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Developer

Remzibi OSD Now Available!

Posted by Jordi Muñoz on September 24, 2009 at 5:00pm
I'm proud to offer one of the best OSD's on the market. Specially the configuration tool and the fact that is fully customizable!I also offered because we are working together (Remzibi, HappyKill and me) to make it 100% compatible with Ardupilot, in order to display all the telemetry data on it. In the near future you will be able to have a full autopilot with IMU and OSD telemetry. Nice.. What else you need? (beside directional antenna, we are working on that too).If you see them on stock you better hurry, because they will going to be mainly out stock due to the high demand!To buy or reserve one (in case they are out of stock), go to our store. Also you will be able to see a demo video i did. I've lost the Spektrum 2.4Ghz connection and i started to dive! What i did is rise the Remote Control in order to regain control, i was lucky and i was able to bring it back to home safely and all thanks to the Remzibi compass navigation!http://store.diydrones.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=remzibi_v11
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3D Robotics

Predator build and fly thread (tip stall warning!)

Posted by Chris Anderson on September 24, 2009 at 6:56am
For those of you interested in the Nitroplanes/Hobbyking Predator (they're essentially the same plane), here's a great build thread on how to make it, along with a very sobering set of warnings and lessons learned the hard way about how it flies. Basically, tip stalling is a huge problem and you have to land it with long, straight and fast glide paths or it will crash (I've already lost one that way). Basically, it's a poor airframe for UAV/FPV/AP use; we just use ours to show off at conferences.
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3D Robotics

ArduIMU now available!

Posted by Chris Anderson on September 22, 2009 at 12:36pm

At last, the long-awaited ArduIMU is available! You can buy the hardware here (the first batch sold out within minutes, but he's making more quickly). The software is in beta, and you can find it here. It is, as promised, $99, making it the first sub-$100 AHRS in the world! Proper documentation is coming soon, but here are the highlights: Features -3 Axis Accelerometer -3 Axis Gyroscopes -Arduino Compatible (Atmega328 onboard) -Source Code included and Open Source! -Power LED (Green) -Status LEDs (Red, Blue, Yellow) -SPI port available for more sensors. -GPS port (uBlox ready!) -Code based on Bill Premerlani's Direction Cosine Matrix This is actually considered a full Attitude Heading Reference System, because it is IMU hardware plus the software to interpret the sensor readings and convert them into absolute attitude and heading information. The output is a serial ASCII string with raw sensor values and the DCM matrix values. You would use this with an autopilot board to convert those matrix values into commands for the your control surfaces. The board works without the GPS module, but in that case the yaw readings are unreliable. If you add the GPS, the yaw is corrected. We will be releasing a magnetometer module to do the same thing indoors.
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Developer

An OSD alternative

Posted by Jason Short on September 21, 2009 at 10:30pm
OK this is half joke, half serious. This is a quick idea I had for the autopilot/FPV unit I'm building. I don't have an OSD and I'm afraid of investing an extra 300+ on a plane that will be going through flight tests in a week. I also don't have Xbee radios nor am I interested in staring at my laptop while my plane flies around. Especially when I've spent so much time on the FPV gear. Here's my lame/fun idea: I picked up a Speech Jet chip that I will wire into the microphone input of my Range Video 900Mhz transmitter. I'm sending out SW Serial through a free pin on the ArduPilot to call out waypoints, heading, altitude, speed, etc.Here's an un-amplified recording. The audio into the transmitter should be pristine when it's done.Play AAC fileBreadboard:3689325507?profile=original
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100KM

NW AUVSI con

Posted by crystal garris on September 20, 2009 at 10:31am
held Friday sept 18th , about 24 people showed up .representing places like Insitu ,near space corp ,cloud cap,nwuav propulsion ,hood tech corp ,nw tech,evergreen helicopters , arcturus,Peak-Aviation and In Vitro aviation. It was held at the beautiful Hoffstadt Bluff Visitor Center near Mt St Helens in Washington .Things kicked off at 11:00 am ,Joe from NWAUV acted as mc . Joe started off talking about how the chapter is being formed etc with some informative Q&A he then talked about NWUAV and showed off their engine and models he also talked about the heavy fuel injection system they are working on for their engine line up. It uses MEMS technology originally designed by HP for printing to atomize the very hard to burn heavy fuels .After that we all stood up one by one and introduce ourselves then it was time for some mingling and lunch . After lunch the guys from Near Space did a slide show with videos on some of the high altitude uav drops they have done , we are talking 150,000 ft altitude , very cool stuff .Aram from Hood tech then spoke about hood tech and his efforts to get kids involved in robotics using lego mindstorms and of course he was very excited to hear about Chris's lego auto pilot . After that we talked more about forming the chapter ,people volunteered for the various posts and we decided on a name we picked "the Cascade chapter" although "the Sasquatch chapter" was in the running. Thing wrapped up about 4:00 then it was time for the drive home. here are some pics I took ,I really liked the variable pitch prop.

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3D Robotics

Blimpduino now available in an "all you need" kit

Posted by Chris Anderson on September 19, 2009 at 9:30pm

We've now released Bilmpduino with the option to get the RC kit, LiPo battery and charger all in one. The only thing you need beyond that to have a fully autonomous or RC-controlled blimp is helium from a party balloon kit (available at Target or any party store). The RC gear is a 4 Channel 2.4Mhz transmitter and receiver from Hobbyking and the LiPo is a very small and light Rhino 460mah unit. The included charger is a Turnigy 2-3 cell balancing charger with 12v leads for car use. The total package, with the Blimpduino kit, RC unit, battery and charger is $155.99 or just $109.90 for Blimpduino with the battery and charger (you supply your own RC gear). You can buy it here!
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3D Robotics

DIY Drones live chat/podcast Sunday night at 9:00pm PST

Posted by Chris Anderson on September 19, 2009 at 6:00pm
Free video streaming by Ustream On Sunday night we'll do our third 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 9:00 PM PST and will probably go about 40 minutes. This week we'll by joined by Jordi Munoz and will discuss: --The new Ardu IMU --Bill Premerlani's progress with the UAVDevBoard --Some other products we have planne --Coolest posts of the week --And whatever other cool stuff comes up!
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UAV Altitude Record

Posted by Geoff on September 19, 2009 at 4:39pm
Hi all,Just wanted to fill you in on a small UAV altitude record that was just set (still unofficial at the moment) using an autopilot similar to the ones discussed here. Here's a story about it: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/september14/airplane-self-pilot-091809.htmlThe record attempt was made by a group of graduate students who took a course this spring in the Aero/Astro Department at Stanford University. I was the teaching assistant for the course. This year the goal for the course was to design a small UAV to beat the remote control altitude record (~11, 000 ft). There were four teams of 4-5 students that had 10 weeks to go from a blank sheet of paper to a successful vehicle. The autopilot and propulsion system were provided, but the teams had to write their own control software and design/build the vehicles. The only sensor allowed was GPS (+ an barometric pressure sensor for the record attempt).At the end of the class in June we had a flyoff where the teams had to demonstrate their vehicles by repeatedly climbing between 50 ft and 400 ft (to stay within FAA regulations). All four team succeed in demonstrating greater than 10,000 ft of cumulative altitude gain. A few students continued working on the project over the summer, culminating in a world record altitude attempt a couple weeks ago at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center.The altitude record attempt was for an autonomously controlled electrically powered UAV weighing less than 5kg, FAI Category U.2a Group 2. The news article gives a good account of the record attempt flights. The record altitude was 2177 m (7142 ft), which ended up being limited by winds aloft, not battery energy. Only about 40% of the charge was used getting to the record altitude.Here are some pictures of the airplanes and the autopilot/GPS boards.

I designed and prototyped the autopilot for the course early this year. It uses the dsPIC30F4011 microcontroller and the uBlox LEA-5H + sarantel helical GPS antenna (basically the same as is being sold now, but in a slightly larger footprint). The xBeePro or xBeeProXSC is used for commands/telemetry. RC controller commands are read by the custom ground station software using a transmitter-to-USB cable and sent over the xBee to the airplane. This software based failsafe was not ideal, but it was the lightest option. The autopilot has inputs available for other sensors (thermopile, IMU), they just weren't integrated for the class and there isn't any software written to handle them.If anyone is interested I should be able to post a BOM, the board files and the autopilot/ground station software, but it likely won't be supported at all since we are working on a smaller/lighter design to replace this one.-Geoff
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DIY Drones order arrived today, now time to get to work!

Posted by isobot on September 19, 2009 at 1:33pm
Like many DIYers, I have way to many projects going on at once. Not sure how or why this is so but it always happens. This being Saturday I figure that I can dedicate most of the day to finishing my airframe.List of things to do:1. trim wing foam, use lightweight spackle to fill the defects.2. go thru my collection of heat shrink covering to see if I have enough yellow to cover the wings, with red for a wing tip.3. Cover the said wings in yellow on top and red on bottom, two colors really help with the visuals at a distance. (is the plane banking towards you or away from you?) The right wingtip will be red also for the same reason.4. Rough out a new Pod fuse, just got a Sony Webbie HD cam which will go in the nose. Need to figure out where to put the ardupilot and gear. With the twin boom set up the servos are in the wing so plenty of room in fuse with no constraints on how far forward or rearward equip. can go. The pods are carved EPP and can be built to suit each payload.5. weigh everything! I really need a better all up weight estimate, I am afraid my outrunner motor will not be up to the task. I would like to fly next week end so have to order a larger one if it is not.6. Document todays build, I always forget to photograph the builds so will try and be better with this project!My airframe is based on the Polly Pusher, which is based in part on the E-Cat. I think these designs have a lot to offer for UAV use. The Polly Pusher is constructed out of a $5 Walmart Glider and coroplast. Inexpensive, simple and anyone can build it. I use EPP for the Pods, more crash protection than EPS but I have a flying wing made out of the walmart glider (EPS) and it has withstood much abuse, five years and it is still flying! Check out acesims.com for more info and directions on how to build.
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Tune and Trim a Magpie

Posted by Pete Burnight on September 19, 2009 at 11:16am
I just finished setting up my Magpie AP airplane to use the ArduPilot UAV controller, and used a fast and easy way to setup the PID and trim values.I made a ground station that can send new trim values up to the plane while it's in flight. That made trimming easy - only took two flights to get it straight, level, and stable.

The ground station consists of an ATMega168 running the code, an XBee pro for the radio transceiver, a box full of buttons, a rotary pot to adjust values, a serial LCD for the display and a 1700 mah NiMh battery.The ArduPilot code was changed to put many of the adjust and trim constants into EEPROM settings and code variables so they could be changed, and stored on the fly as tuning progressed.The ground station allows me to send up new PID values (Kp, Ki, Kd, Min/Max) and trim settings (roll_trim, pitch_trim) as well as any other variables I'm adjusting (Fly_by_Wire_Roll_Gain, Fly_by_Wire_Throttle_Set_Point, etc)

The ArduPilot code only required a small change to add the code required to receive the messages from the ground. (The GPS was removed, and the XBee on the plane was connected to both Rx & Tx for send/receive to/from the ground station during the trimming process)

The commands from the ground are very simple. I only send one value at a time. ( Roll_Kp = 0.3 ) The ground station controller uses a Menu system to scroll thru the various commands available. Each screen shows the variable being adjusted, it's current value (sent from the plane via the std ArduPilot Print_Data sequence) The rotary pot is used to dial in a new value. Once the value is set via the pot, one of the red buttons is pressed to actually transmit the command to the airplane. The code in the plane sends back an "ack" and the ground station beeps 3 times to signal a successful transmission of the data to the plane. That way I KNOW the new value is in place. I can also confirm the new value via the display - the aircraft is always transmitting the current values - and these show up in the ground station display in real time.Using this ground station to up-link data to the aircraft made setup and trimming a breeze.In general, here is the sequence I followed:1. Do ground testing of the UAV control stuff - test the sensors to confirm control surfaces move in the proper direction when tilting the aircraft.2. Get the aircraft flying under manual control. Adjust and trim for straight, level flight.3. Switch to "Fly by Wire" mode and watch what happens.(Be ready to quickly switch back to manual control)Does the aircraft dive?, climb?, Roll?, wobble?, Stall?, all of the above?4. My aircraft oscillated about the roll axis, and wanted to dive.I knew this meant the roll PID was set too high, and the pitch trim was off.5. I decided to work on the roll values first.- I turned off the pitch PID (by setting pKp and pKi to zero.)- I turned off the roll Ki (set it to very low: .04), so I could first tune Kp.Oscillations mean Kp is set too high. The PID is overshooting it's mark.There are some good articles on tuning PIDs.The current EasyStar Kp value was 0.7. I started dropping by 0.1 to 0.6, 0.5, and at 0.4 the oscillations stopped. I took manual control of the airplane, placed it in a steep roll, and turned on the AutoPilot. The plane immediately righted itself, and returned to almost straight flight. Increasing the roll Ki to 0.1 brought the aircraft to a more stable level position. (adjust Kp for quick, gross response without oscillations. Adjust Ki to fine tune the setting)6. I needed to adjust the pitch trim. The aircraft wanted to dive.I turned the pitch PID values back on (Kp = 1.3, Ki = 0.7)The current trim setting was zero. I sent up the value pitch_trim = 10. From manual straight and level flight, I switched into Fly by Wire mode, aircraft immediately dove. Back to manual control. Sent up the value pitch_trim = -10. Entered Fly by Wire, and the aircraft was flying straight and level.I had been hoping I could read the pitch & roll data real time during flight via the ground station, but I kept getting radio interference during flight, and unreliable radio connection while the aircraft was overhead. We had to glide the aircraft low and slow (no motor) near the ground station to send up commands.

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Developer

AttoPilot XYZ Horizon Sensors Available!

Posted by Jordi Muñoz on September 18, 2009 at 12:00pm
Hello, for those waiting for the XYZ now is the time! I stock some units yesterday and they are almost sold out but i will add more this weekend.Sorry i had to increase the price, the stock market for those IR sensor is low and i was unable to get them with the same price as before, actually the price increase of each sensor was just like 2.10 dlls, but that's enough to increase price up to 13 bucks per unit! DAMN! Otherwise everybody will have to wait undefined time.http://store.diydrones.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=SE-0002-01
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T3

UAV search&rescue flight with onboard camera, real sound

Posted by Krzysztof Bosak on September 18, 2009 at 5:00am

UAV search&rescue flight with onboard camera, real sound from Krzysztof Bosak on Vimeo.

The video shows production prototype that has made around 10 flights.It is able to fly T3-2 Butterfly pattern at around 400s (deadline Oct 4th!!!),might be much faster after putting more lead on the nose and trimming the elevator (15min and a few trials).BTW I would like to sell this plane.It features FLEXIPILOT LITE proto, which has the same functionality as FLEXIPILOT, buthas no pitch and roll gyros (bank angle automatically reduced to 40deg), has minimally worse damping in pitch during inclement weather, no status LEDs (only flight ready LED, but it doesnt matter much as teh plane is integrated).It has narrower fuselage than easystar but glides VERY nicely, a lot of potential for heavy lift (some 300g+).http://www.aerialrobotics.eu/flexipilot/flexipilot-advantage-en.pdfhttp://www.aerialrobotics.eu/flexipilot/flexipilot-features-en.pdfhttp://www.aerialrobotics.eu/flexipilot/flexipilot-installation-en.pdfhttp://www.aerialrobotics.eu/flexipilot/flexipilot-navigation-en.pdfhttp://www.aerialrobotics.eu/flexipilot/flexipilot-triggers-en.pdfhttp://www.aerialrobotics.eu/flexipilot/flexipilot-weather-en.pdfhttp://www.aerialrobotics.eu/flexipilot/flexipilot-osd-en.pdfhttp://www.aerialrobotics.eu/flexipilot/flexipilot-brochure-en.pdfhttp://www.aerialrobotics.eu/flexipilot/flexipilot-command-set-en.pdfhttp://www.aerialrobotics.eu/flexipilot/flexipilot-software-en.pdf

I would like to sell the complete tuned plane for 950EUR, personal sale, full support on autopilot and future adjustments,you need RC receiver, lipo3S and camera in order to fly.The plane is also featured here:http://www.vimeo.com/6638706kbosak@box43.pl
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T3

AileronAssist versions 1.7 and 1.8 released

Posted by William Premerlani on September 17, 2009 at 3:30pm

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UAV DevBoard pilots:This is an update of a previous post.I deleted version 1.6 of AileronAssist firmware and released version 1.7.The reason is that I noticed that the firmware fail safe does not work in version 1.6. Although the commanded return to launch will work just fine in version 1.6, loss of signal return to launch does not. If you turn off your transmitter, and if your radio does not have a fail safe, its not going to be pretty.If you are using a radio with its own fail safe, it does not matter whether you use version 1.6 or 1.7 of AileronAssist. But if you might ever use a radio that does not have fail safe, you should use version 1.7.Previous versions of AileronAssist are fine. It is only version 1.6 that is affected.I never noticed it before, because I no longer use radios that do not have built in fail safe.Also, version 1.8 of AileronAssist, with waypoint processing, was just released. It supercedes both version 1.6 and 1.7Best regards,Bill Premerlani
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100KM

Open airframe

Posted by crystal garris on September 17, 2009 at 11:06am
Dev photos for Open Airframe , an open source airframe i will be publishing based on THE EZG

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MADE OF:balsa , plywood ,1 EZG kit ,CF tail boom and a couple 2 litter coke bottles for the clear plasticthe holes along the side are for mounting modular equipment racks that can slide in from the top.
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Robust GPS Antennas (not modules)

Posted by Scott Plunkett on September 16, 2009 at 1:01pm
As many of you know, I have been looking for and even doing some development on some GPS modules. I met this vendor today who makes the most robust GPS antennas I have ever seen - Quad Helix 30db gain active antenna with built in SAW and LNA you can take a hammer to it, and it will just keep on tracking - awesome! The key is the mold-over they are using, it can take a real pounding, and with an O-ring could form a weather-tight seal to the airframe. You could just mount antennas on each of your airframes and only ever buy one actual module - but seriously, I have no affiliation with them.http://www.jimdgrayassoc.com/index_files/STUBBY_PRO.htmThey are pricey, but you'd only have to replace one destroyed complete unit to justify the price. Just thought you guys might be interested. We have already placed our first order.
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