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Best Way To Build A DIY UAV?
Shojun writes "I am very interested in building my own UAV. Not just one that can fly around happily, but one that I can program to say, take photos every second as it does a barrel roll under a bus (ok, that part may be a pipe dream). I have enough embedded programming experience — it's the hardware which I'm uncertain about. I can go the kit way, and then build the remaining stuff, or get some Dollar Tree Foam boards and build it all. I'm in favor of ease, however. Once the plane is built, buying a dev board seems like a possibility, but I wonder whether it's overkill. Alternatively, if there was a How-to-build example on the net for such an activity that I could adapt, to the degree that I could then program in even completely hardcoded flight instructions, I can certainly take it from there. Thoughts? Has anyone here tried something like this before?"
A UAV that runs linux could do a barrel roll.
I'd make sure the Feds have no problem with you running something like this around. Best to make sure you won't get shot down/at.
our amateur UAV building spy overlords!
I shouldn't have to look up acronyms because an editor fails at adding one to the summary. Since I had to look it up anyway -- for those as clueless as me, UAV means Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.
http://paparazzi.enac.fr/wiki/Main_Page
Open source autopilot/software/hardware design for small UAVs. Check succes stories and links on their webpage for a quick overview of what (quite a lot!) can be reasonably easily achieved.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I guess the best way to build a DIY is building it yourself
Hell, UAV? How about building a cruise missile in your garage. Take pictures while barrel rolling under a bus, orrrr, take pictures while breaking the sound barrier. Check it out: http://www.interestingprojects.com/cruisemissile/missilemanbook.shtml
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
If I were to attempt this, I'd probably just get a regular RC aircraft to start with and then rig something like this into the airframe. I'm sure there are cheaper solutions, but it would probably be one of the easiest.
Enemy of the Sun
Link to old contest stuff
Less is more.
go to the http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/index.php RC forums there is alot of info in what you want to do. and here is the forums you want http://www.rcgroups.com/uav-unmanned-aerial-vehicles-238/ Note that if you live in USA it is illegal to make UAV. Even first person view flying is illegal. But first you need to learn how to make stuff fly before you even attempt to do the UAV stuff.
Just go buy an RC plane kit for $20. Bingo UAV. Strap on mini camera and you're done for less than $50.
Oh, you wanted an autonomous flying robot? Lollerscates. Sorry, even the military flies theirs by RC. There are ongoing X-prize style competitions to try to build autonomous robots that work at all, on flat ground or otherwise, and you're asking for a DIY flying kit. Cute... How many millions of dollars were you planning to throw at this little DIY project?
... I think you might want to use a high level language too. These things have a way of being more complicated than you intend, and you may wish to have maintainable or reusable code.
You want to visit DIYDrones.com
It's a very active community that has a lot of resources for people entering the UAV scene.
tasty and delicious
I'm a just-graduated aerospace engineer from Notre Dame. For our senior design project, we build uav's... well, really RC planes. Everything had to be constructed from scratch, except for the electronics (motor/battery/GPS/receiver/etc). This year's goal was to have a mothership-daughtership configuration where the daughtership would detach mid-flight and maneuver on its own. Believe me, it's loads of fun to build everything from scratch, but it is a lot of work. And I definitely think it is doable by anyone, not just aerospace engineering majors.
Here was my team's plane: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW68B3DnNWA
If you're interested in actually constructing the structure by yourself, I'd definitely suggest picked up a book on model airplane construction. Hobby shop dudes are also a big help, just go in and throw some ideas out and most hobby store owners will be very enthusiastic. And, if you're _really_ interested, I'd suggest Aircraft Design: A Conceptual Approach by Daniel Raymer. Link: http://www.aiaa.org/content.cfm?pageid=360&id=1396
Oh, also, flying a model aircraft requires a hell of a lot of skill- we get the awesome dudes down at the South Bend RC Plane Club to fly ours.
Wow. RTFS much? I guess not, since the only link in the summary is to the site you suggested.
Informative? No. Funny? Maybe in a sarcastic way.
Please enjoy your stay.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Have a look at this project: http://www.mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/en/Mikrokopter-Get-started
They offer assembly instructions and software.
Some pictures: http://gallery.mikrokopter.de/main.php
and videos: http://www.mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/VideoListe
Almost everything you need ready-made.
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blog/show?id=705844%3ABlogPost%3A44814
I hope you have a few spare thousand dollars.
From your post you clearly know nothing about r/c aircraft. Learn to fly an r/c aircraft well without crashing. Go find a club and an instructor who'll teach you. Also get hold of a good simulator unless you want to spend thousands. That'll take you at least 6 months, probably closer to a year. (Longer if you don't have any aptitude for it). Flying r/c planes takes more practice and skill than you might think. It'll also cost more than you think. Once you have an appreciation for the difficulties of flying R/C you might stand half a chance programming one with a robotic interface. You'll also want to be able to take over manually from time to time when you're programming the thing so if you get something slightly wrong you've got some chance of saving it.
You could also learn about the robotics more simply with an r/c car. R/c cars can move slowly without any risk of falling out of the sky. Some of what you learn will translate to air, other parts won't.
If you want something off the shelf, I did read about robotised r/c helicopters for commercial applications like security but I think they cost in the 10's of thousands. I think you STILL need to know how to take over manually.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The last time some of my friends tried doing an automatic control system, the plane turned straight toward the flight line and tried to kill us all!
Unless you have extensive experience designing them, I would recommend going with a kit plane for hardware rather than trying to build one from scratch out of foam boards. The reason for this is that you will start out with a design you know is flyable and has the stability properties you want. One of the classic errors in model-scale UAV design I've seen people make is trying to design the craft from scratch only to discover that their control surfaces are poorly sized, the thing is dynamically unstable, and it requires hand-made spare parts after every flight.
I think an ideal platform for a UAV like you describe would be a foam flying wing with maybe a 3-4 foot wingspan. The flying wing design would at least in theory allow you to decouple some equations which would be difficult to do in traditional fused aircraft and impossible to do in helicopters. Also, unibody construction makes it easier to land without landing gear. Landing without some pretty complex rangefinding hardware is tough, even for a computer system. Doing a skid landing on that huge wing surface with a rear-facing prop will add some margin of error to your landing sequence. If possible, get an ARF (Almost Ready to Fly) model. They come with airframe, power system, and sometimes all the servos. All you need to add is the radio equipment (I assume you are going to have a manual override backup. No, really. You're going to want a manual override.). Expanded polypropylene foam is actually more durable than a lot of people give it credit for, and replacement parts for these aircraft are easy to find.
10 Bits= $.25
100 Bits= $.50
110 Bits= $.75
1000 Bits= 1 byte
I have thought about doing a similar project for a long time, one where you can just enter GPS coordinates at get the plane to fly to those coordinates and take a picture, maybe take some weather readings as well, and send it back to a base station. A big problem that I see would be that it's hard to know how much a finished board would weigh, and how much power consumption would the instruments impose on the battery pack? Would I get an advantage from a more powerful engine from more lift, or would it just lead to power waste for the sake of a bit of extra speed? I'd also need to know that I have enough lift from the planes wings to carry the UAV circuit too or else it will be bogged down or not fly at all. The project seems to be more mech eng heavy than I'd like to take on as an elec techy.
You might try instructables.com.. They have a section with this kind of project.
If you want it to be easy, get a ton of money, and buy it.
If you want it to be (relatively) cheap, build it yourself.
You are so wishy-washy that there isn't a solution for you.
Syousef is right. If you had any idea what you were looking for, the /. community would be able to help you. Instead, I wasted time posting this response.
It seem like the obvious approach would be a fairly large RC plane and mount a second the camera (perhaps on a servo) and a tv transmitter on it. You downlink the video to a laptop that then uses some sort of usb connection to a gutted rc controller, either with servos moving the sticks directly, or better yet, bypassing the potentiometers and variably outputting voltage directly to the control board.
It seems like the hardest thing is avoiding (auto)pilot error. I don't have any experience with RC planes, but from what I've heard you have to go into with the attitude that you're going to spend a thousand dollars for 10 seconds of entertainment. You just have to assume that the plane is going to be destroyed on its first flight. Anything after that is bonus.
use the iPhone. It has a good hard drive for programming and picture storage. Also its accelerometer, built in geotagging and GPS capability, along with its built in camera. To use the iPhone as an onboard controller you can interface the audio output with a piezoelectric buzzer and have specific frequencies trigger different controls. (NerdKits piezoelectric buzzer & equalizer project that was on /. not too long ago.)
The only problem I see is if you can make an APP that does all this stuff so its just a plug and play with the controller board the US govn't will probably ban the use of iPhones.
I have always been interested in the same thing. The problem I have always encountered is that you would want this thing to fly on its own, to other states, territories, etc, maybe with a camera. Ideally you would be able to go to your PC, bring up an app, and see (out of the cameras on your UAV) where it is (flying over a beautiful mountain peak, etc). You would also want to be able to send to it new coordinates.
But how do you keep in communication with it? Military UAV's most definitely use satellites. Without the use of satellites, I find it hard for a UAV you build to go beyond your own visual range (= ~10 miles) from the launch site.
Does anyone have any solutions for this, or does one have to rent time/frequency sharing with a satellite provider (read:expensive)?
...an R/C plane. There are any number of magazines and books describing the construction of such, covering many different types for many different needs. Any electronic project you might wish to mount on the plane would be its own project and more an electronics problem then a problem in constructing the plane (the weight would have to be strictly controlled, of course); cameras are a popular one and you could probably find many plans, notes, and tips in the above mentioned R/C resources.
When you're an accomplished vaginaut such as yours truly here, you learn these things.
You're saying you've boldly gone "where no man has gone before"? Hmmmmm....going to share some photos, young jedi?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
There were some people who built an autonomous glider which could perform many of the things you mention (with the notable exception of powered flight), including flying pre-programmed routes while taking photos (as well as navigating to specified coordinates autonomously). The process of building and testing it is documented in a fair amount of detail, including information on choices made for the on board electronics.
I have no particular interest in building aircraft, and still thought that page was a good read.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Not sure if you already have radio-controlled airplane experience. If you do not, I have a very solid recommendation for you:
A world-class starter platform for both learning to fly and lifting is the Slow Stick. It is one of the most popular planes with RC hackers, is cheap as dirt, has solid lifting potential (and upgrades can make it a real monster), and has lots of commercially available upgrade parts.
I'd go with a slow stick glider, and add a cheap brushless motor for starters (in fact, that's precisely what I have about six feet behind me for my first aerial photography platform). That will give you a good mix of cheap and solid lifting potential.
As for the forum, Slashdot is a good place to start for all things geeky, but the specialist forums you're looking for are at RCGroups:
http://www.rcgroups.com/
Here's the main starter thread for Slow Sticks:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122951
Admit your noob-ness, ask for advice, be respectful, weather the occasional ornery response with good humor, and you can learn everything you want to know at RC Groups.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
A Bra and some waterbaloons count as UAV?
B52 RC plane
The Navy Motto "IF it ain't broke Fix It" "A day is wasted if you don't learn something new"
Here's yer UAV: it's a long piece of string and a big kite with digital camera and an Eye-Fi card taped to it. Have fun and make sure you're home in time for supper, young man.
if your in the US your getting into a legal shit storm, look here:
http://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/design_approvals/uas/reg/media/frnotice_uas.pdf
and here
http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAdvisoryCircular.nsf/0/1ACFC3F689769A56862569E70077C9CC?OpenDocument&Highlight=91
other than that, it is an interesting controls project, most interesting part will be getting accurate sensor information without spending a ton on a decent gyro...
build a simulator or you will wreck a lot of airplanes before you get it working 100%
use the cell phone network for comms if your going outside ~5 miles, 900mhz radios should reach that far line of sight with a decent antenna.
hobby store, it's just an rc plane.
Hey frood, you're mixing series lingo you gimboid!
I have built many DIY UAVs (no kits) but have had problems with the police, even though I never flew them out in the open (because I knew they aren't welcomed here): a neighbour saw them in my balcony and alerted the police as they obviously thought I were a terrist, a commie, an alien, or something like that. They couldn't charge me with any crime but they kept an eye on me for a few months by having a police car parked near my house and sometimes escorting me to work. I had no problem with them and was always nice to them whenever they had a question to ask, but since then I destroyed my UAVs and didn't continue with my hobby because I was afraid that eventually they could find something to charge me with just to enhance their prosecution statistics. They continued keeping an eye on me for some time and then they left me alone. So, my advice is: make sure your local police dept is OK with your UAV hobby before you embark on building your own UAV.
I'm not doing your homework for you!
I'm not sure if the original poster is with Al Queda ("wikislamofacism.com tl;dr lol") or a Bond Villain (too lazy to Google for "world domination").
Build a good 6 degree-of-freedom flight simulator using reasonably accurate aerodynamic parameters, mass properties and engine model, then when you have that going straight and level, start working on a flight control system & autopilot model. It will be a whole lot easier to design the control and feedback loops with a math model than with a real bird. If you don't know a Laplace transform from an autobot transformer, you have some research to do...
There are several examples on the net. This is one of my favorites.
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/05/in_the_maker_shed_pre-order_the_bli.html
Might be a bit sluggish for what you want it for, but its a really nice system/resource
Try http://diydrones.com/profiles/blog/show?id=705844%3ABlogPost%3A788. It seems relatively current, and offers some GPL'd software and lots of links.
This is a bit outdated, possibly a dead project, but it was cool when it was new and going on. Check out http://members.shaw.ca/sonde/ [High Altitude Glider Project]. Might be enough interesting pieces there to continue a similar project, or at least contact the original site-owner and ask him a few questions to get you started.
Hardware: http://www.rotomotion.com/
Software: http://autopilot.sourceforge.net/
Designing a UAV flight platform isn't difficult, like many people have said, it can be done with an R/C plane. Building a flight control system, ground station, transmission protocol and backup instruction for the plane will be the difficult part. After doing this, you might as well market it. There is big money in UAV's, especially cheap ones. (e.g. 50K or less.)
Have a specific plan on how you're going to get it to land. That part can be very, very tricky without human input. We lost 7 prototype UAV's trying to get it to land on an aircraft carrier. Luckily the SEALs on board had nothing to do and were willing to go dive in the drink to retrieve them.
Like someone else said above, you'd have better luck doing it with a heli.
The guys that work on Openvulture may have some advice.
best case is they shoot the plane down worst case they track down and shoot YOU
when in doubt NO FLY
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
> female total non-geek ... from watching Stargate
I sense a deep contradiction here, in the force, ....
http://www.drones.com/RC-faq.html
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Try not to attach an infrared camera to it and a automatic machine gun on the bottom. Also, make sure you don't have omnibot running. Definitely make sure you don't interface the infrared camera data to the input stream of an omnibot running under a simulation of an enemy territory server. The worst way to keep this aloft for a long time would be to use a balloon instead of an airplane. Otherwise you might create a terminator, or one hell of a gun turret for your secret base if it was mounted on a pole instead of a UAV.
first step, get a park flyer
learn how to fly a park flyer first. they are the easiest to fly and the most rugged.
once you learn how that particular plane flies, next step is to start automating some of the control surfaces.
I suggest you start simple, program simple a simple take-off and then relinquish to manual. (make sure you program a throttle cut-off if you don't receive manual input in x time.)
once you get that down, work next on a simple park circuit.
As for hardware, the simplest design is a board to control the servos by emulating the radio inputs. This way, you can record your stick movements and later have them play back.
This is the best for simple automation. afterwords, when your hardware gets more complicated, you can change your design to do true flying via sensors with a bigger model.
The important thing is understanding the flight physics before you think you can just plug in numbers and think it will fly properly. Every plane flies differently. You need to learn your plane before programming it because you can't program behavior properly that you can't perform yourself.
They're using their grammar skills there.
If you have some money to spare, try the Micropilot 2028 or 2128 fixed wing autopilot series. Micropilot
.oo00OO
If you use linux you might want to check out http://ktechlab.org/. It is a circuit simulator for PIC micro-controllers, where you can write your PIC code in either C, a flowcharting language, or in assembler. You can attach circuit elements to the PIC like potentiometers, resistors, capacitors, and other components to build a circuit around the PIC to test the software you have written even before you go anywhere near hardware. It also supports several PIC burners too, aparently - for when its time to produce real hardware from your simulation.
Ktechlab does have a few bugs here an there, but still complete enough to be useful. Apparently the project has recently changed hands and is getting under way again after a couple of years of stagnation.
It's a fantastic tool - way easier to use than any of the other circuit simulators I have used, although the version in the Ubuntu 8.10 repository is broken (crashes when placing a component), and I had to download a version directly from sourceforge.
The arduino is a wonderful microcontroller for this sort of thing. It's cheap, it's available in small form factors, and it has pwm outputs that can be used to control servos.
I've also heard that some people have had success interfacing a wii controller with the arduino. If it's not to heavy, that might serve as a good, inexpensive accelerometer.
Get the FMA Copilot which uses the horizon (infrared) as a spacial reference. A GPS can be used in conjunction with this to provide a bearing with waypoints. A 30-dollar gyro can also be used (they're standard with every RC helicopter) to maintain proper roll attitude. These setups are used in conjunction with stanard RC equipment. They can take over if the transmitter signal is lost and return to origin. The one thing all this cannot do is safely land the aircraft -- that still takes a human behind the transmitter. --edfardos http://sierraglider.com/ RC Aerial Photography
I used to work on autonomous UAVs as an engineering competition project in college. This was a couple of years back, so the technology's probably changed a bit. But here's some advice to get you started.
First of all, I would not bother trying to program the entire system myself. There's an awful lot to do, simulation is challenging, and failed tests are expensive and will set you back a lot of time. So you should focus on integrating existing stuff as much as possible. There'll still be crashes/failures/etc, but it's more manageable.
One UAV autopilot was called the MicroPilot (http://www.micropilot.com/). This worked okay, but as of 2005 had really terrible documentation and the UI would let you set certain controls to invalid settings, leading to some problems. So double-check everything on the flight line. The MicroPilot was based on the "Magic" board which contained GPS and gyros and an FPGA; you could in theory program that yourself. I can't find this board in a quick Google search, but it's out there somewhere.
Another competing brand was called the Kestrel. Haven't used it, but know that others have had success. (http://www.procerusuav.com/productsKestrelAutopilot.php)
Other similar things to look up are "FMA Co-pilot" and "picopilot." These are not fully-integrated GPS/gyro/altitude/controller setups, but they can work with external gyros to maintain straight and level flight, etc.
We had good success getting "flying wing" foam airplanes to fly stably under autopilot. A more "traditional looking" plane has lots more room in the fuselage for components, but they're harder to fly. A fat foam wing can fly very stably; a fuselage can be built down the centerline, and some components can be embedded into hollows in the wing. If you do this, reinforce the wing with carbon-fiber spars. We used a custom design based off of the MotherShip (http://www.flyingfoam.com/products.html) because we needed additional lifting capacity. We added a tail-prop electric motor to this. Buy that from a hobby store, as well as the ESC.
Gas engines are also available, but you can't do that with a flying wing; you'll need a fuselage to hold a fuel tank. Gas engines are a bit more finicky than electrics, but can provide more overall lifting power.
We transmitted video via a Black Widow (http://www.blackwidowav.com/) AV transmitter. It was hooked up to a relatively nondescript digital camera and transmitted a TV signal back on UHF; we could watch this on a TV powered by an inverter off a car battery in the field.
A small embedded controller (e.g., an Arduino) would be useful to program for operations like managing a high-resolution camera. If if can also read in data over a serial port, it can be interfaced with the micropilot to provide higher-level operational instructions (e.g., download new mission goals). A micropilot will keep a log of all its sensor data so you can review it afterward. This is valuable for tuning the wing.
You can build a gimballed camera into the bottom of your plane without much difficulty; hook up those servers to the aileron servos, but wired in reverse.
One project which was difficult to make work was bilateral communication with the airplane. You'll of course have your primary RC receiver on board to allow manual takeover of flight control, but talking to an on-board Arduino is challenging. You'll need some sort of radio modem. We tried serial radio modems that operated at 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz, but usually encountered unacceptable signal corruption / interference to make this practical. Modern hardware may have eliminated the design flaws that we saw 5 years ago though.
Good luck with your project!
We need a new moderation tag for posts like these. I've seen +5, Funny, and in this case, I'm proposing +5, Sad.
It's just a sad statement. I don't find it terribly insightful, but I'd give it +1.
You can always find robot help here:
http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum
(disclaimer, its my site)
http://www.mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/en/MikroKopter It's more a helicopter, but really fun to play with and you can program anything you want with it. The hardware is very expandable too. That's why my university uses it to do some research concerning navigation strategies.
How do I uncompress my MD5 archive?
take a look around here http://harkopen.com/projects/ardupilot
I had intended to build one, but my working budget went from a little something to less than nothing due to job changes. I still keep my eyes open to what can be done though. Right now, it's a mental exercise.
The most important thing to remember is, as a hobby toy, unless you want to get in serious trouble with the FAA, you must follow a few rules. This is probably not all inclusive. It's just what I can think of off the top of my head from my own research. Find a local R/C group, and reference the FAA pages for more information.
The FAA has a notice on UAV's here.
1) It can not go over 400 feet.
2) You must stay out of any airspace that an aircraft may be flying in. That is, stay out of the approach and departure areas of any airport. Someone just got in trouble for this, where they had an R/C airplane with a camera that filmed a commercial airliner flying by. It was several seconds between the time the aircraft passed, and the wake turbulence knocked his R/C plane out of the air, which would imply a decent separation, but still, stay away from aircraft.
If you haven't gone through private pilot flight school, you may not be aware of the airspace restrictions. Stop by a local small airport and ask. There will always be someone with time on their hands that will love to talk to a newbie.
3) It can never leave your sight,
4) You must have control of it at all times. That is, your remote control must be able to override anything it wants to do.
6) Watch the frequencies that you're using. If you're on R/C frequencies and TX power, you're safe, but play nice with other people who may be flying. Don't hog a bunch of frequencies because you need them for additional controls. If you're working with other frequencies, check the licensing on those. You don't want to piss off the FCC too.
Now I'll go into the territory of ignoring FAA and FCC rules. Don't do it. Don't get caught doing it. Don't tell random strangers that you're doing it. Sure as hell don't post youtube videos of it, because you'll have feds in your livingroom with a no-knock warrant and a one way ticket for you to Southeastern Cuba.
For mine, I looked at a variety of options. If you search around enough, you'll find people mid-sized R/C airplanes (say about a 3' wingspan) with embedded PC's to do their dirty work. I didn't find this totally practical both from the OS standpoint and the interfaces. I want lots and lots of standard interfaces, and I want flexability to use anything I can. I intended to use a small x86 platform machine, running from a flash card (SD/MMC/CF). Delicate parts will get broken quick. Embedded or x86, you'll probably want several onboard to handle different functions. They'd need to be networked together so you can exchange data. For example, one reading your sensors, one to control the servos, one for comms, etc, etc.
I wanted to have the ability to carry at least a couple camcorders, and USB webcams. Every ounce of weight you add means you need the aircraft to support it. That means it needs a good amount of lift and thrust.
I'm assuming you've flown before. If you haven't, go to a local small airport and go for your private pilots license. That will include both ground school (the book work on how things work), and flight (actually working an aircraft). To program an aircraft for perfect conditions is one thing. Making it takeoff, fly, and land in less than ideal conditions is another. What happens if the wind picks up, and you have to slip during your landing? If you haven't programmed for it, either you'll end up way off course if tracking to a GPS coordinate, or you'll get blown way off of the field, probably into something less tha
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
What I'd like to know is this: has building a UAV become easier than building a UGV (unmanned ground vehicle)?
Is it really that difficult to build a R2D2-type droid with a useful amount of functionality at a reasonable price? Sure we don't have hologram tech yet, but we DO have relatively cheap projector tech - and texture and plane scanning...
"R2, PROJECT ANNUAL BUSINESS REPORT 2004 PAGE TWENTY SIX"
surely this has been done by now?
blog.idigitall.com
we all know that never happened
Cheap, sturdy, easy and fast to build model airframes. Lots of free plans around.
You can check http://ng.uavp.ch/moin
In few words, I think that the best way
to begin : kit avariable, open-source, simple & good implementation, with good results.
paparazzi is a little bit complex
mikrocopter is linked with uavp
Excelent documentation (uav,kalman fiter, gps, ...) on http://openuav.astroplanes.com/
I have some other link but I didn't remember now. I'll post it later
link here
Next time try googling before you post here.
Take a look at www.getinthecockpit.com. These guys sell a set of VR goggles and the gear to put a camera in the cockpit of a model aircraft and beam live video back over the RF link. DIsclaimer: it's a distant cousin of mine's company.
I always wonder why they'd still call it a V-for-Vehicle since there's no passengers, but that's another story.
in short, "vehicle" means "transport". so as long as it is not alive and carries something (not necessarily someone) - it's ok to call it a vehicle.
read F27 Stryker How far can I take it thread.
Listen, All I'm going to say is this: It's allready been done. The problem is, do you have a LARGE enough place to test it?.
You can put a PZ stryker up weighing 100mph for like $300. Strap a camera to it for another 50-75. Strap a cellphone, and you now have GPS, Comm, Camera, and an O.S.
Strap an Iphone to it, and you've got all the above, and "there's an app for that."
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Weighing less than a couple of pounds and flying greater than 100 mph was intended to be inserted between the "up" and "for."
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Same deal too. Showed my best bud how to fly a super cub. Set it up high, hand the controls over. He did great!. Then I placed my semistock stryker up. Got him about 1.5k up, set it to glide and handed him the controller. Had about 40% expo, and told him to move the stick "SLOWLY". He loved it. Then I showed him how to fly at more than 1/2 throttle. 8').
I brought the stryker down, and let him have the cub back. He decided to go all Iceman on a duck. (not a goose though) Unfortunately he crashed and burned just as I was coming back to check on him, I see this plane chasing a bird. He made a sharp turn, then yanked, witch would have been fine on ANY OTHER PLANE, but he basically yanked while his orientation was >90 degrees off horizon.
Dork, he owed me a new fuselodge. $20 later and I put it back in the hands of another aspiring pilot.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
I'm surprised no one mentioned that platform yet. Take GumstixVX main board, BreakoutVX IO board that has bluetooth and IO pins, mount it on stock RC heli and connect gyros to the IO pins instead of standard receiver. You then got a test platform for under $500. And yes, it does run Linux. If you want, GPS and WiFi cards also available. You also can connect off the shelf accelerometer to it.
I've converted ESky Honey Bee 2 microheli to be remotely controlled from a laptop and ti's been a lot of fun.
Here is a good place to start:
http://www.pabr.org/pxarc/doc/pxarc.en.html
They'd need to be networked together so you can exchange data. For example, one reading your sensors, one to control the servos, one for comms, etc, etc.
Hell no! What'll happen after the Cylons hack in to the UAV?
I'd be a little more worried about Skynet. It's real, being developed as we speak by DARPA, the DHARMA Initiative, and Area 51.
Everyone knows the Cylons are just fantasy written to propel the Mormon and Scientology causes.
(this ought to start some trouble)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
In order to avoid any nasty surprises from the department of pompous homeland paranoia (if in the US), I would start out small.
Buy a stock R/C plane and put one of those wireless pinhole cameras on it (those only weight a ounce or so and have a line-o-sight of around 300 feet) then hack the controller to interface with a PC (or your prototype board). The craft will not be fully autonomous and have a limited range, but most non-cruisemissle UAVs actually have a pilot sitting in a control van someplace anyway.
This way when the Feds come knocking at your door with their flame-thrower tanks you can simply unplug the interface and tell them that you are in complete manual control.
Acutally, the FAA redefined the acronym to be UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System) a while back so that they could legally regulate them (the FAA does not regulate "Vehicles" only "Aircraft"). So despite the fact that UAV is still popular with the general public, the term is actually been declared defunct.
Where are you going to fly it that is both legal and will not cause mass civic disruption? I have a suggestion - just watch lots of UAV videos on the Net til you get sick of UAVs. Hobby completed, now move on to something more practical.
Assuming you want to start with an R/C "frame" and build from there, "ARF's" are probably the way to go. (Almost Ready to Fly) They take around 20 hrs to build (YMMV). At least you won't be building from scratch...like a kit. (If/when it crashes, you'll be glad you didn't spend a lot of time building from scratch.)
Not sure if anyone else covered this or not... But amidst all the R/C entries, it is also possible (or at least it *used* to be) to use amateur radio frequencies (with the proper license) to transmit video. You probably can't first-person fly as others have pointed out, but there's nothing which prevents you from from having a video downlink.
So, what would be the difference between pre-programmed course vs. live R/C control and video downlink instead of first person flying? Would that be close enough to get your UAV rocks off?
Even the coolest UAV/UAS run by GNU/Linux probably are not legal for you to fly most places, at least in the US. See:
.
"Subcommittee on Aviation Hearing on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and the National Airspace System"
from March 29 2006, which now has turned in to this, on Feb 24th 2009:
"Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UASs)"
I'm holding out for a good Counterbary based system myself...
... Esteemed Gonzales would have deemed you to be a "Person of Interest" and decried your project as a terrorist act.
In addition, O'Reilly would have gone on Fox news stating that American citizens are helping Al-Qaeda by "teaching" them how to build terrorist missiles.
Not only that, Cheney would have darkly hinted at sic'ing the FBI on you for supporting terrorism and the whole damned case would be deemed classified and not subject to outside review.
Damn, we miss the fun of Bush-Cheney combo.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer