From:  Christian Menge 
Subject:  [Paparazzi-devel] Commercial Application 
Date:  Fri, 23 Jun 2006 07:28:46 -0700 (PDT) 

Guys,

I'm new and have a couple questions about Paparazzi:

(1) We would like to use the software in a commercial fixed wing 
application, how reliable is this technology/software?

Requirments:

a. - Ability to fly in moderate to bad weather, wind, cloud, fog.
b. - Ability to be controlled within a five mile range.
c. - Two hour endurance.
d. - Automatic landing
e. - Ability to control aircraft from a ground station.
f. - Ability to get close to real-time feedback of aircraft telemetry, 
video, altitude, GPS location, etc


(2) Is Paparazzi currently being developed, I noticed several of 
the project pages have not been updated in years?

Thanks!

Christian

From:  Antoine 
Subject:  Re: [Paparazzi-devel] Commercial Application 
Date:  Fri, 23 Jun 2006 18:40:11 +0200 
User-agent:  Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 (X11/20060516) 

Hi Christian

Christian Menge wrote:

> Guys,

> I'm new and have a couple questions about Paparazzi:

> (1) We would like to use the software in a commercial fixed wing 
> application, how reliable is this technology/software? 

> Requirments:

> a. - Ability to fly in moderate to bad weather, wind, cloud, fog.

Ability to sustain wind mostly depends on your airframe choice. The 
faster the better, but a high airspeed has drawbacks in term of 
endurance, landing and takeoff ease etc... The infrared sensors won't 
work inside clouds, under heavy rain or inside dense fog. 

> b. - Ability to be controlled within a five mile range.

The range depends on you radio modem choice. Some people are using 
1W Maxtream units which give a very long range. Tests are planed 
using GPRS modems. 

> c. - Two hour endurance.

Again, depends on your airframe choice - The 200-300g airframes are 
more in the range of 30 minutes endurance - The 1.5kg twinstar with 
lipos and brushless can do 2 hours. 
Combustion engine will allow even more, but have other drawbacks.

Their is no such thing as a perfect airframe, only airframes adapted 
to a particular mission. Once of the strong points of Paparazzi is its 
ability to be configured for all sort of airframes. 

> d. - Automatic landing

Depends on the size of the landing site, the speed of the airframe etc... :) 

> e. - Ability to control aircraft from a ground station.

We have that

> f. - Ability to get close to real-time feedback of aircraft telemetry, 
> video, altitude, GPS location, etc 

We have that too

> (2) Is Paparazzi currently being developed, I noticed several of 
> the project pages have not been updated in years? 

Paparazzi is very much developed and  the user base is always increasing.
The homepage at savannah is somewhat dead due to lack of time.

The wiki at ENAC ( http://www.recherche.enac.fr/paparazzi/doc ) is more alive. 
The most active media is the irc chanel ( freenode #paparazzi )
A look at the CVS will give you the best indications about development pace.

> Thanks!

> Christian

You're welcome

Antoine

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