DIY Drones

Latest Activity

> Jason wrote: > ArduIMU will be supported in 2.5.1. Doug is busy with that right now and we'll have that ready soon. will it be possible to use ArduIMU with NMEA (Remzibi's) GPS ? I've read somewhere there is a performance issue with such setup ?
10 minutes ago
Jason: Can you pm me I'm still having gps issues.
26 minutes ago
Richard, Thanks for the detailed response. I'll look into it tonight.
46 minutes ago
Jason, firstly thanks for all your hard work in creating version 2.5. I have downloaded the latest version from SVN and am having problems with the failsafe (where have you heard that before?). It did work OK in the pre release versions, and I think…
1 hour ago
Thanks for the comment. By tilting the rotors inwards/outwards, I'll control pitch (nose up/down). As shown, tilting rotors inwards towards center line will create an upwards force on the outside of the rotors, which will travel 90deg to the front t…
1 hour ago
In my opinion you only need to turn rotos in front back direction, not in right left side. You can remove two servos.
1 hour ago
Noo, it is WHCD-16X (Whatever Hand Can Draw).
2 hours ago
Ah, right now Throttle based failsafe only works for ESCs that use low PWM values for idle. That will be added in the next version.
2 hours ago
Kasper Pedersen added a discussion
Hey all, I want to make a custom rover in aluminium, but i'm not sure which electronic components i'll need. I would like to be able to control the rover from my laptop, so i was thinking about getting an xbee module inside. I have an arduino alre…
3 hours ago
Jeff added a blog post
Rotors pitched to induce nose-up pitch and counter-clockwise yaw I am beginning to think that this is do-able. it looks very heavy, and i need to do the math to figure out how much thrust I can get out of my brushed motors. I reduced rotor dia…
3 hours ago
No problem guys....Adaptive control is not trivial by any means.
3 hours ago
Faisal, I speed read the 236 pages and focused on some of the summary. It seemed to me that the ailerons, elevator and rudder could still have high speed oscillations (even though the commanded roll, pitch and yaw was very good). Did you see that a…
3 hours ago
I'm no expert, but the info on Airfield Models looks quite interesting and useful.
3 hours ago
Be prepared to open your wallet... Look at this site. for example.
3 hours ago
Jordi's store sells components for DIYers to work with... no autopilot, no planes. (yet) Don't bother him with your custom order. Check Walmart.
4 hours ago
Ryan, thanks a bunch! Soooo .... anyone wanna implement MRAC D or L1 and try it out? Source code is given! I've been thinking about something like this for a while, some way to parameterize an airframe's dynamic response, and an adaptive way to lear…
4 hours ago
Don't forget about the FIRST Robotics Championships in Atlanta, April 16-18.
4 hours ago
Im using reverse mode for my throttle. In the STABILIZE mode my throttle reversed(higher throttle stick motor OFF, lower throttle stick motor ON). but OK in AUTO mode. And also the failsafe didn't function
4 hours ago
WAAS signals are 'in-band' from stational satellites at L1 frequencies (1.5GHz), they model the north american content's atmospherics on a grid based structure (20KM squares IIRC). DPGS/LAAS uses another transmission and models atmospherics at a po…
4 hours ago
The plane will begin to circle in the sky if the GPS fails.
5 hours ago

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Forum

Kasper Pedersen

Rover

Started by Kasper Pedersen in Ground vehicles 3 hours ago.

Zane the brain

airplane designing 4 Replies

Started by Zane the brain in Airframe design. Last reply by Rick Presley 3 hours ago.

Tyler Wood

Looking to possibly buy a Predator UAV 8 Replies

Started by Tyler Wood in Buy, Sell, Trade. Last reply by Sgt Ric 3 hours ago.

Jason Larocque

DGPS with my local Ground Station ??? 9 Replies

Started by Jason Larocque in GPS. Last reply by Simon Wood 4 hours ago.

Andrew Gaiennie

Airal Photography 2 Replies

Started by Andrew Gaiennie in My Project. Last reply by Andrew Gaiennie 5 hours ago.

Chris Lane

Engineering Log Question 1 Reply

Started by Chris Lane in Miscellaneous. Last reply by Chris Anderson 7 hours ago.

William Premerlani

robust estimator of the direction cosine matrix 180 Replies

Started by William Premerlani in UAV Dev Board. Last reply by geir 10 hours ago.

Cronselaar

Hacked transmitter/receiver/groundstation all in one package 8 Replies

Started by Cronselaar in Ground stations. Last reply by Sarel P. Wagner 11 hours ago.

Peter Koppendorfer

ArduPilot for sale 10 Replies

Started by Peter Koppendorfer in Buy, Sell, Trade. Last reply by Milo Sweet 11 hours ago.

William Premerlani

Wind estimation without an airspeed sensor 14 Replies

Started by William Premerlani in UAV Dev Board. Last reply by Gary Mortimer 15 hours ago.

RobC

New GPS module at Sparkfun 3 Replies

Started by RobC in GPS. Last reply by Michael Zaffuto 16 hours ago.

Chris Anderson

Discussion forum for UAVDevBoard, Sparkfun's 3-axis IMU-based autopilot board 559 Replies

Started by Chris Anderson in UAV Dev Board. Last reply by Adam Barrow 16 hours ago.

Simon Wood

DCM in python 12 Replies

Started by Simon Wood in ArduIMU. Last reply by Roy Brewer 17 hours ago.

Manish Chiniwalar

help...Need to make a wireless robot with cam

Started by Manish Chiniwalar in Wireless communications 19 hours ago.

Sam

Quad-copter / UAV DevBoard Tinkering 6 Replies

Started by Sam in My Project. Last reply by Tisham Dhar 20 hours ago.

Mark Richardson

Predator Drone Foamie Prototype 11 Replies

Started by Mark Richardson in Aircraft platforms. Last reply by Pedro Assuncao 21 hours ago.

GillesW

Starting with 1st IMU : a 9DOF Razor 10 Replies

Started by GillesW in Sensors & IMUs. Last reply by GillesW 1 day ago.

Christian Sherman

ArduPilot Shield V2 Kit For Sale $45 & Free Shipping 2 Replies

Started by Christian Sherman in Buy, Sell, Trade. Last reply by Christian Sherman 1 day ago.

Tim McMahan

Homemade Predator Drone 10 Replies

Started by Tim McMahan in Airframe design. Last reply by Tim McMahan 1 day ago.

Tim McMahan

75 dollar IMU 4 Replies

Started by Tim McMahan in Autopilot hardware. Last reply by Tim McMahan 1 day ago.

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Welcome!

This is a site for all things about amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): How-to's, videos, discussion and more (you can read more about us here). Please use the tabs above to navigate the site.

These are our Arduino-based open source autopilot projects:
* ArduPilot, a very low-cost (the basic board is just $24.95!) autopilot
* BlimpDuino, an autonomous blimp with both infrared and ultrasonic guidance

Other UAV/autopilot projects and code, by processor and OS type, are here.
Earlier DIY Drones projects, including Lego and cellphone autopilots, are here

FAQs:
* I'm new to all this--where do I start?
* Are amateur UAVs legal?
* Can you explain how IMUs using gyros and accelerometers work? Do I need both?
* I'm confused by all these terms! Is there a glossary? (yes!)

You can find a list of external UAV resources, including commercial UAVs and other open source UAV projects and code here.

Follow DIY Drones on Twitter

Contests

The fifth round of the DIY Drones Trust Time Trial (T3) Contest has now begun. This round is a "virtual Sparkfun competition". Deadline is March 3rd. Enter here.

Blog Posts

Jeff

9.2 inches tip to tip. Will it fly??!!










Rotors pitched to induce nose-up pitch and counter-clockwise yaw


Continue

Posted by Jeff on February 9, 2010 at 10:00am — 2 Comments

Chris Anderson

National Robotics Week


Continue

Posted by Chris Anderson on February 8, 2010 at 4:00pm — 1 Comment

Jeff

Transverse Rotor UAV: Articulating Arm CONCEPT



This is a lunchtime sketch: will make this quick.

Two independent brushed (thinking weight and cost here) motors directly drive counter-rotating rotors.

I used 4x Blue Arrow S0251 micro servos as a template only, for this concept, to drive the arContinue

Posted by Jeff on February 8, 2010 at 10:30am — 7 Comments

Ryan Beall

Position & Wind Extended Kalman


Wrote up a wind estimator today. It is based off of a simple model which requires very little inputs from sensors.



psi - true heading (not course over ground)


theta - pitch


airspeed


GPS lat and long





It is a simple model. The wind model has no dynamics which helps

Continue

Posted by Ryan Beall on February 7, 2010 at 10:00pm — 28 Comments

Chris Anderson

No podcast/livechat tonight

Tim's under the weather, so no podcast/livechat tonight. But we've got a doozy for you next Sunday (the 14)!

Posted by Chris Anderson on February 7, 2010 at 8:09pm

Tiaan Roux

Burglars use toy chopper to steal

Continue

Posted by Tiaan Roux on February 7, 2010 at 6:29pm — 4 Comments

Dr. Stewart Pid

Easy Star Fiberglass Fuse

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.


Posted by Dr. Stewart Pid on February 7, 2010 at 3:37pm — 6 Comments

Jeff

Transverse Rotor UAV: Bell-Hiller CONCEPT




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) Sin… Continue

Posted by Jeff on February 7, 2010 at 11:30am — 10 Comments

Michael Zaffuto

Arduino Version 0018 Release!!

v0018 is officially released and can be downloaded and installed!



http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software



http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ReleaseNotes




Current Users of Arduino should continue to compile and upload their

Continue

Posted by Michael Zaffuto on February 6, 2010 at 3:48pm — 4 Comments

Martin Seven

USAF MAV Ornithopters

Posted by Martin Seven on February 6, 2010 at 3:25am — 6 Comments

Tiaan Roux

DIY Drones - South African Chapter first general meeting

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 Gar
Continue

Posted by Tiaan Roux on February 5, 2010 at 10:49am — 21 Comments

Paul Marsh

DIYDrones Gets Nod in IEEE Spectrum Magazine

DIYDrones got a brief mention in an article in Spectrum, the magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The article is about first-person-view (FPV) flying, but the author mentions he read about FPV here and at FPVPilot.com.



DIY Eye in the Sky


Get a first-person view from the air with

Continue

Posted by Paul Marsh on February 5, 2010 at 5:28am — 1 Comment

Morli

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




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!!
&… Continue

Posted by Morli on February 5, 2010 at 4:30am — 20 Comments

Jack Crossfire

THIS WEEK IN AEROSPACE

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 around
Vika 1. It's obsolete but it wa… Continue

Posted by Jack Crossfire on February 5, 2010 at 12:39am — 3 Comments

Chris Anderson

DIY Drones authoring tools upgrade to rich text entry


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 pho

Continue

Posted by Chris Anderson on February 4, 2010 at 9:30pm — 3 Comments

Riccardo Kuebler

Acromaster as UAVDevBoard platform

Hi,



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



Continue

Posted by Riccardo Kuebler on February 4, 2010 at 11:30am — 16 Comments

quadrocopter

Octocopter

The base station and head tracking gyro stabilised camera mount is really working a treat. Check out http://www.eyeinthesky.net.au out now.

Posted by quadrocopter on February 4, 2010 at 3:25am

Nima K

Project Andromeda update - CNC Machine and sponsors



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 ne… Continue

Posted by Nima K on February 4, 2010 at 12:45am — 2 Comments

Gary Thomas

Seattle Space Needle scale-model "Airframe" & Quad-Rotor Helicopter "Powerplant" 'makes it so'.

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 form

New extended range fuel cell, liquid hydrogen and 4-electric quad-motor "Powerplant" is in the middle of ....

That is all

Jack 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 dedic… Continue

Posted by Gary Thomas on February 3, 2010 at 11:42pm

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News from Flight Global

Webbies 2009 - winners and judges comments

Eurofighter Typhoon, Amsterdam Schiphol International airport and Things in the Sky blog have triumphed at Flightglobal's annual aviation web awards. The Webbies 2009, now in its second year, celebrate the best and brightest in aviation websites and their social media activities. The Eurofighter website won the Best Aerospace website for its interactivity and games element. Amsterdam's airport triumphed in the Best Airport category for knocking down language barriers, and the judges were impressed with the blog, Things in the Sky for its "compelling visual content". The Webbies 2009 had two new categories: Best Enthusiast/Community Website to honour the website that delivers

Honeywell to hush, bolster reliability of micro air vehicle

Honeywell plans to begin delivering its next-generation gas-powered micro air vehicle (gMAV) to the US Army's Early Infantry Brigade Combat Team by 2011,...

US Army reports successful ground-based collision avoidance system

The US Army has successfully tested a ground-based sense and avoid system with a General Atomics Sky Warrior at an unmanned aircraft test site in El Mirage,...

SINGAPORE 2010: Asian joint venture formed to market, build Israeli UAVs

Singapore-based Stratech Systems has announced launching a joint venture with Aeronautics Ltd to market the Israeli firm's unmanned systems in the Asia-Pacific...

SINGAPORE 2010: UAVs to have more range and strike capability

The United State Air Force is working on new technologies that mean some of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) of the future will have in-flight refuelling capabilities, longer range and new strike capabilities. UAVs are moving beyond surveillance and kinetic strike capabilities to include, for example, directed energy weapons, the US Air Force’s chief scientist Werner Dahm, told delegates today at the Singapore Airshow’s Aerospace Technology and Maintenance conference. Longer-range missions means the UAVs will require highly efficient engine technologies and in some instances this will involve using solar energy and regenerative energy capabilities, says Dahm. He also says the US Air Force is working to develop UAVs that have in-flight refuelling capabilities and can use the US Air Force’s existing fleet of air tankers. The US Air Force used a Learjet “as a surrogate for the unmanned aerial system platform” and “the Learjet successfully got into contact pos

News from UAVSI

Northrop Grumman Global Hawk Aids Haiti Relief

Northrop Grumman, which has an exhibition chalet at the Singapore Airshow 2010, said in a press conference Wednesday that it has been flying a Block 10 iteration of its Global Hawk over the last few weeks for the Haiti earthquake relief effort. Edward Walby, director of business development for Northrop’s Global Hawk Systems division, said that the UAV was deployed from the Naval Air Station Patuxent River base in Maryland, which is monitored from the Beale Air Force Base in California, to fly [More]

Military Adapts Robotics Operation to Afghanistan

The shifting military focus from Iraq to Afghanistan is also shifting the way the military repairs its ground robots, says a U.S. Army project manager. "The static operation in Iraq, bring the robots to use and we'll fix them, doesn't work in Afghanistan," said Jeff Jaczkowski, deputy program manager of the Robotic Systems Joint Project Office at U.S. Army Tank-automotive & Armaments Command (TACOM). Jaczkowski spoke at the opening day of AUVSI's Unmanned Systems Program Review 2010, which [More]

EADS to Sign MOU With Singapore Universities

Representatives from EADS Innovation Works Singapore revealed at the Singapore Airshow 2010 that they are signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) Wednesday morning with two Singapore universities in a move to further its ties to the burgeoning technology hub. Under the agreement, both the National University of Singapore and Nanyung Technological University’s various engineering departments will perform research for EADS’ use. In exchange for the information, the company will sponsor the [More]

NATO Affiliate Defines Classifications of UAVs, System Employment

In a move that might eventually formalize classifications of unmanned aerial systems, Air Cdre. Jan van Hoof of the NATO-affiliated Joint Air Power Competence Centre revealed 31 Jan. at AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems Asia-Pacific that the center recently agreed upon categoric standardizations of different types of UAS. Specifying exactly what constitutes, for example, a mini UAV could increase communication effectiveness among nations regardless of which system it happens to have contracted, said van Hoof. The [More]

Fiscal 2011 Defense Budget Boosts Unmanned Systems

The Obama Administration on 1 Feb. unveiled a $708 billion fiscal 2011 defense budget that calls for more unmanned aircraft flights over Iraq and Afghanistan and buys more UAS, while eliminating part of the U.S. Army's former Future Combat Systems. "FY 2011 investment spending will continue the expanded use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in war zones. The request of $2.2 billion supports the plan to increase Predator-Class CAPs [Combat Air Patrols] from the current 37 to 65 by FY 2013," according [More]
 

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