a point &shoot camera to tilt inside of but not pan. Dome has to be strongenough to land on.

Propellers are 12x6 which makes the shroud inner diameter 13". Wings & fuselage between the wings & tail are variable length, probably made of removable sections. Aft fins contain CF rods & are used as landing
gear.

The exact dimensions are a long way from being known. The more rent increases, the smaller she gets. May use aluminum angle rods because
they're longer.



MARCY 2 REVEALED






The next indoor sonar demonstrator, since the monocopter ended up too big & unstable.

Swapped Vika 2's flight computer & shrunk her to the smallest possiblesize to make Marcy 2. She's the smallest vehicle we can make economically. A smaller vehicle using Feigau motors like theParrot demo would be more expensive so it's cheaper to bury our 1 Feigauthan buy 2 more to make a tri rotor. Turnigy/Towerpro 2410-9's are thelow point in motor prices when they're in stock.

Time to get rid of our 3 year old IDG300's. They had troubleinitializing on 1 axis. The pair could still be used in a flat IMU buttheir temperature sensitivity was horrible. Nowadays it's not worthhoarding gyros. They were free samples at a time no-one ever heard ofUAV's. Invensense thought their only use was phone cameras but we knewbetter.

Time to use up the LISY300AL's we got last April in a cube IMU.

MARCY 1 RADIO DISASTERS



The Marcy 1 ground station is basically a scratch built USB radio with 2 channels & a 224khz soundcard, sending 1.8Mbits of telemetry & sonar tothe laptop & 9600bits of commands to the aircraft.



Radio failures explain some of her instability. The Marcy 1 radios havenever performed as well in the fully integrated ground station as theydid in this test:


this-week-in-marcy-1-aviation

They sometimes work & sometimes drop out for no reason. There seems tobe no difference between straight dipoles, impedance matching baluns,plastic enclosures, bare circuit boards, low baud rates, isolatingcapacitors, & choke inductors for Vbus.

These radio parameters improved on the reference software.

Set the AFC range to +15/-16 Fres.
Use the highest receive bandwidth.
Use the highest FSK deviation.

The choke inductor on Vbus got rid of a lot of sonar noise.

Stepped up the remote control to 115000 baud but the flight computeronly has enough horsepower for 86000 baud. Now it's coming down tointerference from through hole parts.









She didn't crash there. It's a radio test.



New 900Mhz -> PCM receiver with a balun.



Without wind & with perfect radio contact she can hover in a smallarea. Cyclic effectiveness ramps up with very small magnitude & seemsto decrease with higher magnitude until she falls out of the sky.

STEVE STABILIZATION



Finally ran a stabilization pass on some Steve Morris helmet cam footage to see if it did any good for helmet cam footage. It looks a bit more like flying than clinging to someone's head but he needs a TASE gimbal & a head tracker.
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3D Robotics

DIY Drones authoring tools upgrade to rich text entry

Posted by Chris Anderson on February 4, 2010 at 9:30pm

If you're posting a blog post you'll note that the formatting tools are now much more powerful, allowing for WYSIWYG text and photo entry. No excuse for not having photos, videos and other eye candy! (Seriously, it's a very good idea to start your post with a relevent photo, which hugely increases click-through rates).


The same rich text authoring tools are available in the discussion forum.


This is a good moment to remind everyone about the difference between blog posts and discussion forum posts. Blogs are for information of broad community interest. The discussion forum is for questions, calls for help and n00b whimpers. The blogs are moderated, and we'll delete posts that are not appropriate before they're published. The discussion forum is not moderated before publication, but we may nuke spam or wildly off-topic posts if they show up.

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Acromaster as UAVDevBoard platform

Posted by Riccardo Kuebler on February 4, 2010 at 11:30am
Hi,

here are some experiences with Bill Premerlani amazing UAVDevBoard on a Multiplex Acromaster.




Here is a video that shows the impressive ability of this device with Ben Levitt pattern stabilization firmware:

UAVDevBoard stabilized Acromaster from Riccardo Kuebler on Vimeo.



The plane, base components:

Acromaster with Apache 30/14T AR
ESC Castle Creation Phoenix 45
Lipo 4S 3600mAh
Propeller APC 12x6
Servos 4x Hitec HS81MG
ACT S3D 2.4GHz 4+2 RC rx

IMU upgrade:

UAVDevBoard
Oilpan
Ublox
Xbee Pro
A123 2S 1300mAh

Here is the options.h file with my actual settings:

options.h

Here is a spreadsheet with the commented history of the settings:

Logbook Acromaster.xls

This is a great work from all the developers and programmers (hardware: Bill Premerlani, Tom Posey; firmware:Bill Premerlani, Adam Barrow, Adam Bellchambers, Pete Holland, Ben Levitt; Aerobatics stabilization firmware: Ben Levitt; and all the fantastic rest of the team).

Best regards,

Ric

1st edit 7.2.10:
link added for autopilot devices, video embedded
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Project Andromeda update - CNC Machine and sponsors

Posted by Nima K on February 4, 2010 at 12:45am

We have been working very hard on the CNC machine and it's almost finished. The machine will form a vital part of our arsenal leading up to the competition. We will use it to create our launch/arrestor systems and also the molds for the airframe.It is in working condition at the moment but we just need to clean it up. The spindle needs liquid cooling so we've been busy trying to sort out an adequate pump and reservoir to facilitate that.Another urgent matter is end switches. We had a close call the other day where due to various unforeseen reasons the Y axis slammed itself into the X axis. This was during testing so we weren't actually machining anything but it was very scary nevertheless. I didn't realize how quickly the axes could move if uncontrolled. Owing to this incident, I also ordered a nice perspex shield to place in the gap below the X axis in case we break some milling bits. We are definitely not turning it on until we've got all these precautions in place.In other news. Project Andromeda has its first sponsor! Advanced Circuits from Colorado, USA have generously sponsored us and are going to make the PCBs for our autopilot. We have been with those guys from the beginning and the experience has been great.There is a full article on the CNC machine on the Project Andromeda Blog if anyone is interested in further reading. There are also some more pictures in the gallery.
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Seattle Space Needle scale-model "Airframe" & Quad-Rotor Helicopter "Powerplant" 'makes it so'.

Posted by Gary Thomas on February 3, 2010 at 11:42pm
That Post Title's pretty much it in a vital new treasure-chestnut shell .....Imagine/Visualize:[Top portion of] Seattle Space Needle "Airframe" in scale-model formNew extended range fuel cell, liquid hydrogen and 4-electric quad-motor "Powerplant" is in the middle of ....That is allJack Frost Nippin' @ Your LH & LOX Nose ...Help me honor the memory of our 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who was very much alive & well in 1962 when the Space Needle Building was first dedicated at the '62 Worlds Fair.Space Needle Quad-Rotor R & D Club now forming! Call now. Help me verify that my new phone # is on:Try( 3 0 4 ) 8 6 0 - 8 5 4 2. Anytime 24/7P.S. - I'm about 5 hours freeway distance from Washington D.C. Let's say we go lobby the coal state U.S. Senator R.C. Byrd !WaHooo!
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Its Alive!!

Posted by David Ankers on February 3, 2010 at 5:30pm
There will be a load more talk about this project right here on the DiyDrones Podcast on the Feb 14th. This code was working a while back but we finally got around to making a video.The hardware has changed a little bit since then but only to expand the power options and a couple more features, 8 servo inputs, 8 Servo outputs, SDCard, USB and lots more. Its a totally community driven project, the hardware will be cheap (revolutionary cheap) because we are doing this for fun, it is very high quality and very powerful. This tiny 4-layer board is awesome and the AHRS is out of this world.
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3D Robotics

Arduino grows up--multithreading and an OS

Posted by Chris Anderson on February 3, 2010 at 1:53pm

Arduino's extraordinary popularity has made it the focus of innovation for hardware and sofware hackers everywhere. The result is that they're wringing a suprising amount of performance out of a 16 MIPS chip:. Here are two recent advances: --"Easy multithreading on Arduino with Concurrency Enjoy programming microcontrollers, but frustrated about how difficult it can be to get them to do more than one thing at a time? Well, then you might be interested in Concurrency, an open source programming language and environment specifically designed with multithreading in mind. That means you can write programs that do multiple things at the same time, without interfering with each other. Of course, you could achieve the same things using a stock Arduino with some crafty coding or timer interrupts, however using a purpose-built language such as this could be a great way to get your feet wet in threaded computing. Check out their website for source code and Creative Commons-licensed tutorials!" [From Makezine] --An Arduino Operating System "Pyxis OS is an operating system developed for the Arduino. It has been designed to allow Arduino users a greater level of freedom and capability than they currently have. Chief among Pyxis' list of features is its built-in ability to run compiled programs directly from a microSD card. Pyxis can switch between these programs and run as many as you can fit on your card. The Pyxis programming language not only allows you to take advantage of many of the commands you're used to when developing for a standard Arduino (such as pinMode, digitalRead/Write, analogRead/Write, delay and more) but also expands on them with built-in LCD functions (such as drawLine, fillEllipse, etc). In addition to using the Pyxis programming language you can access, modify and control the Pyxis OS directly from the Arduino environment. Libraries give you access to powerful abilities that are simply not available without Pyxis. For example, create a Textbox, Button, Progressbar, Combobox, or Checkbox in a single line of code and let Pyxis do all the work of tracking the object and updating the screen for you!"
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Podcast Episode 15 - Tom Pycke and Gluonpilot

Posted by Tim Trueman on February 2, 2010 at 4:03pm
iTunes linksAAC: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=330632997MP3: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=330633212RSS feedAAC: http://feeds.feedburner.com/diydronesMP3: http://feeds.feedburner.com/diydronesmp3Gluonpilot website: http://gluonpilot.comArduPilot 2.5 testing photo set (referenced by an audience question): http://www.flickr.com/photos/ttrueman/sets/72157623199524559/show/Sorry about the late post, I was very sick last night.
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Under Wing Pan/Tilt

Posted by Mike W on February 1, 2010 at 1:00pm
Mounted the ServoCity.com SPT50 Sub-Micro Pan & Tilt with two Hitec HS-55 servos and a SuperCircuits.com board camera (one of their inexpensive B/W models) to the underside of the Easy Star wing, directly under the wing spar in the removable block of foam. The camera is secured using hot glue which does a surprisingly fine job of holding it in there, yet making removable possible without lasting effects to the board or pan/tilt mounting plate. Also, I'm using Servo Stretchers (also from Servocity.com) to adjust the limits and extend the travel of the servos.Could improve the design by using shorter servos (so the camera is closer to the wing), and by covering the camera board but remember not to add too much weight. I didn't find it difficult to balance out the wings with the added weight on the left wing, but I can only imagine how an unbalanced plane would do if you got it up in the air.Cost:$19.99 SPT50 Sub-Micro Pan & Tilt2x $13.99 HS-55 Sub-Micro ServoOptional: 2x $19.99 180* Servo StretcherTotal: $88 w/ Servo Stretchers, $48 without.Enjoy!-Mike W
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Developer

Ardupilot 2.5 Release Candidate

Posted by Jason Short on January 31, 2010 at 9:30pm
I was finally able to test 2.5 over the weekend and added a few tweaks to the code.
Here's what I hope is the final release.

As the new Manual gets formatted, you can view it at: http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot/wiki/ArduPilot25
Until the content is finally moved over the 2.4 manual is still a great resource.

Ardupilot_25_RC2.zip

Bonus - If you look check out the Waypoint_writer_25.pde file in the test suite, you can upload relative waypoints. This isn't supported in the config tool yet.

Jason


UPDATE -
A lot of people were having trouble with the GPS code and LEDs. I reworked the GPS parsers today to iron out some things. They were nothing that would interfere with flight, but I highly recommend using this new version. I've also added the ability to scale down your plane's roll based on airspeed. This should help planes that turn faster when they go slower. We may tweak this a bit in the future, so I'm looking for feedback on it. Note you can always turn it off in your header file with this line:
//6-4
#define AIRSPEED_TURN_P 1
see the header file for more instructions


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3D Robotics

DIY Drones live chat/podcast with Tom Pycke tonight at 10:30pm PST

Posted by Chris Anderson on January 31, 2010 at 10:10am
Free video streaming by Ustream Tonight we'll do podcast #15, 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 10:30 PM PST (late hour to accommodate a European guest) and will probably go about 40 minutes. This week we'll by joined by Tom Pycke, the Belgian inventor of Gluonpilot, a very cool IMU-based open source autopilot that should be available in the next few months. We've written about it here and here. Tom's one of the smartest people we know on autopilot technology, and we've learned a ton from his his postings and progress in the past. Now he's going to release something we can all use. Tune in to hear more about it! As always you can subscribe to the podcast here. Tonight's livecast will be recorded and available as a podcast on Monday.
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A nice home-made UAV on the way

Posted by FPVaddict on January 31, 2010 at 9:30am
Hello everybody,congrats from a newbie on this superb website.For those interested in home-made UAVs, I am creating something similar to the Shadow 200.

This is the project :

And this is the current status:

For more information and lots of pictures, check my (french) blog http://oeilvolant.blogspot.com/.I hope it will provide you with some ideas.Critics welcome.Bye,clear skiesMichel
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