I’ve read a lot about the Parrot AR Drone (a quadcopter that you control with either your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad) but I’ve never seen it fly live. Recently one of my friends bought one and I got the opportunity to have a closer look on one of the most well-known quad copters out there.

Once plugged in the Parrot AR Drone generates its own WI-FI network to which you connect your Apple unit to control. All you have to do after that is to press the ”Take off” button on your iPhone and it takes of and stabilizes at 80 cm altitude. You steer it with either the accelerometer or with controls on the touch screen. On the screen you’ll be able to see what the Drone sees from two different cameras, one is located in the front and the other one is aimed to the ground (bomb view).

Even though my friend’s Drone had some pretty bad props I truly could see the potential of it. It’s super stable, very easy to fly and a great way to get into the basics of multicopters and FPV. It’s quite limited though since it’s not possible to fly further away than 50 m …

Parrot AR Drone on ground.

Airborne :-)

Latest picture of my new Skywalker 1900 mm. I’m really looking forward to try it out :-)

Each thursday me and my friends meet up to either fly fpv or to build and modify our models. Down below is a framegrab from the last recorded video. Everything went great and nothing was harmed. The platform I used was my Easystar with EZOSD.

Since my old and loved Skywalker is still gone I decided to buy myself a new one. I really liked the plane so I decided to go for another one. The new Skywalker has the new wing design with enlarged wings (1900 mm instead of 1680 mm) which means more lift and less current :-)

I’ve come quite a long way with the build and I hope to get it airborne next week.

I’ve hid the hinges and painted all rudders fluoroscent red :-)

I’m sorry by the way cause I havent wrote anything in here during the last couple of weeks. The reason for that is that we’ve bought a house with a big garden! It feels great but it takes quite some time to get the hang of everything. We’ll be moving in on 1 of June 2012.

My Skywalker is gone! I lost visual contact with it last day. I’ll write more about this later on. Right now my goal is to reach out to as many people as possible, that’s probably my best chance of getting it back. I’ll write the next part in swedish but will keep you updated with what is going on …

220312 klockan 06:30 förlorade jag kontakten med mitt radiostyrda flygplan. Jag flög i ett område mellan Fors golfbana och Berga Naturbruksgymnasium i Haninge (2 mil söder om Stockholm). Modellen heter Skywalker EPO V4 och är 168 cm brett och 118 cm långt. Planet var omöjligt att se på himlen men jag befann mig i närheten av gymnasiet när kontakten bröts.

Hittelön utlovas!

Jag har satt upp affischer på anslagstavlor, i butiker och busshållplatser och planet är förlustanmält hos polisen.
// Daniel Lagerholm
070-534 06 09

Last week has really been a great FPV-week. I got a lot of projects going on and have made a couple of good flights with my Skywalker. Spring has really taken off here and I was able to go out flying before work this thursday. The photo below shows my Skywalker and groundstation before flight, the clock is around 06.00 in the morning.

I was also able to make a maiden with my Easystar (after all the modifications) but it wasn’t a good one at all. I wanted to film the plane from the ground but I had forgot to insert the memory card into the Gopro and therefore I was unable to record anything. It was really windy (8-10 m/s) and I had to use a lot of power just to be able to fly it around safely. After a number of uncontrolled turns I decided to cancel the flight. Just before I landed a gust of wind decided to roll the plane 90 degrees to the left and forced me to land on the wingtip of the Easystar. Luckily for me the EZ* is a tough one and I could bring it back home without a scratch from the small incident.

Some of you might have noticed in the picture above that I’ve bought a transmitter bag for my Futaba 7C. This was the first time using it and all I can say is that it works – good! :) It will prevent the cold wind to reach your hands and fingers and I think I’ll use this bag a lot during the cold season.

I’ve also worked a lot on my ground station. I made a lid to the box that I’ve showed you before and tonight I’d a lot of thoughts about where and how to place all the equipment that has to fit inside of the box. The outside is more simple since it’s just an patch antenna on the front and one whip antenna on top (you can’t see the whip yet).

The box looks more complex inside and the picture below shows how I’ll fit everything. The ”empty” part is for the goggles and battery only.

I’m in the middle of making a new ground station. My goal is to hide all cables and all the things that I don’t need to see. Below is a picture of what it looks like for the moment. I still got some hours left before it’s finished and it takes a lot more time than I expected since I’ll have to figure out where to place all the things. I’ll power up the whole ground station up with a 3S 5000 mAh lipo.

This will probably be the first version of my new ground station. I’m waiting for a DVR-recorder and I’ll probably make some room for my 7″ screen in the next version. It’s really difficult to get it perfect from the beginning and the best way to get closer to perfect is to learn by mistakes :)

 

We got all four seasons here in Sweden. Right now we’re in the dark and cold period of winter and even though it is a lot brighter than it was during the darkest time of the year it is still not bright enough to fly after work. This isn’t just bad since you’ll get a lot of time to upgrade and rebuild your models. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks to make a lot of modifications to my Multiplex Easystar. My goal was to create a plane that could be used in any type of conditions and also a plane that I didn’t have to be so afraid to use. Therefore I decided to make it lighter and cheaper. Since I already got a bigger model that is able to carry more weight I decided to just use a RMRC-540 camera instead of the Gopro Hero HD that I used to fly with before. I’ll make all high quality videos with my Skywalker or Tricopter and just fly cause it’s fun with my easystar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is what the plane looks like without wings. Let’s take a closer look below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lot of things have happened here. I did buy ReadyMadeRC Easystar pod with pan/tilt but since I wanted to keep it easy and light weight I decided to just go for the pan axis. I modified the original pan/tilt pod and routed a hole for the servo. Then I used CA-glue to attach the servo to the pod. The servo is equipped with a SSV4 servo stretcher that allows the servo to move up to aprox 170 degrees.

The camera is the same that I’ve used for a while RMRC-540. It’s really a high quailty camera but I decided to try out a new low light lens. Have a look on its size – it’s huge! I haven’t tried it in air yet but after a couple of tests in the backyard I can tell that it makes a lot of difference and I definitely think that it’ll make night navigation a lot easier.
If you look closely you can see three of the seven LED’s that I’ve mounted on the plane. The green one is located between the rudder servo and the pod and the other two (both white) are located on each side of the ESC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A closer look of how I mounted the pan servo to the pod.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This were the place where I hid the lipo that powered up the camera and the transmitter. RMRC’s Easystar pod has a compartment at the rear for that battery. The 3S 500 mAh Turnigy lipo battery has almost the same size as the Immersion RC EZOSD that I’ll use which were great news for me. By mounting the EZOSD like this I can always reach the buttons and cables on the other side. Right under it is another LED.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The RC receiver is hidden inside of the body.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The EZOSD got a lot of problems acquiring satellites since the gps antenna was hidden under the motor and esc and in between a huge amount of cables. Quite soon I found out that it worked better if I moved the EZOSD a bit out of the body but the problems continued. I did take a look in my huge RC box and find the long EZOSD GPS Antenna cable that was supplied included in the EZOSD box. The modification is very simple to make. Just cut the EZOSD’s shrink wrap open and carefully take out the gps antenna. The EZOSD is basically just two parts (the OSD-unit and the antenna so it’s no risk that you take out the wrong part). Loosen the gps antenna cable from both the OSD and gps antenna (a good advice is to take a picture of how cable were connected before you take it out) and replace it with the new longer cable. Take it out in the direction you want to and add a new shrink wrap to the OSD. The next part is to add shrink wrap to the gps antenna and connect the cable to it – it’s as simple as that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not easy taking a picture of how the LED’s look like when it’s dark outside. I can tell you that it looks a lot cooler and better in reality. The LED-kit that I bought contained a total of 8 LED’s but I did just use 7 of them since I managed to break one of them when I did try to install it. There are four different types of LED’s in this kit:
- Always-bright (red, green and white)
- Strobe (white)
- Slow-flash (red)

I’m really looking forward to try these mods out. Feel free to contact me if you got any questions regarding these modifications or other RC/FPV questions.