DIY Drones

Chris Anderson
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Needless to say, just reverse the connectors if the fans are going in the wrong direction
21 minutes ago
Zouhair, perhaps you could furnish a little more information, I see that your climb topped out at 200m but that must be because you have 60m tall obstructions around you. Do you have a KML and numbers for the total climb?? Maybe I missed it but I ...
1 hour ago
Chris, Will this work as the IMU in 6 months for the ardustation ? Earl
1 hour ago
Joe, Im very sorry but I can't allow the entry from you guys, it broke the not above 400' rule, but I say that with my tail between my legs as I have followed Dans work for a couple of years and I often quote it as the way forward and containing m...
1 hour ago
Oh I looked up and the 29th had happened, I will sort the results now, what an interesting contest this one was with really cracking entries, seems like this community of UAS enthusiasts is able to bang out some fantastic results using many platfo...
1 hour ago
18gm GPS Logger with GPS Receiver and Antenna inside it and runs from Receiver spare channel http://blip.com.au/item.aspx?itemid=62 I have already ordered one and just waiting for it. Its ideal thing to record your flight path for T-3 etc. con...
2 hours ago
Chris Anderson added a blog post
We're taking two weeks off from the live chat/podcast while I'm travelling. Back on Sunday, December 13th
4 hours ago
Interesting idea of using kinetic energy, requires very well tuned platform in order to work. BTW. Some details after brakar's flight, one 'artistic' image of what really happened: The groundtrip accumulated up to... 63.74km. The time on logs w...
4 hours ago
5 hours ago
On the 15th of November I had the opportunity to run the T3-3 course while working with Dan Edwards on his autonomous glider. We were out flying in order to tune the motor on the glider, and the T3-3 course fit nicely as a way to finish the day. T...
5 hours ago
Krzysztof, you're right about ArduPilot not being in the UNAV3500's league (although it's far better than the Picopilot, which is what the offending RC Groups thread was about), but you're wrong about the manual. It does exist and is up to industr...
5 hours ago
You mean you don't have a RC system at all? If you do have one, you can plug it it to center the servos even if you don't intend to use RC on the blimp. If you don't have one, just leave the servos in the position they came and let the PID loops d...
9 hours ago
It just means you won't be able to select multiple modes. So you'd have, for example, manual and WP, rather than manual, RTL, and WP.
9 hours ago
Good answer ;-)
10 hours ago
Sure. Why? What does the Thermopile give you that the IMU does not?
10 hours ago
No, you wouldn't use both. They do the same thing, via different methods. At the moment, the IMU is a stand-alone product and is not intended to work with ArduPilot.
10 hours ago
Given that you've already got the RC gear, your budget seems fine. All of the ArduPilot equipment, including wireless telemetry and a ground station, is less than $400. The EasyStar with the brushless upgrade is about another $100. Beyond that, yo...
11 hours ago
I'm seeing some awesome runs here after a week away. I was considering the possibility of putting in a bigger battery, tweaking the code and getting another run in, but seeings how I just got back from a glorious week in Hawaii (neener neener neen...
12 hours ago
Here is a video of the GCS for the whole duration of my 6041m/19'819ft cumulative climb flight. Some technical details: Multiplex EasyStar with Himax 2808-1550 brushless motor and 6x5" Aero-naut carbon prop. Paparazzi TWOG v1 autopilot. Multiplex...
13 hours ago
A 9v will do in a pinch, although it's quite heavy and you'll really need to top off the helium to lift it. You need at least 5v.
13 hours ago

Profile Information

About Me:
I'm Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, author of The Long Tail (Hyperion, 2006) and FREE (Hyperion, 2009) and founder of GeekDad.com and BookTour.com
Website:
http://longtail.com
Hometown:
Berkeley, California

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Chris Anderson

No DIY Drones chat tonight...

We're taking two weeks off from the live chat/podcast while I'm travelling. Back on Sunday, December 13th

Posted on November 29, 2009 at 6:11pm —

Chris Anderson

ArduIMU+ V2 on sale ($99)!

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Posted on November 28, 2009 at 6:30am — 6 Comments

Chris Anderson

Dealing with spammers on DIY Drones

Folks, you may have seen that the price of DIY Drones' increasing traffic and Page Rank is that the spammers are now targetting us pretty regularily. As a result, I've had to turn on moderation for blog posts. That means that when you post, it won't show up until a moderator (there are a couple dozen of them) approves it. Hopefully, that will always be within an hour. Sorry for the inconvinence!

(This doesn't affect the discussion forum, which the spammers don't seem to target)

Posted on November 28, 2009 at 5:00am — 25 Comments

Chris Anderson

Cool new tracking antenna

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Posted on November 27, 2009 at 9:12pm — 6 Comments

Chris Anderson

Arduino in the Wall Street Journal

Cool WSJ coverage of our chosen platform, which has won the open source hardware stakes so far. Excerpt:

"The Arduino represents an early entrant in the emerging open-source hardware movement, which like Linux and other open-source software projects is driven by the belief that allowing duplication is a better way to spur innovation than keeping designs under lock and… Continue

Posted on November 26, 2009 at 10:13pm —

Comment Wall (46 comments)

At 5:58pm on July 11, 2007, Jeffrey Johnson said…
Great talking to you today. We are on it with using your designs here, and look forward to dovetailing our efforts. Power to the PictEarth People!
At 9:13pm on January 2, 2008, Dhrumil said…
Thanks for setting this up.
At 11:12pm on February 7, 2008, Mark L said…
Hey Chris,

I just read your post on UAVs and I'm wondering if there's anywhere that one could purchase a pre-made UAV...couldn't find one on ebay.
I run a network of websites, www.ballerhouse.com, and am considering featuring a UAV article. Can you point me in the direction of where someone could purchase one? If so, what other info should my readers know?
Thanks!
Mark L
markl@ballerhouse.com
At 11:17pm on February 7, 2008, Chris Anderson said…
The cheapest commercial one is around $7,000 (cropcam.com). The cheapest *good* one is around $10,000 (http://www.procerusuav.com/). That's why we started this site, to bring the price down below $1,000.

We're *DIY* Drones--buying one premade isn't the point ;-)
At 5:41pm on February 28, 2008, William Premerlani said…
Chris,
If you want to do a Q&A with me, that would be fine.

The reason for the board is that my son and I thought it would be fun to build our own board, develop theory, and write firmware. We were inspired by Maynard Hill, who came to town and gave a talk.
We got our feet wet with a rapid-prototyping board mounted on an RC truck, and then build our own board for a sailplane. We bought our parts from SparkFun. Nathan Seidle, the ownder of Sparkfun, asked me what we were doing, I told him, he offered to build a surface mount board for me.
My son and I spent a few delightful summers getting the firmware working. At the time, our goal was to play, to just do some interesting things with it, without any goal in mind. When we were done, we had something that worked to our satisfaction, Nathan asked if he could sell it, we gave him permission.
We recognized that what we had was not a full-fletched autopilot, but that it might be interesting to anyone wanting to tinker with the controller. They could build on our firmware, if they wanted, or start from stratch, if they were ambitious.
By the way, the main reason we used assembly language was that my son had never written any, and he wanted to learn. He had used lots of other languages, but not assembly.
As far as what people are doing with my board, you probably have more information than I have!! The only person I've talked to so far is a member of diydrones. All I know is that the board is selling well at SparkFun, with no complaints.
By the way, the reason the board has been backordered for so long is that the vendor of the GPS replaced their ET301 with an ET312 at the same time that SparkFun was automating their board production, resulting in some defective boards. Even after we worked out the hardware problems, there was a subtle change in the ET312 that caused some problems. Every board that SparkFun builds is tested with the full firmware running, and the boards were not passing. We finally figured out what was wrong, production is resumed, I guess they are catching up on backorders.
All of the work my son and I was deliberately done in a vacuum...we didn't do any research on what other people were doing. We made some mistakes (that was the point) and had some fun.
My background is an electrical engineer with strengths in control theory, mathematics, and theory of flight.
I work at GE's research labs, I've been there for 33 years.
You might want to do a Google on "William Premerlani" to see what I have been up to. Much of it has to do with software development...you gave me a good chuckle when you said in your review that you wondered why we hadn't used C...the answer is, it would have been too easy!!!
Bill
At 10:52pm on March 22, 2008, Elisa said…
any time if u like to have a wet dip & country village food, come over try our our boats,(planty of spcae for plane flys
elisa
At 6:02pm on March 26, 2008, T-Rex said…
I heard you on Talk of the Nation today...great job! I did not get to hear the whole show, but definately heard the part about your "robotics" site and 3-axis accelerometers. You, my friend, rock!

By the way, thanks for the advice about starting out in R/C with a foamie...else I would not have made it past my first flight attempts.
At 6:27pm on March 26, 2008, Chris Anderson said…
Thanks! I wanted to say "3-axis MEMS accelerometer" but I held back for the sake of the NPR audience ;-)
At 10:44pm on April 4, 2008, Simon Pan said…
Hey Chris,

I won honorable mention, best in category, best in engineering, 550$, and an internship offer, at the state science & engineering fair. (The winners were a guy who did computer simulations of bird flu epidemics to determine the best method to distribute a limited supply of antivirals, a girl who developed an advanced, complex robotic vision algorithm which could detect blobs in foggy areas and high altitude ranges, and a guy who figured out a method to stem the growth of certain forms of cancer, so it was a humbling experience).

I just wanted to thank you for making this website and for your great documention and projects, because without them I'd probably still be trying to figure out how to connect the GPS receiver to the Stamp.

Thanks!

- Simon
At 8:26am on May 10, 2008, Huckleberry said…
Thanks Chris,

Been following along for some time (geekdad) and just bought a Blubberbot for something to do over the summer holidays... thinking about the project possibilities for my kids in electronics 11/12 ... hmmm blimp racing? Anyway, great to be here.

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