Super-turbo-Awesome ground control system

If you take a hummingbird board, (http://www.solid-run.com/products/hummingboard/), with a RC305 video receiver, a 7" touchscreen monitor....Load DroidPlanner onto it...Mount it to your Taranis...And you have both recordable FPV & touchscreen GroundControlSystem. And A/B switch to change between the 2 screens. Nice idea huh? Shall I build it? :)

Throttle failsafe working on MPNG + AIOP using standard 9x receiver

If you are using MegapirateNG and a Crius AIOP board with the Turnigy 9x, the standard 9x receiver doesn't enable the somewhat important throttle failsafe feature in Arducopter & Mission Planner.

However, I have the Throttle failsafe working on my 'Locust Quadcopter' AIOP board, using the standard 9x receiver (9x8cV2). 
It appears to have allowed me not to purchase the Frsky modules (£50/pair?) just to enable throttle failsafe.

If you would like to try it, I have used this PPM encoder V1 board which cost me just over £4 on ebay.

It was quite simple:

I set up MegapirateNG on the Arduino software to enable the default PPM (Changing it from my previous PWM signal), and uploaded it.

I then plugged the ppm encoder board between the 9x receiver and AIOP, sending the 3 ppm wires (+5v, GND, PPM) to the AIOP board (+5v, GND, A8).

I powered the 9x receiver from the AIOP board also (powering using the PPM encoder board didn't work for me). I didn't use the MUX wire on the PPM encoder either. It's not necessary.

Then, it was just a case of connecting the ch pins from 9x receiver to PPM encoder as you see fit for your needs.

I didn't have to modify the PPM encoder at all. It worked as it came, out of the bag.

If anyone wants assistance I'm happy to offer advice. 

3D printing a V929 frame

Here's the new 3D Printing of a V929 frame with a tilting 808 camera mount, sideways battery slot, and vtx mounting plate:

Thermal Imaging Quadcopter

Update on Flir Lepton camera:
lens = 50-60degree fixed focus
voltage= 2.5-3.1v
power=150mw
dimensions 8.5mmx8.5mm
pins=32pin socket connection
resolution=80x60px
Interface=i2C, MIPI, VoSPi
Price=$xxx

FPV Video

I was thinking, just now, wouldn't it be great if instead of using an lcd monitor screen mounted on the controller, or the traditional rc video goggles like these:


Perhaps a hybrid like google glass would be fun to use.


You could record the pilots view, and also record the quad view in the HUD then possibly link this video feed remotely to a live service such as Livestream or Ustream (Or your military commander....). 



or this: 

or with thermal imager:

Update - LM1881 chip

Unable to get the sync chip to sync video correctly. Both pictures are there, but not in sync.
Using the basic PALdemo code for Arduino TVout: http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/TVout

And the live video-out from 808 #16 camera.

Both going into the LM1881 chip.

Motivation.

"people often ask me why big companies have trouble innovating while small companies seem to be able to do it so easily."http://recode.net/2014/01/01/can-do-vs-cant-do-culture/

I've been thinking about buying my first RC Plane: A bixler 1.1 with Ardupilot. My finger keeps wavering over the 'buy it' button but it's the conflict of cost with my weekly financial budgeting that keeps me from going through with the purchase. Anyway, my thoughts: I thought as I'm doing this project mostly for myself, and for my own education. I'll be sharing it freely online and making the code available for all. But I can't help thinking, it would be really nice if I could get that Bixler from the efforts I'm putting in. Anyway, whatever. I'm still doing this project no-matter.