[Canberrauav] possible sub-projects for next 6 months Andrew Tridgell tridge at samba.org Sun Oct 14 19:58:54 EST 2012 Hi All, I thought it might be useful to outline some of the possible sub-projects CanberraUAV could undertake over the next 6 to 9 months. 1) Weather station for CMAC. I'm hoping we will have a online weather station up at CMAC in the next few weeks. It would be particularly useful for people wanting to know what the wind is like. It could incorporate a camera as well. 2) CSIRO collaboration. I've been working with Trevor Dowling to help his CSIRO group with their aerial mapping project in the Phillipines. Trevor has bought a SkyWalker, and has been learning to fly on my SkyWalker and SkyFun. He hopes to take his SkyWalker to the Phillipines in February. 3) DGPS. We've been discussing for a long time the possibility of building an affordable differential GPS solution. Chris and I hope to work with Andrew to build a prototype. 4) Legal digital video. It would be nice to be able to demonstrate a digital video system capable of transitting over 15km or so legally, with affordable, lightweight hardware. This is one of the big problems with FPV in Australia (and other countries) at the moment. Dave Woodgate has volunteered to look into it! 5) X8 wings. Jack plans on getting a couple of X8 wings to test if we can build an electric UAV with enough endurance, speed and payload to complete OBC like missions. We will very likely end up building our own design in the future, but the X8 seems like a good place to start learning about what can be done with a large flying wing. 6) Compact GCS. I'd like to port our GCS system (including imaging and mapping) to a android tablet. I now have a Nexus7 tablet and I'm looking forward to experimenting with what can be done. Note that the Nexus7 and many other modern android tablets (most running android 3.1 or later) can run their USB OTG ports in host mode, which means they can directly connect to the RFD900 or 3DR radios. 7) PX4 port. We need to work together with other ArduPlane developers to get ArduPlane running well on the PX4 autopilot. That will give us a lot more CPU and memory on the autopilot for new features. 8) Fuel cell batteries. If we find that LiPo batteries don't give us the range we need then we could look at the possibility of fuel cells for re-charging LiPos in flight. This could either be done by working with an existing fuel cell company and offering to work with them to test their system in our UAVs, or we could try to develop our own, or re-purpose existing commercial fuel cells (eg. laptop fuel cells). If you want to work on one of the above sub-projects, put your hand up! Cheers, Tridge
[Canberrauav] possible sub-projects for next 6 months Stephen Dade stephen_dade at hotmail.com Sun Oct 14 23:07:02 EST 2012 I've got a few ideas too: 9) Porting MAVProxy to Windows. This would vastly enlarge its user base and make it more flexible. I had a poke around it during the weekend and it now "sort of" works. 10) Adding a top level GUI to MAVProxy. This probably fits in with Tridge's (6). This is another making-it-more-user-friendly project. 11) Some sort of long-range sonar/radar/camera for accurate AGL height detection during flight. If mounted looking down and forwards, real terrain tracking and obstacle avoidance becomes practical. Tridge - I'm happy to help out on any of your items - they all sound like really cool ideas. -Stephen -----Original Message----- From: canberrauav-bounces at canberrauav.com [mailto:canberrauav-bounces at canberrauav.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Tridgell Sent: Sunday, 14 October 2012 7:59 PM To: canberrauav at canberrauav.com Subject: [Canberrauav] possible sub-projects for next 6 months Hi All, I thought it might be useful to outline some of the possible sub-projects CanberraUAV could undertake over the next 6 to 9 months. 1) Weather station for CMAC. I'm hoping we will have a online weather station up at CMAC in the next few weeks. It would be particularly useful for people wanting to know what the wind is like. It could incorporate a camera as well. 2) CSIRO collaboration. I've been working with Trevor Dowling to help his CSIRO group with their aerial mapping project in the Phillipines. Trevor has bought a SkyWalker, and has been learning to fly on my SkyWalker and SkyFun. He hopes to take his SkyWalker to the Phillipines in February. 3) DGPS. We've been discussing for a long time the possibility of building an affordable differential GPS solution. Chris and I hope to work with Andrew to build a prototype. 4) Legal digital video. It would be nice to be able to demonstrate a digital video system capable of transitting over 15km or so legally, with affordable, lightweight hardware. This is one of the big problems with FPV in Australia (and other countries) at the moment. Dave Woodgate has volunteered to look into it! 5) X8 wings. Jack plans on getting a couple of X8 wings to test if we can build an electric UAV with enough endurance, speed and payload to complete OBC like missions. We will very likely end up building our own design in the future, but the X8 seems like a good place to start learning about what can be done with a large flying wing. 6) Compact GCS. I'd like to port our GCS system (including imaging and mapping) to a android tablet. I now have a Nexus7 tablet and I'm looking forward to experimenting with what can be done. Note that the Nexus7 and many other modern android tablets (most running android 3.1 or later) can run their USB OTG ports in host mode, which means they can directly connect to the RFD900 or 3DR radios. 7) PX4 port. We need to work together with other ArduPlane developers to get ArduPlane running well on the PX4 autopilot. That will give us a lot more CPU and memory on the autopilot for new features. 8) Fuel cell batteries. If we find that LiPo batteries don't give us the range we need then we could look at the possibility of fuel cells for re-charging LiPos in flight. This could either be done by working with an existing fuel cell company and offering to work with them to test their system in our UAVs, or we could try to develop our own, or re-purpose existing commercial fuel cells (eg. laptop fuel cells). If you want to work on one of the above sub-projects, put your hand up! Cheers, Tridge
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