Community, Competition, Hardware, Software, Videos

DELFTACOPTER – Hybrid Drone on a Mission

September 20, 2016 Rich Burton

DELFTACOPTER, an electric, long range, transitioning autonomous delta-wing helicopter, is on a mission. What mission? In this case, it’s the 2016 Outback Medical Express challenge and the MAVLab Team at TUDelft has high hopes for their hybrid aircraft.

This year’s Outback Medical Express mission requires a UAV to pick up and bring back a blood sample of an ill-fated person called “Outback Joe” located at an inaccessible roughly known location 30 kilometer away remote location with unknown terrain.

Powered by PaparazziUAV, the DELFTACOPTER is also equipped with state of the art on-board stereoscopic wide field of view computer vision.

Property description	Value
Flight
Cruise speed	45 knots at 300 watt
Most efficient speed	35 knots at 230 watt
Maximum speed	50 knots
Physical
Weight	4kg
MTOW	4,5kg
Wing area	0,496 m2
Wing loading	8kg/m2
Span	1,54m
Length	0,6 m
Height	0,4m
Energy
Power usage in hover	280 watt
Main battery energy	10000mAh ~ 225 Wh
FTS battery energy	250mAh ~ 2Wh
RPM in forward flight	450 rpm
RPM in hovering flight	1550 rpm
Datalink
Datalink 1 protocol	Iridium satellite communication
Datalink 1 range	Global
Datalink 2 protocol	900 MHZ long range communication
Datalink 2 range	40km
Weather properties
Maximum wind speed	30kts
Maximum precipitation	Light rain

All the best to the MAVLab Team and their DELFTACOPTER during their Outback Challenge adventures.

Community, Events, Hardware

Paparazzi UAV at DefCon 24

August 3, 2016 Piotr Esden-Tempski

We will be at DefCon 24. A yearly hacker conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. If you are there make sure to say hi. To get in touch just send a mention or private message to @paparazziuav on twitter or a contact us in our Gitter Discuss channel.

1BitSquared will be there selling their hardware. If you are interested send them a message to @1bitsquared on twitter. They will have Elle0, Lisa/S, Lisa/MX, Lisa/M autopilots for sale as well as Lisa/S starter kits and Quad Kits. The new Black Magic Probe v2 programming and debugging adapter will be available at the Hacker Warehouse in the Vendor area.

See you there!

Hardware, Software, Videos

Drones vs. Retro-gaming: fly with a Game Boy Classic

August 1, 2016 Gautier Hattenberger 38 Comments

Some time ago, I found my old Game Boy at my parents’ house. So the first thing that came to my mind was: can I fly a drone with this ? (and also where is my Mario Bros cartridge).

So I spend some time searching the web to see if I could find some idea to solve my problem. And if it seems that piloting unmanned aircraft with a Game Boy is not so common, you can find everything you need to program it!

But you can’t expect to go directly to an old custom serial com port to a wifi-based drone without some intermediate steps:

Finally, the Game Boy is just sending the bitmask corresponding to the buttons being pressed (with an Arduino and a FTDI to convert Game Link signals to USB), and a small program on the ground station converts this into actual commands for the drone (an ARDrone2 from Parrot with an extra GPS in my case).

The result is here:

See https://github.com/enacuavlab/PPRZonGB for more information and source code of this demo.

Community, Events, Research

Flights at the ISARRA2016 conference

July 24, 2016 Gautier Hattenberger

Last May, the ISARRA conference (International Society for Atmospheric Research using Remotely Piloted Aircraft) was held in Toulouse, France (http://www.meteo.fr/cic/meetings/2016/isarra/).

The week before the conference, a few teams of researchers gathered to share experiences and fly their drones at the Atmospheric Research Center of Lannemezan near the Pyrenees. Among them was some of the oldest users of Paparazzi: Martin Muller (http://blog.pfump.org), the team of Joachim Reuder from the Geophysical Institute of Bergen, the UAV Lab of ENAC and the French Meteorological Research Center who was hosting the event.

Many flights have been done, including for the ENAC lab, the first flight using ChibiOS v3 implementation and some autonomous catapult takeoff.

Community, Release, Software

Flying Robot Commander + PPRZLINK = Improved MultiMAV Management

April 11, 2016 Rich Burton

For those of us that use Paparazzi to fly multiple MAVs, the current GCS does a great job of managing and presenting just the right amount of information for safe flight. That being said, there’s always room for new tools. It’s my pleasure to introduce the Flying Robot Commander, a PPRZLINK enabled web application for managing multiple MAVs.

The Flying Robot Commander(FRC) is a Flask/python based RESTful web application that integrates with Paparazzi UAV via PPRZLINK. That’s right, you can now write python code to access/extend Paparazzi UAV capabilities (NOTE: one of the main complaints about the current Paparazzi GCS is that it’s written in ocaml). In addition to python, PPRZLINK also provides C and ocaml libraries for those that need them.

For more details related to the Flying Robot Commander, PPRZLINK and Paparazzi UAV in general, see the following links:

– Flying Robot Commander Github
– PPRZLINK Github
– Paparazzi Github
– Paparazzi Wiki

Community, Hardware, Tutorial, Videos

Introduction to the G0 GPS

March 21, 2016 Piotr Esden-Tempski

Dear Paparazzians,

I made a new video describing the details of the G0 Paparazzi UAV GPS receiver module. In the video I go through and describe the several design decisions we made to ensure high Signal to Noise Ratio, good multi path GPS signal rejection and overall reliability of the GPS for use in airborne robotics applications.

I hope this video is helpful. If you think so too please let me know in the YouTube comments. If you enjoyed the video make sure to like it on YouTube and subscribe to the channel.

Check out the G0 paparazzi wiki page for more information about the GPS.

G0 is now available for purchase in the 1BitSquared store together with the Elle0 autopilot. It is available in both of our stores; the US Store and the German Store. So if you live in the European union, you can now buy Elle for your next UAV project without having to worry about customs and shipping time. 🙂

Cheers, and successful flights,
Esden and the 1BitSquared team

Community, Hardware, Release, Tutorial, Videos

Introduction to the Elle0 Autopilot

March 3, 2016 Piotr Esden-Tempski

Dear Paparazzians,

I made a new video describing the details of the Elle0 Paparazzi UAV autopilot. Elle0 is now available for purchase in the 1BitSquared store together with the G0 companion GPS receiver. In the video I go through and describe every IO pin as well as some of the design differences to the Lisa/MX Autopilot. Additionally, I describe how you can add a battery voltage monitor to your Elle0 using a voltage divider circuit.

I hope this video is helpful. If you think so too please let me know in the YouTube comments. I am planning to make many more videos describing different aspects of Paparazzi UAV, not only hardware but also flight videos and Paparazzi software tutorials and tips. If you think it will be useful for you make sure to subscribe and tell me in the comments what you would like to see.

Also, check out the Elle0 paparazzi wiki page for more information about the autopilot itself and diagrams of the system. Additionally to the Elle0 and G0 boards we have also released a matching R0 radio board and UU0 UART to USB adapter boards. We will be making videos describing more parts of the modular system we are working on soon. Whereas the Elle0 and G0 are already in stock, the R0 & UU0 are available for Pre-Order in our US store.

Cheers, and successful flights,
Esden and the 1BitSquared team

Community, Hardware, Software

Paparazzi UAV on Pixhawk teaser

March 1, 2016 Bart Remes

Hi all Open-Source enthusiasts,

Today we are happy to announce we’ll be adding an extra autopilot board to there long list of supported autopilots.

The Pixhawk autopilot board will be integrated in our next software release! The video shows the first flight with Paparazzi UAV on a Pixhawk, more videos will follow.

Why choose Paparazzi UAV?

If you are looking for an advanced, modular open-source autopilot which has features others can only dream of, you choose Paparazzi UAV.

We make it possible for you to choose the best software for your needs, on the hardware platforms that are right for your project.

Wishing you successful flights,
The Paparazzi dev team

Community, Hardware, Release

1BitSquared launches German Store

January 12, 2016 Piotr Esden-Tempski

1BitSquared has just launched their German online store. This is the first dedicated Paparazzi UAV hardware supplier in Europe.

With a store in Europe they can provide faster delivery times of Paparazzi UAV hardware for all the European users and developers. Now you can purchase Lisa/M(X), Lisa/S, Elle0 autopilots and accessories for Paparazzi UAV within Europe without having to pick up your order at your customs office. We hope this will make the entry into Paparazzi and working with the system easier, knowing that you can get new parts and hardware faster from a local supplier.

Check out the 1BitSquared DE store, if you have any questions or suggestions let us know in the Paparazzi UAV Gitter channel, esden is always there to answer your questions regarding the 1BitSquared products and online store. You can also reach 1BitSquared through their contact form, and the 1BitSquared Gitter Discuss channel.

Community

Wiki Front Page Update

January 6, 2016 Danika Esden-Tempski

With the coming of the new year we decided it was time for a refresh of the appearance of the Wiki front page. Stripping away its colorful design and removing the boxes around text we thought it would help make the information cleaner and easier to read. We have added new icons to help clarify how you can best connect with the community and where to find what you need.

We hope people like the new look of the Wiki and find navigating it to be an easier experience, as always new contributions are welcome. Happy flying everyone!

If you don’t remember how it looked before, here is a picture;

Paparazzi UAV Blog