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Potential to capture and broadcast FPV video through phone

Posted by Colby sts on November 22, 2009 at 8:30pm
My friend and I just set up our Easy Star following Chris's recommendations (brushless, ESC, and lipo). We wanted a cheap way to grab some FPV footage to show to our friends and family. We decided to cut a hole in our Easy Star fuselage cover to mount my Blackberry Curve so we could use it as a video camera. I bought a 2 Gigabyte SD card from Rite Aid for $19.99 and we we're set to go. Although the video quality is rather poor we think the smartphone serves as a cool platform to broadcast FPV in real time through its data channel. The mobile app Ustream could help us and others broadcast live video streams to the internet. Now I just have to convince my friend to mount his iphone 3GS onboard and we'll get some better quality!This flight below was filmed with the Blackberry. We were flying RC but will be integrating attopilot into our easy star as soon as it arrives.UPDATE: The new Motorola Droid phone has the capability of broadcasting 720 X 480 video live through Qik. See an example video here.

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3D Robotics

RobotC Version 2.0 now out

Posted by Chris Anderson on November 22, 2009 at 12:17pm
For those of you who, like me, love Lego Mindstorms as a robotics prototyping tools, good news. The best programming language for Mindstorms is Robot C, and it's just been upgraded to 2.0. (It's a free upload for registered users of the previous versions). New features include: * Tabbed Programming Interface – Multiple programs can be open at a single time. * New Hardware Support – Support for PITSCO’s TETRIX Programming Language * New Competition Support – ROBOTC is an approved programming language for the FIRST Tech Challenge competition. * “Live Start Page” – Feature allows users to keep in touch with the latest news and updated from the ROBOTC community. * More Sample Programs – Over 150 new and updates samples programs now included with ROBOTC * Updated User Interface – Updated and modernized ROBOTC’s user interface, with floating and dockable debugger windows. * Improved Debugger – ROBOTC’s debugger can now control motors and servo individually, as well as provide easy-to-use debugging information for users. * NXT Remote Control – NXT users can now send joystick data from their PC to their robots using a Logitech USB game controller. * Improved Help System – Now includes sample usage of functions, as well as references to sample programs. * Upgraded Motor and Sensor Setup Wizard– Easier to configure different types of sensors and motor features, such as PID and encoders. Includes easy configuration for TETRIX controllers as well.
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3D Robotics

In AUVSI mag: "Do Terrorists Want UAS, Too?"

Posted by Chris Anderson on November 21, 2009 at 11:30pm

There's a provocative piece in the current issue of the AUVSI's offical magazine, Umanned Systems. It asks how likely it it is that terrorists will use UAVs, which is as you might imagine is a question that comes up quite often for those of us in the open source UAV world, where we don't restrict who uses our technology. The article notes that UAVs are not the best choice for terrorists delivering explosives, given their complexity and relatively low carrying capacity, but does raise the issue of UAV-distributed chemical and biological weapons. It quotes Vann Van Diepen, then the Department of Defense's acting deputy secretary for nonproliferation, warning in 2002 that UAVs "are a potential delivery system for weapons of mass destruction and indeed and ideally suited for the delivery of chemical and biological weapons, given UAV's ability to disseminate aerosols in the right place at the right altitudes." But others quoted in the article are less concerned. Wayne Morse, president of American Dynamic Flight Systems, a UAV maker, said it's unlikely that terrorists would choose UAVs. "It doesn't make sense. UAVs are very complex and terrorists want to terrorise. How can you best do that that? If you have people willing to kill themselves, that's what terrorizes. So why aim UAVS at the Super Bowl when you can have somebody walk up and self-detonate before they go through stadium security and cause mass panic?" Renting a Cessna would allow a terrorist to carry a much larger load, much more simply, Morse said. The article is available as a pdf to AUVSI members. BTW, joining AUVSI costs just $50 a year for individuals, and comes with a free Unmanned Systems subscription. Highly recommended!
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3D Robotics

DIY Drones live chat/podcast Sunday. Guest: Steve Morris of MLB

Posted by Chris Anderson on November 21, 2009 at 6:30pm
Free video streaming by Ustream Tomorrow (Sunday) night we'll do our regular podcast, 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 an hour early, at 8:00 PM PST, so I can catch yet another redeye to the East Coast :-( This week we'll by joined by Steve Morris, CEO of MLB, a long-time UAV leader. MLB is a pioneer in small (well, big to us, but small compared to a Predator), inexpensive UAVs, such as the BAT 4 (below) and V-BAT (right) platforms. Other themes in the podcast will include: --Obama highlight Blimpduino! --Getting ready for the next Sparkfun autonomous vehicle competition --The latest on the DIY Drones dev team progress --Favorite blogs posts of the week --And whatever other cool stuff comes up!
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FLYING REALLY HIGH & MORE DISHES

Posted by Jack Crossfire on November 20, 2009 at 2:00pm
FLYING REALLY HIGHFor the first time since Mike Fouche documented it on Goo Tube.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6j--ja_okgAn autonomous copter has flown at a certain very high altitude in a certain country. The exact altitude & country is a secret to protect the innocent of course. It was also at midnight, like all our most extreme test flights.Since the radio seems to work better if the antenna isn't blocked by anything including foam, moved the radio farther down the tail rotor to test higher visibility. Eventually want a spring loaded boom which swings the radio under the fuselage.

With that arrangement, the radio is real good for our cruising altitude of 400ft AGL. For fixed heading at higher altitudes, it's probably not much worse than 400ft but U have to be like a spaceship & keep it fixed so the antenna is always visible & perpendicular to U.For pirouetting, it gets dicy & U have to fidget with the ground station to keep it alive.

Forget about manual control. If something malfunctions, U can disable autopilot, descend real fast, & hope the rate damping keeps it level long enough to get within visual range, but you're probably killing the engine & dropping it. Definitely need a large safe landing zone.Not much flight time at altitude with the current landing program. Landing voltage with 100A batteries is 10.7 instead of 10.6 & most of your flight is spent descending. Can't take over manually for 2/3 of that descent so you're definitely focused on battery voltage. Need a 3rd velocity teir for landing.

Theoretically 1 of the points of light in this 204 frame stack is Major Marcy's satellite control network seen from the apartment. M.M. also works in this secret unknown country that allows high altitude flights.Speaking of M.M., got some more dish shots.MORE DISHES

Very risky shots. Crash behind the impenetrable barb wire fence & you'll have to approach someone in the Air Force to recover the vehicle. We all know what happened the last time we approached someone in the Air Force.

It's the Air Force Satellite Control Network, directly controlled by last week's dish farm. This dish farm is near the apartment. Who knew Rain Ramon & Sunnyvale were linked through space & time all these years by the Air Force.

Finally a montage of those flights.FREE RTK GPS BUSTEDhttp://gpspp.sakura.ne.jp/rtklib/rtklib_beagleboard.htm2 good 2 B true. No consumer GPS module outputs the raw navigation data required. The modules he used R either no longer sold or in the $300 range. He must have thought every $100 uBlox4 & uBlox5 did it but they really don't.
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Developer

The ASP XR-01 UAV with the Ardupilot v2.4.6

Posted by Jean-Louis Naudin on November 19, 2009 at 12:19am

On nov 15,2009, this was a great day, my ASP XR-01 UAV fully equiped with the ArduPilot v2.4.6 has done successfully its first series of 10 full autonomous flights under the flight plan. The ASP XR-01 is a customized version of the Sonicliner from Multiplex, my model has already done a lot of flights since 2007 but only with a FMA thermopile based Copilot. Today, I have replaced the FMA Copilot by the full ArduPilot with 6 thermopiles, the shield v2 with its pressure sensors, a GPS and a full downlink telemetry system which communicates with my handheld ground station.The weather was windy at the morning (7 m/s SW gusting 9 m/s).I have conducted various tests flights :- full autonomous tests flights with a regular pre-recorded flight plan with 3 waypoints,- the self-learning mode of the v2.4.6: the 3D waypoints have been recorded in flight and then replayed again in full autonomous mode,- the automatic RTH (Return To Home) when the R/C transmitter is switched Off...All these tests flights have been done successfully.You will find a photos album of this event at :http://diydrones.com/photo/albums/the-flight-of-asp-xr01-uavThe ArduPilot firmware has been updated to the v2.4.6. This new personnal release includes a new parameter which is the GPS_MINIMUM ( this is the parameter 8-10 added in the header file). GPS_MINIMUM is the minimum ground speed required in case of strong front wind. In this case this was 3 m/s.Below, onboard video of a full autonomous flight in windy conditions :You will find this new firmware version at :http://code.google.com/p/ardupilotdev/downloads/listBest Regards,Jean-Louis
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ArduIMU V2 Test Application

Posted by Paul Mather on November 18, 2009 at 7:30pm
MainScreen9.gifThis application was designed to help you test your ArduIMU V2 by showing graphically and numerically all of the data being output from the IMU.You can download the Setup here: ArduIMUTest Setup (3 MB)This version of the Test App uses the MSCOMM control, so the max COM port number is 16 (unfortunately a limitation set forth my Microsoft).Before starting the application, make sure your ArduIMU is sitting flat with the serial cable towards yourself. When the application starts, it will automatically try to find the right COM port and it defaults to 38,400 baud.To reset the ArduIMU, click Disconnect and Connect again on the application. It takes about 10 seconds for the ArduIMU to boot up and start sending serial messages so please be patient.No need for LabView runtime! Yay! However, it now requires DirectX 8 runtime :)EDIT: A special thanks to Michal for providing the 3DS file and texture map! Thank you Michal!!!
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Pushing the UAV DevBoard to the limits

Posted by Bryan Cuervo on November 18, 2009 at 5:06pm

Tailless & Wingletless from Bryan Cuervo on Vimeo.

In one more attempt to test the abilities and push the limits of Bill's UAV DevBoard, I removed the winglets from my tailless design so now there are no horizontal or vertical stabilizers.The video is in three segments; the first showing manual flight with stabilization disengaged. You can see the difficulty I had flying a tight figure eight pattern. The next segment displays flight in stabilized mode which is noticeably smoother and the last shows turns at three waypoints.Even without the vertical stabilization, there is some yaw stability due to the wing sweep but it is obvious and pretty impressive that the DevBoard firmware can still handle a plane with marginal roll, pitch and yaw stability. Enjoy the cheesy music-----Note: cheesy music replaced with cool music.
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SC-203, Small UAVs, and You

Posted by Adam Kaplan on November 17, 2009 at 9:01pm
Earlier tonight I had the pleasure of attending an AIAA seminar on Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the National Airspace System led by John Moore, a principal design engineer with Rockwell Collins.SC-203, a special committee requested by both the AOPA and the FAA, is currently drafting recommendations for policies that will "assure the safe operation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) within the National Airspace System." A vast majority of the regulations SC-203 is in the process of drafting will concern large UAVs (> 55 lbs). Most, if not all, of the regulations levied at small UAVs (< 55 lbs), will be similar to the common-sense guidelines already in place for small amateur UAVs. While most of SC-203's recommendations are a ways off, Mr. Moore suggested that we could see concrete small UAV regulations in place by as soon as 2011.More info here:http://www.rtca.org/comm/Committee.cfm?id=45
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Curious about the legal issues behind UAVs? Listen to this week's podcast episode with Patrick Egan!

Posted by Tim Trueman on November 16, 2009 at 11:30pm
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/diydronesmp3Handy blog post linking to an article that details the ARC proposal from April 1, 2009 (read what you will into that): http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/article-on-faa-regulation-ofLearn what you can do to help move things along by listening!
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ArduIMU groundstation written in 'processing'

Posted by agmatthews on November 16, 2009 at 4:00am
I have created a basic 'ground station' for the ArduIMU in the 'Processing' IDE

The Processing development environment is very similar to the Arduino evironmentProcessing compiles into Java, it allows you to run the same code on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.Being a Mac user and suffering from not being able to find and run the correct version of the NI LabView runtime engine I decided to have a go at creating a ground station myself.This version ArduIMU_v004.zipwas the result of only a couple of hours of work so is a bit rough.NOTE: This is slightly updated from Original code uploaded - fixed 2 bugs.It borrows some of its design from the exiting LabView example and from Jose Julio's Python(?) exampleThe Ground Station:Logs All incoming Serial data to a text FileShows raw data in real timeDisplays key data in textDisplays Accel and Gyro data as bar graphsDisplays Roll Pitch and Yaw as rotating linesDisplays an 'aircraft' showing 3D orientationControls:Press Y to ignore YawPress L to start or stop LoggingPress Q to QuitHere it is operating (with no GPS - inside the house)I intend to keep developing the code for my own purposes.I'd be happy to hear any suggestions or requests for featuresPlease let me know what you think?-Andrew
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Gyro and accelerometer vibration tests

Posted by automatik on November 16, 2009 at 1:00am

I performed some rudimentary vibration tests on Razor 6 DOF board with Arduino - which has same gyros and accel as ArduIMU (LPR530AL and LY530ALH, ADXL335). In the above link you'll find complete description of test setup and bunch of images and graphs.Summary is:- Razor / Arduino, which is bulkier then ArduIMU, was placed inside HawkSky ( a la EasyStar) and tests were performed on the bench. I tried, as much it's possible on the bench, to simulate flight condition (i.e. no rigid connections to bench)- there were three groups of tests - no padding, "IMU" padding, and "IMU" + motor mount padding-Accelerometer data, gyro non-amplified signals, and gyro 4x amplified signals were recorded for part throttle and full throttle

Preliminary thoughts:- High Pass filter should probably be changed / eliminated - as noted in other threads by Andrus and Doug W.- I wouldn't mind if bigger capacitors for low pass filters (accels and gyros) were put in place- Padding matters. Location of padding + board placement matters.(some previous data on Razor at http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/razor-6dof-imu-arduino-dcm )
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3D Robotics

DIY Drones live chat/podcast tonight at 8:30pm PST

Posted by Chris Anderson on November 15, 2009 at 6:30pm
Free video streaming by Ustream Tonight (Sunday) we'll do our regular podcast, 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 a half hour early, at 8:30 PM PST, so I can catch a redeye to Boston tonight ;-) This week we'll by joined by Patrick Egan from RCAPA, the Remote Control Aerial Photography Association, talking about UAV regulations and the FAA process to integrate UAVs into the national airspace, something he's part of. Here's a little more on Patrick that he provided us: "I currently hold the title of director for the RCAPA, airspace advocacy committee member at AUVSI(Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International), and membership on the ICC (International Coordination Council) which inputs to the EUROCAE wg-73. I have also worked within the framework of the standards groups; ASTM F-38 and RTCA SC-203 (lightly regulated sub-group), and was a full member of the FAA's Small Unmanned Aircraft System Aviation Rulemaking Committee (FAA Order 1110.150)" Other themes in the podcast will include: --The latest on the ArduIMU+ --Chris gets a painful lesson in centrifugal forces --The DIY Drones dev teams ramp up --Favorite blogs posts of the week --And whatever other cool stuff comes up!
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Developer

More news.. (Including new 2Ch OptoCoupler and ArduIMU Flat issue)

Posted by Jordi Muñoz on November 15, 2009 at 1:30pm
For some reason my left index finger hurts me, so i can't type very well. ;-)I'm setting up ArduIMU and ArduPilot SVN repertory, in conjunction with Google code. In that way you will be able to track all the changes made to the code and spot the differences between revisions with the possibility to comment (or complain) about it.Lets do an interesting example, if you go to google code repertory for ardupilot and you click in the tab "source" and then in the option "Changes", or just click here: http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot/source/list. You will see a list of all the revisions of the codes, any change we do to the code will be displayed as a new revision.Now click on revision 5 "r5", over there you will see the log message (i forgot to say something) and the "Affected files". The affected files tells you if i have made a modification, addition, etc. to the specified source file.Now lets go to the point, if you want to see the changes made to the file "/trunk/GPS_UBLOX.pde" in r5 just click on the "diff" link. In the next page you will see a comparation from r1 and r5 files, scroll down and you will find a tiny correction in the checksum verification for the uBlox parser in red (old one) and green (for the new one), spotted and correct by Jason (hehe, my bad). This is what you should see:

***************************************************************************************Now for the store i have include a new and improved 2ch optocoupler:

Its pretty small (in the picture looks huge) but in reality is very tiny. Can be use as single or dual channels. Not to mention that has less components (smaller and cheaper) and more convenient for ucontrollers, because you don't need to supply 5V to power the board in the input side, you can just connect the 3.3V or 5V PWM signal output from your system or receiver (with ground) and you are done!-You can get the stand alone board from here.-Or the assembled version from here.***************************************************************************************For ArduIMu flat version, seems that the High Pass filter on the board is causing problems for some applications, so this the solution:-I will not populate the 1 Mohms resistors anymore.-The 4.7uF capacitor will be replaced by a zero ohms resistor, just to make a bridge, click here.You can see here the difference between the original board and the new board.And whalaa!! Problem solved. If you want me to remove your HP, just mail it to me and i will do it for free.***************************************************************************************-UPS shipping problem!! For some reason the store page is displaying the full prices (and no the prices with discount) for international shipments. If you want to use UPS for international but the displayed price is very expensive just email me and i will give you the real price and i will refund it.Best regards
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