Type in ‘drones’ on Google, and it won’t be long before you come across DIY Drones, the largest amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicle community on the web with 15,000 members, and the DIY Drones online store – “The Amateur UAV Superstore”.
The site basically caters for the enthusiastic amateur who does have more than a rudimentary knowledge of electronics – a specialist aero-modelling community focussed on machines capable of autonomous flight. But the quality of the products suggests that anyone with a small budget looking to use UAS for commercial activities, such as aerial photography, could find all that he needs at the store. Here is an extract from the ‘Getting Started’ page:
What is an amateur UAV?
An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft that has the capability of autonomous flight, without a pilot in control. Amateur UAVs are non-military and non-commercial. They typically fly under “recreational” exceptions to FAA regulations on UAVs, so long as the pilots/programmers keep them within tight limits on altitude and distance. Usually the UAV is controlled manually by Radio Control (RC) at take-off and landing, and switched into GPS-guided autonomous mode only at a safe altitude.
What do I need to make one?
- An RC plane, quad-copter or helicopter
- An autopilot
- Optional: a useful “payload”, such as a digital camera or video transmission equipment
What type of autopilot should I get?
Autopilots in the amateur category typically fall into two categories: thermopiles or inertial measurement units (IMUs). Thermopiles are infrared sensors that measure the temperature gradient between the sky and the earth and use that to stabilize the aircraft. IMUs use accelerometers and gyros to do the same thing. These days, most people use IMUs, which are smaller and easier to set up than thermopiles and can work in any weather conditions. We are focused here on autopilots that allow for full UAV functionality, including mission planning. There are other products that you can buy that allow limited autopilot functionality, such as automatic “return to home”, fight stabilization, and auto-landing.
The site has a very lively forum section, with members sharing photos & videos of their creations, and lots of admirative comments and constructive criticism. It also coordinates Local Fly-in/Meetup Groups, with 15 in the USA, and others in The Netherlands, New Zealand, The Philippines, South Africa, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The online store can supply all that is needed to build relatively sophisticated ‘models’. Whilst stopping short of openly selling its own branded products, the store is run on a commercial basis by 3D Robotics, whose two owners are also actively involved in the web-site. And they clearly have some favoured suppliers, such as AeroQuad , who announce on their site that they have “teamed up with DIY Drones to develop a very full featured quad-copter and helicopter UAV!” AeroQuad is an open-source hardware and software project dedicated to the construction of remote controlled four-rotor helicopters, also known as quad-copters or quadro-copters. Here is a demonstration:
Continuing with the open-source policy, DIY Drones also offers Arduino-based auto-pilots from ArduCopter. The ArduPilot Mega is an open source, Arduino-compatible, pro-quality autopilot. It is the most advanced IMU-based open source autopilot available today, and provides an entire UAV control system with scriptable missions with 3D waypoints, in-flight uploading of commands and powerful ground station software.
What is Arduino?
It’s an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board. It is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than an ordinary desktop computer.
And as if that isn’t enough information already, the site invites you to “research much more about drones at Dronepedia, an open source effort to collect knowledge about amateur UAVs in a wiki form.”
Source: DIY Drones
There are kits also available in the UK & EU from Build Your Own Drone. There is a massive selection of UAV equipment there, from ArduPilot Mega’s to ArduCopters, you can even buy the UK & EU full telemetry kit to go with your Ardupilot Mega or copter all in one place for total control of your Drone from the ground!