DIY Drones - Build one today!

[Pablo Escobar]

from the UAV thread.....

Did I post this somewhere else?

Here is a guy who says he invented the drone market..... Okay, I'm exagerating. He said he invented the DIY (do it yourself) drone market....

Long story short, he is a Wired mag columnist who one day received two products to review, a lego robot kit, and a RC airplane to test and write about in Wired. He started with the robot kit with his 9 yo son, and they quickly became bored, so went out to a field for the RC airplane, which he promptly crashed, and then came up with the idea that he had the components for a DIY drone.

The rest, as they say, is fun for the whole family.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/ff_drones/all/

http://diydrones.com/

[Ross]

It is 3 am so I will not say much except that I have had an
interest in this for sometime .It is on my 'todo' list and
I would bump it up the priority scale but justifying it in
money terms is the problem .

[Sonny]

http://www.barnardmicrosystems.com/L...rossing_II.htm

Maynard Hill and his team from maryland today successfully flew an RC airplane from Newfoundland, Canada to Ireland. The flight began at 8pm local time on Saturday, and the airplane arrived and landed in Ireland this morning. It covered the 1888 mile distance in approx. 38 hours. This likely sets new world records for distance and duration by an RC aircraft.

For those of you interested in the tech specs, the 11 pound aircraft was powered by an OS 60 4 stroke engine and controlled with off the shelf Futaba radio gear and a custom built/programmed GPS system. The engine was powered by 38 ounces of camping stove fuel.

The web site is: http://www.progressiveengineer.com/profiles/maynardHill.htm

In order for the records to be broken, the plane had to weigh less than five kilograms, including its " camping lantern" fuel.

[Sonny]

http://www.accurate-automation.com/content/UAV

AAC is a research and development firm specializing in the design, development, and implementation of products related to aviation safety, such as adaptive flight and engine control systems, health monitoring systems, sensors, cockpit video systems, advanced telemetry systems; plasma aerodynamic systems to dramatically improve aircraft and engine performance; and neural network systems including avionics; fault detection and isolation; robotics; command, control, communications, and computer intelligence (C4I); signal processing; and air traffic control. Accurate Automation Corporation has developed several types of unmanned aircraft for research applications leading to operational military applications. AAC has developed the LoFlyte® waverider testbed aircraft for DoD and NASA, and the GLOV™ and X43-A for NASA and DoD.


X43-A LS

LoFlyte® waverider

[Ross]

I have just been checking the cost of ArduPilot electronics when I thought
to check the China price . Yup you guessed it , they cost half as much.

Ardupilot Mega ................. US Price $60.00 China price $36
Ardupilot IMU Sensor board . US Price $150.00 China price $80

Unfortunately the Ardupilot Mega and IMU board are connected by pins and in the
event of an almost guaranteed crash(s) I suspect damage would be
done no matter how much foam you put around them .

This is the Sensor board ( ArduPilot IMU )


It goes with the ArduPilot Mega ( below )


If I use the ArduPilot Mega combo as shown above I would also need a brand
of GPS system that I do not have ( US price $80 ) . Hopefully there would also
be a cheap Chinese knock-off available .



I could do roughly the same thing using the much more downmarket ArduPilot board
( shown below ) and I am tempted because I already have some of the stuff like an
appropriate GPS and FTDI cable .



US price for the basic ArduPilot board is only $25 but I would have to
acquire XY/Z infrared sensors and I am not convinced they would work
well at low altitude or in mountainous terrain ( based my zero experience ) .

How cheap it all is has surprised me but there would still be hundreds of hours
of effort and what is the payoff ? I find it all quite interesting and have recently
been using an Arduino board to link my rowing machine and personal PC so
is some ways I am already partially there but it is still an awful lot of work for
no payoff .


PS ... Please note I am in full fantasy mode because I do not even
have an RC aircraft and probably never will .

[Ross]

Air speed sensor images ( from Wiki ) .










There is a lot of interesting stuff at this site ...
http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot-mega/wiki/Airspeed

A complete airspeed kit is only about $25 .



( Now you know the kind of absurd stuff I waste my time on )


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