New Member

[E-Copter]

Good afternoon,

as i just registered on the forum, i thought that intorducing myself would be maybe the first thing to do

So my name is Fabien, i'm from France ( near Nice, French Riviera) and i design and manufacture CNC parts for anything that has a few blades and flies

My partner in USA ( David Cook, DC Concepts) is the " CAD " guy in Solidworks, i take care of mechanical logics and base designs and then David brings them to CAD level, then we get our ass kicked by my cousin ( RATTO and Sons company) when we bring drawings with impossible shapes ( that he always end up to manage to mill anyway lol) , Thierry owes a precision mechanic workshop with some nice Mazak machines ( Nexus Matrix, Integrex 250 SYII...), and he finaly installed Mastercam to be able to perform 3D milling ( we had a blast testing the abilities, we were like kids in front og the INtegrex lol). We also have a very good supplier for carbon stuffs and well, we plan now to release in some time a specific airframe for aerial visual tracking / hd recording with Indie Cam cameras.

Project was pretty slow so far as i'm everything but a code guy ( lol) , but since last week, a new member came in the " E-Copter / DC Concepts" Team, his name is TIago Goncalves and he is a total geek ( Dual PHD in aerospace engineering / Signal and image processing), but he is a cool guy and was able to sustain our " Fu.. Yeah" way of doing more than 3 consecutives minutes without cracking down so he's in lol !

We are willing to give a try on designing a vidual tracking interface on the AQ6 as it is open source, which is making things much easier We don't really know if we will succeed but well, no try = no chance

I wish you all pleasant flights and code writing and hope to be able to be active on the forum

BEst regards,

Fabien

[kinderkram]

Bonjour Fabien and welcome to the club!

Sounds like you guys are into something.
Visual tracking & navigation is on our agenda for some time now and there are plans to use a Gumstix as daughter board, which the AQ6 is prepared for.
You'll meet team members who work both on the hardware and code side and it could be of great outcome if you guys team up on that matter.

Have a nice time around,

Norbert

[sandmen]

Hi Fabien,
as kinderkram already says, visual tracking, we have a eye on this topic.
Which kind of algorithm do you want to use?
Which platform do you want to use?

[plexus]

salut fabien, surpris de te retrouver ici . Bienvenue.

[E-Copter]

[E-Copter]

Hi Guys,

thanks for your messages

Regarding everything about the code, this is Tiago who takes care of it. YOu can ask me anything about elpint to setup a multirotor, fine tune PID gains and so on, and anything mechanical. Out of this ( code and programmation), i am clearly not competent and leave all this to Tiago. I'll check with him next week and i think he will need first to see how the AQ6 code is done and how he can interact with it i guess ?

Gumstix is good but there is one thing that cause a problem with it, it's the potential boot failure you can get with some temperatures conditions. I don't know if that has been solved so far, but sure thing is, some " big" companies here in France using Gumstix had some surprises some times. But well, for testing and developping, it's for sure a fantastic tool

My task in the project is to make a frame and gimbal that will allow the electronics to express all of their potential. Visual tracking is a tricky compromise regarding C of G of the frames, tilt and roll axis and the choice on a very well calibrated camera system.

First thing for us will be to get an AQ6 board, eventually 2 of them, and Tiago will look at all of this, during that time i'll mill an aluminium hard casing with foam air openings to protect against rotors succions that could give erratic barometer issues.

Wel, what else ? Not a lot as log as we will not have started to work on all of this )))

Thanks again,

Fabien

[mr_westie]

Welcome Fabien
I will beta test anything you put together

Would love to see something like this in the OoenSource space

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_fPBb6IHOE

Wish I could program more so I might have a chance to put something together.
http://techland.time.com/2011/04/07/rev ... en-source/
or
http://opencv.org/


The virtual camera view window on the right seems easy enough.
Draw a polygon on a Google earth map.
Camera state data.
Setup data
1. Horizontal FOV at 0 zoom. ?degrees
2. Vertical FOV at 0 zoom. ?degrees
3. Max zoom
4. H.FOV at max zoom
5. V.FOV at max zoom


1. 70
2. 46
3. 4
4. 17
5. 11

1/2. Gps cordinates in decimal degrees.
3. Heading , 0.0-360.0 degrees
4. Verticle angle. 90.0 ground, 0.0 horizon
5. Hight above ground (M)
6. Zoom level, 0-100
7. Carriage return

eg
36.492970,S,174.37621,E,3600,750,050,000<CR>

You may get a slightly off estimate if the area under you is not flat.
ie looking at a mountain side.
That could be resolved with more programming that takes that into account using GE elevation data.

[kinderkram]

We've already looked into several projects and this one looked interesting:

[E-Copter]

Hi,

i will be able to give more informations once Tiago will be available, he is trying to pass PPL ( Private PIlot Licence) next week and is concentrated in this at the moment ( you need to have a valid PPL theoric licence now in France to operate UAV's including multirotors)

I'll check the datas and youtube link, actually we are working on something " click and lock" if i can say so , with 2 major modes :

1) Camera tilt / roll and Multirotor Pan automatic, but with keeping position

2) Follow target at xxx meters if aerial conditions allow it

Best regards,

Fabien

[kinderkram]

Would this be interesting for you, Fabien?
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/42 ... iscovered/

I could try to coordinate activities with Kenn and Paul, former core coders of the OpenPilot project.