2012 February » Odd Copter

OpenPilot Revolution Flight Control Board

Feb 282012

February 28, 2012 Posted by Britt Boards, Components, News No Responses »

Revo2 flying from James Cotton on Vimeo.

Dankers, over at OpenPilot has released some interesting details about their upcoming Revolution flight control board. The Revolution board will be even more advanced than their current CopterControl board. Dankers says:

It is a full 10DoF, Mag, Gyro, Accel & Pressure

Cool stuff and it sounds like they are getting close, but these guys will not release anything until it works perfectly. Also, their quality control is excellent, so when it is available, you can be sure it will work. I can’t wait!

They are also in the process of replacing the CopterControl (CC) board with a board called CC3D that will have similar capabilities. Due to CC’s great success and OpenPilot’s high quality standards, the CC board is almost impossible to get. Hopefully, these new boards will be more readily available. I am lucky enough to own one of the original CopterControl boards and it is amazing. It is very easy to configure, customize and fly.

Quadcopters and Civilian Drone UAVs in the News

Feb 272012

February 27, 2012 Posted by Britt News No Responses »

What is the difference between a UAV, a Drone and a Quadcopter?

If you do a Google search for “Civilian Drones” today, there are a lot of articles that come up with pictures of quadcopters and other multicopters. Most of them are about the future legality of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Drones. This article from Boston.com quotes Dan Elwell, the Aerospace Industries Association’s vice president for civil aviation as saying:

It’s going to be the next big revolution in aviation. It’s coming.

As a hobbyist, I just want to enjoy flying my quadcopter around and hope there won’t be a lot of laws regulating it. Sure, I like the idea of attaching a camera to my quad for first person video (FPV) flying and or to get some cool video. However, I don’t have an interest in sending my quadcopter off on a GPS guided mission to do surveillance of my town. That is when a quadcopter starts to be classified as a drone. So, drones and radio controlled quadcopters are both UAVs, but an rc quadcopter is not necessarily a drone.

GPS Guided Video Surveillance

These are probably the areas most likely to be regulated. When a multicopter uses computer guided GPS waypoints to automatically fly around and shoot video, it could be something that the government wants to regulate. As for us recreational rc quad fliers, hopefully, they will leave us alone to have or fun.

Quadcopter ESCs (Electronic Speed Controls)

Feb 212012

February 21, 2012 Posted by Britt Components, ESCs 13 Responses »

ESC – Electronic Speed Controller

Here are a few tips I have picked up while researching which ESCs to put on my quadcopters.

The Basics

On a quadcopter, the flight control board’s firmware monitors measurement devices like gyros and accelerometers along with pilot stick inputs and sends signals to the ESCs attached to each the four motors. The ESCs use these inputs received from the flight control board to deliver the power required to control the speed of the motors. Each ESC has a processor, firmware and other electronics that manage this task by rapidly switching the power to the motor on and off. Continue reading for some tips on choosing the right ESC…
Continue reading »

Francis Fukuyama Builds a Quadcopter

Feb 142012

February 14, 2012 Posted by Britt News No Responses »

Author and political scientist Francis Fukuyama recently built a quadcopter that uses a DJI NAZA flight controller. He calls it a “Surveillance Drone”. Ha, I wonder if he is ready for some realtime surveillance with FPV (first person video). You can see it flying near his office at Standford in the video above and read about it on his blog.

Older Entries