dunkonu23

Ivan,

The unit I'm considering doesn't have the position sensor. From the docs it's more like a Skookum 720 only with a bailout feature that actually works. I'm considering as a cost saving measure in the long run for either the F6 or V50.

3GX. We ran into issues with the 550 V2 kit itself today. One stopped us dead during setup.

The first issue was easily fixed. The link rods from the servos to the swashplate were just too long. We couldn't crank them down enough to make the swash driver arms perpendicular to the main shaft. We ended up cutting 2mm from each end of the three links.

Second issue: The link ends from the swash to the head had the swash side wear out after only two removals. Not good. They were sloppy and audibly so. If you turned the blade grip you could hear a click from the end attached to the swash and you could see the slop, too. Not good. We stopped there, still in DIRmode on the 3GX. More links on order.

clp.eng

My Feedback: (10)

Ivan - That's what I'm looking for!

Scott - we all know you'll figure it out!

I realized I only have a week or so before the KDS gets here so I figured I better get the new heli finished. So,.... I had trouble getting the wiring to look good. I must have used & removed 50 tie wraps before I was mostly happy. I still have the gyro to add & wire & then I start on setting up the head (the scary part for me!).

Chuck

clp.eng

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That only took 10 months to do!!! LOL

Chuck

clp.eng

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And looking at my own pic, I just realized the d@mn tail servo is hanging on the wrong side! I had fits getting it right! Ah, well, something to do on this rainy Sunday.

Chuck

dunkonu23

Chuck, it's only on the wrong side if you think it's on the wrong side.   Convention says to get stuff like the case of the servo out of the way of blade rotation, but if you don't "Scott" you should be okay!  LOL!!!!    I love it.   Don't call me "Crash"... call me, "Scott"!  

Crash... no ... Scott

dunkonu23

Dave, you know you'll be hooked after you ride!

I have no idea what a six axis gyro does, let alone what it is. I've seen videos of the thing flying and it looks like an MCPXon steroids. I found a series on this helicopter on the Freak, as well. I watched it this morning and the radio looks interesting... color touch screen display.

It does seem like Walkera is going after the mCPX big time in their offering of brushless motors with this helicopter. Still, a bit too much for my tastes. I do wonder if I'll see any indoors this winter.

I think Skookum 720's have a three axis accelerometer, Dave.

Well... it's still too windy here to do anything but kvetch...

Scott

GTX SlotCar

Hey guys, just dropped in to say hi.

It's too bad they didn't make Spyder Pig upside down At least he's not the Harry Plopper verison

dunkonu23

Hi Gary,

Good to see you. How are things going?

Scott

clp.eng

My Feedback: (10)

Hi, Gary. Good to hear from you. How's the business doing in these trying times?

Crash, ah, oh I mean Scott - I got the servo moved to the "preferred" location. So all is good

Tomorrow I'l try to get the gyro mounted & wired.

Chuck

clp.eng

My Feedback: (10)

Ivan - who do I need to talk to about flying at the dome? The club or Bennsenville PD? I'm thinking now that I'm working I should be able to show up at least once a week.

CHuck

phillyD

One hijack by a swashbucking pirate...specially for Ivan. I could not help..pay attention from the 45 second mark. Do you like that sound Ivan?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdMgpNuYGW4

9sec240

Phil, that thing is CRAZY!!! You have one on its way?

Chuck, first couple days are free at the dome. Starts 4th of Nov. http://www.suburbanrcbarnstormers.com/Indoor.html

dknovick

Yep, sound very much like optical flow. It tracks "features" in an image. Find the features in one image, then find the same features in a second image and see how far they've moved. Grass has a lot of features. You can always create some features on your concrete (drop colored bits of paper, paint...). Sounds like you know what you're getting yourself into. Love to hear what you think about it.

Ivan-
Your opinion on the HeliCommand?

Scott-
Oh yeah, I'm sure I'll love a trip in a hot air balloon. But I all ready have one expensive hobby, and at least I can fly that in my cul-de-sac!

From looking the Walkera genius uses 3-axis gyros (just like all the rest of the FBL helis), and adds a 3-axis acc. to sense roll and pitch (no yaw), to help stabilize the heli and, hopefully, remove some of the drift from the gyros.

Gary-
LOL. Very glad it wasn't the Harry Plopper verson!

Phil-
That looks awesome. Love the sound! zzziiIIIIIiiiippp...


Also too windy to fly here.

-Dave

phillyD

No sir Ivan
I'm trying to get a guy who likes to buy stuff and can't use them to get it. my hornet is nearly too much for me at 60-70 mph...yea Dave beeeoooooo

clp.eng

My Feedback: (10)

Thanks, Ivan. I'm figuring every Friday should be enough as that gives me 2 whole days to recover before Monday! LOL

Oh, no, Dave, grass good = soft, concrete with paper BAD = hard & lotsa' damage! I should get it next week but it won't go on until my new heli is flying, just in case... I'll be sure to let you know what I think. I've been reading the pigeon English manual in my spare moments.

Hi, Phil!

Chuck

dunkonu23

I wonder how the optical sensor tracks things like grass in the wind?  Being one with a background in computer graphics, I know how to do it, but it takes cycles.  I'm thinking image averaging, single pass,  and not-so-good resolution on the sensoryou want to see, but you don't need to see everything to know something has changed.  You just have to see well enough to differentiate X,Y and Z axis'.  Never tried this, but if I was younger with time to burn, I'd give the problem a shot just so say I tried. 

Scott

phillyD

Right on owner of Chuckey

clp.eng

My Feedback: (10)

They finally released it!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_-T_A7Tsj8&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

dunkonu23

And then there's this...

http://www.horizonhobby.com/Products...ID=SPMAR7200BX

BeastX  FTW.

Scott

dknovick

More incentive to not crash!
Grass... I think I remember what that is...


Scott (and Chuck)-
You don't really care about the grass, per say, just about the features in the image. You track multiple features from frame to frame, and figure out how they moved. If some of the grass is blowing, you just loose some of those features (which is why you try to track a lot of them).
Here's a good example:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4r2HXGA8jw[/youtube]
You can see in the hallway, there aren't many targets on the featureless walls.

Cool, a 2-fer from Horizon Hobby!

-Dave

dunkonu23

Dave,

There's a quick way to do it... exclusive or the entire image against the previous image,  then you know what has changed and where it has changed, you then need to figure direction.     That's why I said, low res camera because finding the change is not the issue, the issue is noise.  If I were designing this, I'd want to make most of the tough stuff done optically so the XOR stuff would be more relevant in terms of noise filtering.  Grass in wind is noise.     Of course, if the image is small enough, virtually every calculation with the exception of image difference and direction could be precomputed so that would speed things up some.

Chuck when you get your system, try to fly it over a solid gray or off-white background  and see what happens.   Just kidding... don't try it.  It'll probably be very ugly.

Scott

GTX SlotCar

It's been rough in the hobby business. Lots of store owners, some of them my friends, have gone out of business. I feel bad for them. If things don't get worse, and manage to turn around pretty soon, we'll make it. But like many businesses, we're doing about 20% of what we did before the recession. You can feel the mood people are in because business is up and down with fairly large swings, not relatively steady like before. I've talked to other local businesses and they say the same thing.

My daughter graduated from college last year and is in her first year of med school now. My son will start college next year. I'd like to be able to keep a roof over their heads until they're done with school, and then the pressure will be off. My daughter will go anywhere in Maine that the state needs doctors and they'll pay off some of her debt; and my son has already been offered a job in bio-chemical engineering when he gets out of college (he's smart). So, they'll be all set

I was following the Horizon Hobby product release and was hoping for some kind of new toy, like a quadcopter or tricopter, but big, stable and affordable. (something I could make parts for )

clp.eng

My Feedback: (10)

Gary - ya' I thought so. I know I've cut back even though I'm working. Glad to hear you're hanging in there WOW! with the kids, nice - keep on good relationships with them so they'll take care of you when your OLD!!!! Esp the DOC!

Scott - SWEEEEET! Next heli, when the prices come down.

Dave - interesting vid. If you think back, it's the skinny green stuff that grows poorly in North America but we spend huge amounts of money & natural resources to do it any way! LOL

Ivan's vid showed him hovering over the driveway w/o problem. I think you smart guys are over thinking this thing. It's 69 bucks so the H/W is minimal & the S/W can't be much either. But I will take vids when I get it & install it! Typically, you take off from a realatively smooth surface any way, so I'm guessing it gets "smart" as you move it around.

It's been crazy around here & that new heli is still not finished. I finally managed to accumulate a little PTO, so I took next Monday off & I hope to spend a good portion of it working on the heli & watching Finless Bob vids & reading the notes I took from Ivan & putting it all in practice!

Chuck

dunkonu23

I don't think I'm over thinking at all. In fact, I'm dumbing it down. Here's the deal, in the video as I see it, dealing with mostly a solid white or off white background, it's easy to pick out what's changed. They find the change, then they track small areas around the changes. In fact, this goes right back to plain old early collision detection in software. The goal with the software in the video appears to avoiding collisions, so how do you do that? You just go where there are no collisions (within limits). You can see how it tracks by looking at the red trails as objects move. There are other factors such as speed, but the software can glean that rather easily simply by tracking objects and knowing the focal length (which doesn't appear to change). Proximity seems to be done rather simply by counting the number of tracked spots to the left, right, and center. You'll notice that the drone doesn't want to move forward when there are a lot of tracked objects in the center and it hesitates moving at all until it appears center hits are going away while left/right hits stay roughly the same and in the same position..

I'm probably dead wrong, but if I were to do something like this, the approach I would take would be as above, to start.

Scott

dunkonu23

Ivan,

We finished 3GX setup today, ESC programming, and general setup. Fun stuff. Idon't know how far you've gotten in your 3GX stuff, but I'll tell you what we experienced here.

1. It's easy to setup in DIR mode. Very straight forward.
2. Directions of the Aileron and Elevator are okay, but correction direction checks and responses by the system happen very quickly so I needed to set it incorrectly to determine if Ihad it correct the first time, then set it back to the correct direction.
3. Tail setup was okay, but they only give you 10 seconds between each step. The good thing is that it's easy to get back to a step if you run out of time. We ran out of time a couple of times because Iwas explaining what to look for.

We didn't get to the computer portion of setup today, but we'll investigate next Saturday.

That's about it so far. Ihope all is well with you, sir.

Scott