A place for West Australian UAV / UAS enthusiasts or businesses to discuss topics, arrange meets or share experiences.
Hexicopter
Hi AllPurchased a FlyPro X600 and I am trying to sort out what would be the most suitable camera to use for FPV and some video/stills photography. The supplier has wired it up for a GoPro 3. That model is a little out of date but a good camera to start with although if I am going to purchase a camera I would like to only spend on a one of that last for sometime. I have had a look at the specs for the for what I will be flying it for Sony FDR-X1000V. The software has stabilisation and some…
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Sunday sounds good however mid week after work is also best for me. If Sunday, is early OK? I can get out early Sunday morning the easiest.
To illustrate my previous point about the size of Joe from the air. The attached image is from some software I wrote to capture analogue video streams. It's a frame of me taken from a downward pointing security camera in my plane earlier today. This is from an altitude of around 50m. I am in a red shirt as indicated by the circle!
A better camera would make it easier of course, but when the plane is kicking around in the wind and the camera is not stabilised, it's easy to get motion sickness!
Cool, I'm in Bayswater so not too far away. How about we meet at CopterCam HQ on Sunday morning say 10am? JB, Stephen, would that suit?
Autonomous is of course the goal, but I guess it would be best to build up to that. Get a reliable manual find to make sure the camera and search strategy are working, then add autonomous object recognition on the returned imagery. "Joe" will just be a dot in most images, even at low altitude, so things like thresholding selection are critical. This can be as hard to tune as your average PID :-)
There is also the thermal option since he usually has an IR lamp next to him. NIR may help - at least running visual and NIR cameras side by side would be good. Proper FLIR is even better if we can afford it!
I'm available this Sunday, the Coptercam office is located in Malaga, 15mins north of Perth is also available.
Some considerations:
- the more autonomous the more points awarded
- any IP and methods is going to end up in the public domain so commercialization and OBC aren't going to go well together
Evenings mid week is best for me as I fly on a weekly basis east for a day or two for work. We can use my office and workshop as a meeting location.
Sounds good JB. I hope I can have it "under control" :-). I'm free anytime this weekend so perhaps Sunday, when Stephen is back, would be good. Anyone have a room with a whiteboard where we can sketch out a few ideas. I'm happy to bring a few Matso's beers to get the ideas flowing!
I agree with James and Hai it's a big commitment .. that's why I mentioned that it will only work with the required support mechanism. Now as part of the commitment I really think we should use the obc development project to also kick off a business opportunity for SAR and environmental monitoring platforms. No use in squandering our efforts just for one event. Hopefully that will keep the levels of commitment up too.
We need all the skills as well. I'm more hardware orientated, so electronics hardware and design shouldn't be much of a problem, I can always get my electronics engineer to help anyways. On programming it would be good to have James on board to have a fixed programmer that has it "under control".
I'm not very confident with the automated find though. I'd rather concentrate on fast find and accurate drop. The auto find might be more hit and miss. What type of parameters are there to focus on? Just some colored jacket? You'd probably get away with a simple color scan then maybe?
I can also help with the documentation requirements etc...I do feasibility studies as part of our business etc, so it shouldn't be too hard.
As a first step we should meet up on the weekend or so. Then setup a group server for sharing info and communicating outside of this forum. Then start with the optics and downlink, get it as compact and effective as possible and then look for a airframe on which it will all fit.
I did mention a while back that I had unsuccessfully tried to get a team going at my former workplace, Curtin University over the last 3 years. As has been mentioned, it is a big time commitment, and while a number of people who I have spoken to said yes, there was a lack of commitment and nothing happened.
I have been researching the obc for over 3 years, and I found that many teams didn't even make it to the flying stage due to not making the documentation deliverables.
I have a licensed uav business, with workshop facilities, airframes, r/c, autopilots, and a/v equipment. I have a MAAA gold wings instructor in my team, and I have experience in objective c.
But I have said before i don't want be on an obc team unless the other members are willing to sign up for a two year commitment.
Plane flying a autonomously, easy, the challenge is autonomous visual location of the target, and then calculating bomb trajectory.