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Daylight timelapse from autonomous hover

Posted by Jack Crossfire on March 29, 2008 at 9:00pm
Got some timelapse of a hillside in wind. Wanted to face away from the sun this time but there was nothing to see. Note the sun reflecting off water on the hillside. These were 3k images.
Daylight timelapse from autonomous helicopter from heroine worshipper on Vimeo.Ning is the only game in town for 3k images. Had to go up to ISO 400 to get enough shutter speed to overcome vibration. Crummy camera kept going for smaller iris instead of faster shutter.

Small landing zone, but still $40,000,000 for those 5 sq ft.
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a few ideas gleaned from the microblimp design

Posted by Howard Gordon on March 29, 2008 at 9:00am
Along with a couple of Tri-Turbofan toy blimps, one of the purchases for my early blimp experiments was a Plantraco MicroBlimp, which is the company's current offering. After ordering, I found out that it was too small to carry any useful payload, so I left it in the box until deciding to take a closer look yesterday.Plantraco seems to specialize in really small radio controlled aircraft. They tend to be somewhat expensive, but there are some cool designs. Their current blimp design bears no resemblance to the original Tri-turbofan except that it still uses 3 motors. However, these motors are really small - approx 6mm diameter. The motors may have been designed for pagers or cellphones - I haven't worked with motors this size, but they seem to have a lot of power. These seem to be similar in size to the pager motors sold by Solarbotics. Props are 45mm diameter (1.75"), and everything is attached to a very thin flexible circuit board (0.63mm or 0.025") that's been trimmed to shape. The entire circuit assembly with motors weight 8gm, and total weight with the lipoly 90mAh battery is 10gm. I really like the small motors - I'll have to get some samples from Solarbotics just to see how they compare with the larger N20's.

Two other interesting features - the battery pack uses magnets for the battery terminals, so installing the battery pack is quite simple. I read somewhere that they have a patent pending on this, so someone should do a patent search before taking the idea into production. Also, they use magnets for ballast - also a slick idea (more elegant than kids' eating utensils). Only problem with the magnets is that they will probably screw up the local magnetic field for compass readings, but still something to consider.

The blimp itself is 20" diameter, so it holds approx 2 cu ft of helium. I didn't bother to weigh the envelope, but would guess 20gm, so with electronics, the total package weighs 30gm. I had to add more than 20gm ballast to get neutrally buoyant, so there's a lot to be said for minimizing the weight of the motors and electronics.One additional observation - I don't really care for the 3 motor propulsion system for blimps, as compared with two motors plus a servo for thrust vectoring. However, the 3 motor approach is simple, light and cheap.
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3D Robotics

PCB fabbing advice

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 28, 2008 at 11:30am
For those of you getting into creating your own PCBs, here's some quick advice: We use the CADSoft Eagle software (free version can handle up to two PCB layers). It's powerful but pretty hard to learn. For easier to use (albeit more limited) software, you might try PCBArtist (also free). I'm a newbie, so I use PCBArtist. Jordi is an old hand, so he's now using the pro version of the Eagle software. Once you've designed your board you need to send it off to be fabbed. Here's some advice on the best companies to do that, from a friend, a pro in the industry: "Most of my fab is done by 4PCB. They have good service, online-quotes, fast turn-times, web-tracking and good prices for rectangular any-layer boards. $500 free for first-time customers. For extra cheap small quantities of 2-layer rectangular boards without soldermask or legend: BarebonesPCB (they are actually a re-badged 4pcb). For odd shapes, cut-outs or gold plating, I use: BACircuits. 4pcb can do it all, but they charge a hefty premium for non-standard stuff."
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3D Robotics

New double-sided BlimpBot board!

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 28, 2008 at 11:30am
Our progress towards a $79 UAV mod kit for toy RC blimps is going well. We've now got a much better, two-sided PCB board that we're having fabbed. It's smaller, has more features and now integrates the IR sensors on the same board (Eagle schematic here; mask files here) The board is an Arduino (ATMega168 CPU) clone at heart (we call it "Blimpduino"), with: --Four motor drivers (two 2-motor chips) --Four IR sensors and associated supporting components --Ground-based IR beacon --A choice between rechageable (more expensive) and non-rechargeable (cheaper) Lithium batteries --Port for Ping))) ultrasonic sensor --ISCP and FTDI programing ports Pretty cool--a complete blimp autopilot and sensor package (with one ground beacon) for $79! Don't place your orders yet--we've still got a lot of sourcing and testing still to come--but I'm looking at having it ready for Christmas ;-)
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3D Robotics

Interview: Martin Müller and the Paparazzi Project (now less DIY!)

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 25, 2008 at 10:30pm
We've been following the Paparazzi autopilot project with interest for several years. It's a European open source technology initiative that has created both thermopile (infrared sensor) and gyro-based autopilot hardware, along with quite sophisticated software to run it. But the problem to date is that the only way to use it was to fab your own PCB boards and otherwise built the hardware from scratch. We're all about DIY here, but that's a bit much for most people! So I was delighted to learn last week that you can now buy the Paparazzi hardware pre-made, either as fully-populated PCB or a bare board to solder yourself. That will significantly expand the potential audience for Paparazzi, which is a great thing. To mark this moment, I asked Martin Müller, who was part of the team that gave this awesome demo of global coordination of Paparazzi flights, to explain more about the project. Q: First, can you tell us a little about yourself? As a day job I work as an electrical engineer for a big automotive supplier here in Germany. We do car navigation systems. I have been building RC aircrafts since being a kid. It is amazing what is possible today - much more than what I always dreamed of! Q) Who are the core team now developing Paparazzi? The Paparazzi project started at ENAC in Toulouse, France in 2003 with Antoine Drouin and Pascal Brisset. Later in 2004 people in Germany and Arizona built Paparazzi systems and contributed. Since then more people joined. Some names and pictures can be found at the end of the 24C3 presentation. We try to meet about twice a year, usually at the location of a competition. Q) In broad strokes, what makes Paparazzi special? What was the motivation for developing it? The idea was to build an autonomous aircraft to be able to take part in competitions. Over the years the various competitions pushed the technology forward. The special thing about Paparazzi is that people from diverse fields come together to work on making very small autonomous aircrafts. There are aerodynamics people good in building airframes, flight control, software, electronics and not to forget RC control. Q) Where is Paparazzi going next? The next competition will be in Braunschweig, Germany this summer. Work is in progress to get the quadcopter fully autonomous. Also scientific meteo applications will be important this year. Q) Paparazzi is based on a thermopile sensor (as is the commercial AttoPilot). What are the pros and cons of that, as opposed to gyros and accelerometers? Thermopiles give you an excellent way of flying autonomous aircrafts. They give you an absolute reading which keeps the whole control simple. We have flown in mild Europe, the deserts of south-west US, tropical rainstorms in Florida, near a glacier on Iceland, hot northern India and last week a Paparazzi equipped team collected meteo data by flying from the helicopter deck of a Norwegian coast guard icebreaker. There are limits for thermopiles but they usually do not hurt you. As a hobbyist you do not want to fly in bad weather anyway. For commercial usage - if there is thick fog the on board video camera can not see anything anyway. It will not work in fog or inside clouds and there needs to be some temperature difference. Generally the limit where thermopiles do not work any more is far more towards bad weather than what you would think. Q) Finally, can you describe the set-up and organizational challenges that were required to pull off your amazing CCC demo? The two way telemetry stream was transferred through TCP/IP. Off-the-shelf video software was used for the on board pictures. Some special efforts had to be done to be able to get a connection to the German airfield as we only had a cellphone which was very well shielded by the network firewall. One team each was waiting at the fields in France and Germany, ready to take off and fly the mission!
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3D Robotics

Minimum Blimp V2 PCB files, code

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 25, 2008 at 9:14pm
This is just a quick update for those following along with the Minimum Blimp UAV project. We've modded a toy RC blimp and created our own Arduino clone PCB (complete with motor controllers and ports). Here are the PCB files and source code: --Schematic (Eagle file format) is here. --PCB etch file is here. --Arduino source code is here. Next up: a new PCB that's smaller and integrates the IR sensors. Just as soon as I learn how to use the Eagle software properly....
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Nothing impressive, just my first aerial video.

Posted by Wai Weng Kong on March 25, 2008 at 7:02pm
This is my first aerial video taken with The World Models Super Frontier Senior 46. It's quite a large trainer plane with 2040mm wing span and a lot of dihedral. The fuselage also has a lot of room for my equipments.

The video is taken with the Canon PowerShot A430 digital camera attached to the bottom of the fuselage.

Currently, there is no autopilot system in the plane yet. The plane is controlled manually. I just start recording the video before I take off the plane. It turned out the video is quite shaky without the stabilizing platform for the camera.
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diydrones vs rcgroups vs runryder

Posted by Jack Crossfire on March 24, 2008 at 6:25pm
Rcgroups & runryder definitely seemed to dry up after diydrones appeared. They're now more focused on promoting businesses while diydrones has attracted the hobbyists, but Ning really needs more organization than the Latest Activity list. Here's a robotic copter update.

Had to point into the wind for more stability. That's also where the sun is.
More autonomous hover in wind from heroine worshipper on Vimeo.
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3D Robotics

Where are the "add blog post" and "add forum discussion" links?!

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 21, 2008 at 8:07am
Last night Ning, our social network hosting platform, pushed out a few new features and in the process changed our look and feel a bit. Among those changes: the "Add a blog post" link at the bottom of the blog listings and "Add a discussion" link at the bottom of the forum listings are gone. So now how do you do those things? Answer: use the tabs above. You add a discussion topic on the "Forum" tab and add a blog post on the "My Page" tab (under the "My Blog" subtab). This isn't ideal, and I assume it's just temporary until Ning rolls out a more flexible layout toolset. But in the meantime, the tabs are your friend ;-)
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3D Robotics

Autonomous blimps at MAKE NYC meetup

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 21, 2008 at 7:30am
MAKE Magazine's New York City meetup (a hardware hackathon open to all) is next week, on the 27th, and this time they've got blimps! Here's the announcement: What can a group of Makers do with a tank of helium? We're not sure! Care to find out? The sixth Make:NYC Meeting includes: Challenge: Blimps You've got brains, we've got blimps. Two teams will compete to make an ordinary RC blimp perform extraordinarily. Arrive on time to make sure you get in on all the lighter-than-air action. Show and Tell Meet your fellow NYC Makers and show off your creations! Bring your gadgets, gizmos, sketches, ideas… anything you’d like to put in the spotlight. We encourage NYC Makers to collaborate on and discuss DIY projects. If you’re planning to bring a project, drop us a note at meetings@makenyc.org. If you’d like to attend we have plenty of space for everyone, but please RSVP! Location Make Offices, 2nd Floor (Google Map) 325 Gold St. at Flatbush Ave. Brooklyn, NY 11201
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3D Robotics

Minimum Blimp V2 update

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 19, 2008 at 6:00am
As mentioned before, for the second version of our Minimum Blimp Jordi and I decided to mod a RC toy blimp on the grounds that it will be cheaper and more robust than trying to build the whole mechanical assembly ourselves (the aim is to have a fully programmable and hackable blimp UAV kit for less than $100). Jordi started with $15 toy (gondola shown above), ripped out the RC electronics and built his own Arduinio board, IR sensor package and added a Ping))) sensor for altitude hold. Here are a few shots of the first version (please forgive the protoboard disasters--we'll neaten it up for the next rev!)

Underside of the blimp gondola, showing custom IR sensors for navigation and Ping))) ultrasonic sensor for altitude hold. (enlarge to check out the DIYDrones branding on the IR board!)

Inside of the blimp gondola, showing the custom Arduino board. This Toy blimp just got a major brain transplant! We'll be showing a more polished version of this blimp at the FIRST Robotics National Championship in Atlanta, April 17-19.
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UAV Project Progress - flight gear simulation, first steps

Posted by Cory on March 18, 2008 at 8:22pm

I am working on using flight gear to simulate and test my UAV code. The screen shot shows flight gear and the C# application that is receiving the data. the way I see it, the first step is to read some data out of flight gear. I am using a TCP socket to read the data. I have achieved display of the raw string of data. My next step will be to parse the data into meaningful bits. I have been looking all over the net for information on using flight gear for UAV simulation. I haven't found anything I can use, so I am trying the roll your own approach. The idea is to be able to run my own control algorithms on live flight gear data.Let me know in the comments if you know of any prior work that I could use to facilitate this.
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Autonomous UAV Aerobatics Project

Posted by Cory on March 18, 2008 at 6:54pm

_autonomous_UAV_aerobatics_airplane_hover.jpg

here are two notes below that describe the fantastic video demonstration of the MIT Autonomous Airplane Indoor Flying test. Keep your eye on this page for more info in the future."In these flight tests, a fixed vertical landing platform was designed and attached to a concrete pole in the middle of the RAVEN flight space to allow the fixed-wing aircraft to land and perch on the pole. This test is similar to the test performed on January 28th, 2007 except in this test the platform was attached to the wall. This test was repeated number of times and a video shows repeating the vehicle take-off, hover and land sequence twice. In this flight test, the aircraft took off from the vertical landing apparatus and autonomously moved to a location in the northeastern area of the room in the hover configuration. Once the vehicle reached this location, the vehicle was commanded to transition to level flight mode and flew 3 laps around the room. These three laps were completed in about 10 secs (since the vehicle was flying at approx. 6 m/s during the flight). Following the laps, the system commanded the vehicle to transition back to the hover mode and once it stablized itself began its decent to attempt a landing on the vertical landing apparatus. Note that room is approx 8 meters wide."I found this post on DailyDiy.comThe site is fantastic. It is impressive work.
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3D Robotics

What does "Open Source Hardware" mean?

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 18, 2008 at 2:00pm
Here at DIY Drones, we adhere to open source principles wherever possible. That means we aim to share (that means post it, not make people ask for it) code, schematics, PCB files, parts lists, instructions, and algorithms for every project featured here. In practice, that's not always possible (not all project have PCB files; not all projects need schematics), but it's our philosophy. Is that "open source"? In spirit, yes. But in letter, it's more complicated, because hardware is more complicated than software. We can't GPL a parts list, and the license that we do use for this site, a Creative Commons "Attribution" license (use/modify what you want, but give credit), doesn't have the same viral characteristics of the GPL in the sense that people who use our intellectual property are free to keep closed their "derivative work" if they want. This is all a bit messy and complicated, but fortunately Phil Torrone of Make Magazine gave a great talk on Open Source Hardware at Etech that helps explains all this, and it's now available.
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3D Robotics

A clever approach to indoor beacons: ultrasound + IR = GPS

Posted by Chris Anderson on March 18, 2008 at 5:13am
A Luxembourg-based team has come up with a really clever indoor navigation system that combines ultrasonic beacons with IR to achieve absolute position ("synthetic GPS"), much like the NorthStar system we use but entirely DIY. As they describe it: "The infrared flash of a single beacon arrives instantaneously at the robot that is equipped with a combined infrared/ultrasonic receiver. But the ultrasonic signal only arrives with a certain delay, due to the "slow" sound velocity, in comparison to the speed of light. The receiver is able to measure the time lag between both signals and deduce the distance between the robot and the beacon." Features include: # participation of up to 7 beacons that may be placed at strategically interesting places # the beacons send out strong IR and ultrasonic signals that don't require reflectors on the receiver side # like RF-beacons, these beacons transmit their identification number, making localization easy # always one beacon acts as the master beacon, sending out a synchronization message to all other slave beacons The project is entirely open source and is in the proto-board stage (see below). It was designed to work with LEGO Mindstorms NXT and as such uses I2C output. But that, of course, is also readable by any microcontroller, so it could work as well with Arduino or Basic Stamp. Looks like a great opportunity for one of our PCB whiz's to make a small and light version for blimps!

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YARB 1.0 - added compass and ultrasonic sensors

Posted by Howard Gordon on March 16, 2008 at 5:01pm
I attached some additional sensors today - a pair of Maxbotics EZ0 ultrasonic ranging modules and a Honeywell HMC6532 I2C compass. Also, I added an extender to the camera module to point downward about 30-degrees and I finally adjusted the focus. I think the camera angle is pretty good now - the wide angle lens has a field-of-view of approx 120-degrees, so the bottom of the frame captures objects almost directly below.I haven't yet filtered the sensor data. The ultrasonic data is pretty solid - the forward looking readings bounce around a bit, but the download readings are fairly consistent. However, I am thinking about going with a narrower beam module - probably the EZ1. Also, I would like to add a couple of side-looking modules to enable some degree of mapping capability.The compass is less consistent, but I suspect the may be due to magnetic field interference from the motors. When I was recording, I wasn't paying attention to the readings, so I will have to run some tests to see if the compass reading change depending on whether or not the rotors are firing.Here's a snapshot of the gondola with the additional sensors -

I'll work on cleaning up the data a bit, and then will start to write a script (there's an onboard C interpreter) to let the blimp wander around on its own, perhaps following a course based on heading. After that, I will add some logic to use the camera to lock onto an object and follow it around while maintaining altitude and avoiding collision - that will be a bit more challenging.Here's a short video clip of the latest test -
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YARB 1.0 update - first untethered flight

Posted by Howard Gordon on March 13, 2008 at 4:26pm
Here's a video clip from YARB 1.0's first untethered flight. I captured the video while sitting in my office while the blimp explored the hallway and front room (the dogs completely ignored it). The camera is a bit out of focus, and the afternoon light washed out the picture somewhat, but you get the idea.You can see the modified console with buttons to vector the props and invert the video. I'm actually surprised with how easy it is to pilot YARB - it is very responsive. Next step is to add the ultrasonic sensors and compass.
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