An awesome new way to pitch blades for control

This video has left me with my jaw dropped. This is as significant as the wheel, or someone reinventing the wheel. With this, helicopters and coaxial copters will require less moving parts and be lighter overall. Great job everyone involved! via: http://hackaday.com/2014/12/16/uav-coaxial-copter-uses-unique-drive-mechanism/

Schematics and diagrams

Click picture to enlarge Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 stage 3 can also be used for helicopters. APM and servos are on separate power rails to prevent brownout from servo current. Multicopter UAS

New Naze32 flight controller! and derp

So I got this new Acro Naze32, test flew it today and its more stable and lightweight than the APM I had installed. But I was flying FPV and got to 50′ and tried to come down just a bit and it just flipped and flipped into the dirt. Guess I need to do more…

PID tuning an Arducopter APM 2.6 Mini-H quad

Had issues initially getting this tuned because of its small size.  Its a 280mm measured from one motor to the the other diagonally.  Its a clone I made of the “220mm Blackout Mini-H quad“, but the Blackout cant fit 6″ props just 5”. I used the tie down tuning method like this guy Dave C.…

Upgrading from KK2.0 flight controller to APM Arducopter 2.5

Quadcoptergarage.com just did a whole write up on this, which is great because its very detailed. KK2.0 is a pretty good basic flight stabilizer/controller and only costs $20. But its kinda dumb, no GPS or automation. Which is where APM comes in. Also, before buying anything Ardu APM related…consider using the new PX4 PIXHAWK gear…

FPV video frequency selection

Frequency choices for video: 900MHz – A nightmare in the city due to interference from civilization and cell phones. Not recommended. Not available in the Euro zone. 1.2GHz…Europe legal only, but a good choice if you can use it. An issue will be sourcing off the shelf antennas, not many exist and will probably have…

QGroundcontrol and PX4 is in, APM and Mission Planner is out?

3DRobotics which is famous for their “Diydrones” is changing hardware and user interface systems. They used to call their system Ardupilot and Arducopter and Ardurover, a short time ago they dropped all that for the name APM:Plane, APM:Copter and APM:Rover….well to confuse things further all new nomenclature is now old school. The new stuff is…