[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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