8 ms·
OpenSource Nano Quadcopter Kit
- robodale 14y agoThis. Is. Gorgeous.
- robin_reala 14y agoWhen’s the Raspberry Pi of quadcopters coming? Would love a £40 quadcopter with a basic video camera.
- larrydag 14y agoI think most of the cost in quadcopters are in the sensors. I looked for cheap arduino copters and found this http://code.google.com/p/quaduino-ng/wiki/ShoppingList http://code.google.com/p/quaduino-ng/wiki/ShoppingList
- oftenwrong 14y agoAnother big cost is replacing and fixing the ones you crash.
- sc00ter 14y agoThat's silly. You can buy a complete arduino based flight controller with 3-axis gyro and accelerometer for less than $13. (For the best value I'd recommend the KK2.0 for $29, and for more comprehensive sensors one of the APM based boards, but you get the point.)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jlgreco 14y agoI suspect power would be an issue. You probably want to dedicate as much battery power as possible to the motors.
- sc00ter 14y agoNot quite, this is probably as close as you're going to get: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYi2NrEAxrs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYi2NrEAxrs Hubsan X4 £35-£40, Camera, TX,RX £20-30, Monitor, varies.
- imwhimsical 14y agoAmazing! I've already preordered a set. How do you think it'll rank up against my current model? (A Parrot AR Drone 2.0)
- simias 14y agoThe AR Drone is bigger and has cameras, wifi, ultrasound sensors etc... Most of the software (outside the kernel) is also not open source. It's also more expensive. Not the same kind of product really.
- Gertig 14y agoReally looking forward to seeing more and more of these nano quadcopters hit the market. I funded one on Kickstarter a fair number of months ago (still waiting on delivery) and can't wait to start playing with it.
- sc00ter 14y agoJust go out and buy one: http://www.google.com/search?q=hubsan%20x4 http://www.google.com/search?q=hubsan%20x4 http://www.google.com/search?q=walkera%20ladybird http://www.google.com/search?q=walkera%20ladybird http://www.google.com/search?q=wltoys%20v929 http://www.google.com/search?q=wltoys%20v929 To name just a few of the better known / more flyable ones.
- netcan 14y agoThese things are so cool, but also a little scary. Someone's gonna make one of these things assassinate a public figures or steal your keys.
- celticninja 14y agobig variance between those two outcomes, I really dont want my keys stolen.
- simias 14y agoI don't think this drone can lift a keychain. A gun even less so...
- netcan 14y agohow about a needle?
- simias 14y agoThose things are not exactly silent you know. Nor are they difficult to stop/intercept. Case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbnySBqioB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbnySBqioB0
- tanepiper 14y agoSo basically a hunter-seeker? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIVzK-h6qao http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIVzK-h6qao
- pchristensen 14y agoThey are un-ignorably loud, have battery life < 10 min, and are flown by line of sight. So if you tried to harm someone with it, you wouldn't get away.
- sc00ter 14y agoCorrect on the first two points, but larger hobby UAVs can be flown FPV at a range of several kilometers. Not legally in many western countries countries, but then norm is harming people. Edit: Line of site restrictions, maximum heights, and the maximum power of radio communications permitted without additional licensing are typical limiting factors.
- sgt 14y agoThis'll make a mean spycopter (i.e. for having fun with collagues). I suppose putting a camera on it should be doable - but wth 250kbit/sec @ 80m, is it enough? That'll probably give you 320x240 video (assuming that anything more than that will be too intensive to encode), which might not give you enough visual acuity to remote maneuver the quadcopter. Any thoughts?
- simias 14y agoThere doesn't seem to be a hardware encoder and the CPU runs at 72MHz max. I'm not sure what kind of encoding you can perform with such limited resources. Not to mention there are no camera interface. It has a USB bus however, so you might hook a smartcamera there if it's lightweight enough. I'm not sure how much you can lift with it tho, I'm guessing not much.
- elteto 14y agoIf you watch the video on the site you'll see that they fixed a tiny camera to it, though no info on range / data transfer rates.
- sc00ter 14y agoYou're thinking too literally. There's no reason for the video to be digitally encoded or transmitted. This is a microcopter, but larger ones can carry full size cameras: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsqAoELpmFQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsqAoELpmFQ
- ComSubVie 14y agoFinally! I've watched the Crazyflie project for quite a while and not finally I'm able to order one!
- icpmacdo 14y agoI cant wait to see the price drop enough on these so I am able to have my personal quadcopter army.
- meaty 14y agoSold! That's just what I wanted to play with :) I reckon I'll bust the PCB in about 5 minutes though.
- youngtaff 14y agoThese guys were at Øredev in Sweden back in November - there's a video of their talk here - https://vimeo.com/53073656 https://vimeo.com/53073656 Had a play with a Parrot at the same time and the CrazyFlie was much more nimble but relies on user control. Felix Geisendörfer did a talk on hacking a Parrot AR at Øredev - https://vimeo.com/41836614 https://vimeo.com/41836614 and it was great fun too.
- sp332 14y agoHere are some papers that might be useful for budding quadrotor hackers and pilots: https://fling.seas.upenn.edu/~dmel/wiki/index.php?n=Main.Publications https://fling.seas.upenn.edu/~dmel/wiki/index.php?n=Main.Pub... and a video made by that school: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQIMGV5vtd4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQIMGV5vtd4
- ef4 14y agoIf you like this, also check out http://openpilot.org http://openpilot.org. It's an open source autopilot project.
- sc00ter 14y agoWith a megalomaniac leader who has already dispatched two key developers, setting the project back months in the process? I suggest you don't. Instead, check out the http://diydrones.com http://diydrones.com site founded by former Wired editor Chris Anderson, and particularly the open source / open hardware Arduino based Ardu Pilot Mega (APM) flight controller, and software http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/wiki/ArduCopter http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/wiki/ArduCopter.
- ivanvanderbyl 14y agoI can vouch for ardupilot. Out of 6 flight controllers I've flown (KK, Mikrokopter, Multiwii and variants) it is the most advanced and stable flight platform under active development. OpenPilot looked promising but I haven't seen any proof yet.
- ef4 14y agoI have heard the same complaints, and I know several of the core contributors have just recently started their own fork. I linked to the original because I can't find much web presence for the new fork yet (PhoenixPilot, I think).
- visarga 14y agoI got a quadcopter as present for Christmas but I didn't enjoy it much - it is too hard to stabilize. I can't do anything with it. By comparison, a Syma 107 helicopter was much more fun. So, quadcopter designers out there - please make them less fragile, less crash prone. Can you mount sensors in all directions to keep it from bumping into walls and hovering at the designated location without human intervention? That would be useful.
- cpher 14y agoMy 5-yr old daughters got 2 Syma 109 helicopters for Christmas. They love them, but they're pretty hard for them to control--actually, very hard. But they're a blast for me. My 8-yr old god-son got a big quad copter that he can control with an iPod and it has a camera (with real-time video to the iPod). It flies and hovers amazingly well. Of course is was $400+
- bajsejohannes 14y agoIsn't the point of a quadcopter that it's supposed to be more stable than a helicopter?
- ynniv 14y agoWhile it's easy to automate level flight with four rotors, it's difficult to prevent horizontal drift.
- stcredzero 14y agoI would've thought we'd have consumer fly-by-wire by now.
- ynniv 14y agoThere is for $hundreds, but not for $tens. The Syma helicopters and quadrocopters mentioned are less than $40.
- sc00ter 14y ago
- visarga 14y agoI got a quadcopter as present for Christmas but I didn't enjoy it much - it is too hard to stabilize. I can't do anything with it. By comparison, a Syma 107 helicopter was much more fun. So, quadcopter designers out there - please make them less fragile, less crash prone. Can you mount sensors in all directions to keep it from bumping into walls and hovering at the designated location without human intervention? That would be useful.
- tocomment 14y agoCan a quadcopter fly on 3 motors if one dies, or does it crash?
- voorloopnul 14y agoAnd burn too, but a hexacopter can lose a motor...
- alexsb92 14y agoIt wouldn't be able to fly on three motors only. Opposite motors essentially stabilize each other, both on a horizontal plane and in terms of rotating then quad. So if one motor dies, it would do a combination of spinning out of control, similar to a helicopter without its tail rotor, and rotate on the axis of the two opposite motors that are still running.
- alexsb92 14y agoIt wouldn't be able to fly on three motors only. Opposite motors essentially stabilize each other, both on a horizontal plane and in terms of rotating then quad. So if one motor dies, it would do a combination of spinning out of control, similar to a helicopter without its tail rotor, and rotate on the axis of the two opposite motors that are still running.
- alexsb92 14y agoIt wouldn't be able to fly on three motors only. Opposite motors essentially stabilize each other, both on a horizontal plane and in terms of rotating the quad. So if one motor dies, it would do a combination of spinning out of control, similar to a helicopter without its tail rotor, and rotate on the axis of the two opposite motors that are still running.
- alexsb92 14y agoIt wouldn't be able to fly on three motors only. Opposite motors essentially stabilize each other, both on a horizontal plane and in terms of rotating the quad. So if one motor dies, it would do a combination of spinning out of control, similar to a helicopter without its tail rotor, and rotate on the axis of the two opposite motors that are still running.
- tocomment 14y agoI'm picturing putting two little prongs on the front of this and having it use image recognition to fly up to electrical outlets and recharge itself while hovering. Then it could fly indefinitely. I guess you'd need it to carry an AC/DC transformer though? Too heavy?
- jlgreco 14y agoI've heard ideas for flying robots that would hook themselves onto power-lines like birds (or maybe more like bats I guess) and charge themselves with induction from the line. Probably several kinds of illegal, but it would be pretty neat.
- beambot 14y agoThere are examples of wireless recharging [1], and UAVs perching on power lines for recharging [2]. Apologies for the self-indulgent links -- I wrote the articles, so they were easy for me to locate. ;-) [1] http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/04/17/wireless-power-transfer-ground-sensors-using-uav-quadrotor http://www.hizook.com/blog/2012/04/17/wireless-power-transfe... [2] http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/07/20/gliding-uav-perches-powerline-recharge http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/07/20/gliding-uav-perches-po...
- tunesmith 14y agoWhat's the danger level on this? Will it chop off your fingers?
- sc00ter 14y agoThat thing? Not a chance. The motors have no power, and the props virtually no inertia. A newborn pinkie would stop it in its tracks. A full size quad, hex or octo on the other hand can do some serious damage, from serious cuts to digit reduction.
- thematt 14y agoIf you're interested in serious quadcopters, check out the stunts these guys are doing: http://team-blacksheep.com/videos http://team-blacksheep.com/videos
- srlake 14y agoQuadrocopters FTW.
- stcredzero 14y agoHow about swarms of these designed to fan out and seek out any humanoid mammal in the area and deliver a taser/ tranquilizer charge? The batteries will run out in a few minutes, but not before everyone in the area has been incapacitated or telemetry data has revealed the location of all people encountered by the swarm. This could be the basis of a new counter-terrorist weapon.
- malandrew 14y agoI didn't realize we had so much terrorism that we need to program swarms of these to do what you described. Or by terrorism do you mean legitimate activist groups that threaten existing power structures?
- stcredzero 14y ago> I didn't realize we had so much terrorism that we need to program swarms of these to do what you described. You didn't realize because you aren't in command of all the facts, or you knew and didn't correlate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis Using gas in a situation like this isn't like in the movies. Dosages vary tremendously with physiology and interactions with other drugs, so dosing everyone is very likely to produce fatalities. Swarms of TASER-bots would avoid this. > Or by terrorism do you mean legitimate activist groups that threaten existing power structures? That's largely a matter of point of view. Is your point of view that anyone who even thinks of the weapons implications of technology automatically is for the oppression of dissent? If so, then this reveals your prejudices. For myself, I think that these sorts of gedankenexperiments about potential military use are interesting and valuable, because they allow for concerned parties to become aware of these possibilities, which is constructive. The automatic tarring of people doing such speculation has the opposite effect.
- gusgordon 14y agoI wonder if it's possible to find another battery about a third of the capacity that's a third of the weight (or less if the quality is higher). Then there would be considerably more weight for a camera or other things.