OpenSource Nano Quadcopter Kit | Hacker News Reader

OpenSource Nano Quadcopter Kit

seeedstudio.com

191 pointsjwillmer56 comments

I 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.

My 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+

Isn't the point of a quadcopter that it's supposed to be more stable than a helicopter?

While it's easy to automate level flight with four rotors, it's difficult to prevent horizontal drift.

I would've thought we'd have consumer fly-by-wire by now.

There is for $hundreds, but not for $tens. The Syma helicopters and quadrocopters mentioned are less than $40.

As with microcopters, there are plenty of duff microquads on the market, but the Hubsan X4 (google it) is easy to fly, and very durable, and a cheap way to get into the hobby at about $50-60.

If you like this, also check out http://openpilot.org. It's an open source autopilot project.

With 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 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.

I 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.

I 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).

These 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.

big variance between those two outcomes, I really dont want my keys stolen.

I don't think this drone can lift a keychain. A gun even less so...

how about a needle?

Those things are not exactly silent you know. Nor are they difficult to stop/intercept. Case in point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbnySBqioB0

So basically a hunter-seeker? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIVzK-h6qao

They 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.

Correct 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.

Many quadcopters can be programmed to fly routes by GPS. No line of sight needed technically, legal part depends on country.

What, like this?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pH_k5TC433g

These guys were at Øredev in Sweden back in November - there's a video of their talk here - 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 and it was great fun too.

Here are some papers that might be useful for budding quadrotor hackers and pilots: 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

I cant wait to see the price drop enough on these so I am able to have my personal quadcopter army.

This'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?

There 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.

If 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.

You'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

When’s the Raspberry Pi of quadcopters coming? Would love a £40 quadcopter with a basic video camera.

I 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

Another big cost is replacing and fixing the ones you crash.

That'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.)

I suspect power would be an issue. You probably want to dedicate as much battery power as possible to the motors.

Not quite, this is probably as close as you're going to get:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYi2NrEAxrs

Hubsan X4 £35-£40, Camera, TX,RX £20-30, Monitor, varies.

I'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?

I'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.

There 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-transfe...

[2] http://www.hizook.com/blog/2010/07/20/gliding-uav-perches-po...

Really 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.

Just go out and buy one:

http://www.google.com/search?q=hubsan%20x4 http://www.google.com/search?q=walkera%20ladybird http://www.google.com/search?q=wltoys%20v929

To name just a few of the better known / more flyable ones.

If you're interested in serious quadcopters, check out the stunts these guys are doing: http://team-blacksheep.com/videos

Can a quadcopter fly on 3 motors if one dies, or does it crash?

And burn too, but a hexacopter can lose a motor...

It 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.

It 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.

How 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.

I 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?

> 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

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.

I 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.

Amazing! I've already preordered a set. How do you think it'll rank up against my current model? (A Parrot AR Drone 2.0)

The 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.

Finally! I've watched the Crazyflie project for quite a while and not finally I'm able to order one!

Sold! That's just what I wanted to play with :)

I reckon I'll bust the PCB in about 5 minutes though.

What's the danger level on this? Will it chop off your fingers?

That 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.

This. Is. Gorgeous.

Quadrocopters FTW.

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