MATT. Looking forward to a progress report upon it's completion. What about expected flight time and range?? POWDERMAN.
If I can get the motors that I want then the flight time should be around one hour with a re-charge time of the same depending on the amount of sunlight. Range should be unlimited so long as it can land and recharge and I have cell service for the communications. Speed and duration will depend on the motors and battery of course.
The Arduino board that I have has been updated just a little bit (trashed the pic that was on it and replaced it with a Pic32 ) This gives me built in networking, easy GPS integration and has plenty of memory to run the httpd server that I will use for controlling it.
I still have to come up with the motors, props, ESC(electronic speed controller) and a few other items before it is complete. I found the plans on
www.Instructables.com and then combined that with information from the PDF that I will link in this post. I found most of my parts on ebay and have spent a total of maybe 50 bucks so far. The frame was 18 and the auto piolit module was about 20 I think. I had all the other electroincs so no out of pocket on them. I figure the motors will cost almost $100 for the ones I want so it may be a while before I can finish it. The ESC's are not that bad for good ones and the props are dirt cheap so in the end I think I can do everything I want for under 200 bucks.
Matt does lic. enter the picture with regard to the two ?
Not that I know of around here.
One of my thoughts was to stream the main cam video live on GBO once it is up and working. Maybe have the members pick a location and then send it there and stream the video back as long as the locations has GSM cell service. I should be able to use the multicast server on GBO to stream the video without to much extra effort.
Anyone else playing with these things ? If so what design and control method are you using?
Matt