better than a quad?

[Terry 5]

Im not sure what you guys think but i dont think it would be much good with a go pro.

Terry

[Mr.RC-Cam 123]

I've been following their progress. Honestly, some of their promises are bit too optimistic. But it is a cool design and I think it will be a fun indoor toy.

It reminds me of the expectations for the Hubsan Spy Hawk, the affordable ready to fly FPV airplane. Looked very good in the early promos. But after a few modelers got them, we discover that it is not exactly as promised.

http://www.modelairp...fly-fpv-models/

It will be interesting to see the user feedback when the Dragonfly is available. I hope it's as good as they are advertising.

[Terry 5]

Yes my feelings exactly

Its a great gadget but I dont see it ever being able to carry much payload and the video feed from an on board camera would make you feel sick!

Its a sort of flapping Chinook I guess? would love to see one in the flesh, I wonder how hard it would be to make a basic controllable model?

Terry

[Mr.RC-Cam 123]

I wonder how hard it would be to make a basic controllable model?

For a commercial product, I think the challenge is to make the flapping model strong enough to survive those common beginner flight mistakes. But for a DiY solution, durability is less important. No doubt there will be some DiY open source projects in our future.

The most amazing part of the Dragonfly project are the funds that they quickly raised through indiegogo. They were looking for $110K USD; So far they have collected 3X that amount! There's going to be a boat load of angry investors if it does not live up to the hype. They have set the expectation bar quite high!

http://www.indiegogo.../robotdragonfly

[Terry 5]

Yes good point, I think they have just been fishing with ideas and hoping the funds would allow them to make them real. The idea certainly seems to have sparked the imagination of some !

Terry

[Mr.RC-Cam 123]

I guess we have to wait awhile to see how it turns out. The funds campaign ends this month, then they have to get it into production. Delivery times are towards the end of 2013; Even so that looks very optimistic.

Along with the usual tasks of getting a new innovative product to market, the engineers have plastic tooling and some serious integration tasks to work out. If all the promised dragonflies, with the features that have been advertised, are in customer hands in 2013 then I will be very impressed. However, winning the Powerball lottery might be more likely. I'd feel a bit more confident about their claims if they had production quality models flying in their online demos instead of animations and CGI.

[Kilrah 2]

Nice thing, but indeed in this world where projects can win awards on paper, CGI and simulations... the step towards the real world becomes more and more surprising and unforgiving

[Terry 5]

I think the Hummingbird project is far ahead, has anyone heard any updates on that one?

Terry

[Mr.RC-Cam 123]

AeroVironment's Nano Hummingbird is awesome. Other than the demo video they posted over a year ago, I haven't heard of anything new. If it is available for sale, I suspect it will cost as much as a previously owned luxury automobile.

[Mr.RC-Cam 123]

And here's what happens if you feed the Hummingbird a lot of steroids:

[Terry 5]

Yes I remember watching the development on a TV program, if I remember right they had a few problems and had to add that vertical section at the tail which was a shame.

Terry

[Kilrah 2]

I'm happy with my new FPV Hubsan X4 for now

[Mr.RC-Cam 123]

I'm happy with my new FPV Hubsan X4 for now

Very nice. But I don't see that it can flap its wings.

Are there any links to your build that you can share? If not, how about creating a new topic that has the details and sample videos?

BTW, the scale FPV model in the background looks very interesting. Is it a backyard flyer?

[Kilrah 2]

Do flapping wings actually have an advantage besides looking cool? I get 6min of flight out of the stock 240mAh battery

I haven't made pics during conversion, but the most complicated things were fitting the TX (5.8GHz 20mW) inside (requires demeling off the edges and corners, of course shield is removed), and sorting out power supply to avoid noise on the image without a second battery (it took 2 of my homemade micro DC-DC 5V step-up regulators, as the 5.8GHz TX uses more current than my previous 2.4Ghz ones and one won't power both TX and camera anymore).

No decent video yet, but here's some raw footage of what it looks like:

I still need to edit the video of me flying around the workshop...

The backyard flyer is HB-RCF - The last flying MS-406 (actually Swiss version D-3801 pictured throughout the article).

http://kilrah.dynali.../100624_Morane/

And sorry for the OT

Edited December 15, 2012 by Kilrah

[Mr.RC-Cam 123]

Good video performance despite the indoor environment. What are you using for antennas?

[Kilrah 2]

Only a wire on TX and the DVR's internal one there. I've been able to fly in a big hall and go through a wall fine, range is sufficient however I do get a lot of multipath interference. OK to fly, not so nice on recorded video.

I was thinking about putting a small CL antenna like I did on my UMX Sbach, but that won't be super easy and most importantly the antenna on top would complicate transport (I now just put the little quad in its original package that I cut out).

Still needs more thought... I also have to find out if I can easily mod the DVR to match it. A previous one I had had a very strange antenna setup, and even though it had a connector it wasn't useable as is...

Edited December 16, 2012 by Kilrah

[Terry 5]

Do flapping wings actually have an advantage besides looking cool?

Well I have my droughts but some seem to think so....

I would be interested to see if CP aerials improve the video indoors. Most seem to think they are essential for 5.8Ghz but I have found no need outdoors away from buildings.

Nice job as always though

Terry

[Kilrah 2]

I was skeptical at first too, but once I bought good ones and did some side by side testing I did find a big difference.

Again not much in terms of range, but overall video cleanliness. I tested side by side in a completely open field away from everything, with linear antennas I'd always have little breakups here and there, and the longer the distance the more of them - with the CPs it becomes glitch-free, and increasing distance only results in a decreasing S/N ratio - more and more "snow", but still without breakups and regardless of the orientation.

While range isn't increased per se, useful range was significantly improved (about 2x), simply because at some point the breakups become unbearable with linear antennas. At least with the low power levels I use, the difference is significant, the cleaner picture is really enjoyable.

[Terry 5]

Interesting!

My normal set up is 100mW which gives me a usable 2 miles with a 14dBi auto tracking patch, how dose that compare with yours?

Terry

[Mr.RC-Cam 123]

Just as another reference point, my quad's CP antennas have eliminated the glitchy video I had with traditional dipoles. So I can confirm that CP is awesome for environments with a lot of multipathing. I use a Skew Planar Wheel on the model and a circular patch on the Rx.

Adding a pair of CP's to the Hubsan's installation would be the icing on the cake. So don't give up on trying it out.

[Terry 5]

A nice directional aerial like a patch is quite good at reducing multipath anyway. I would like to know more about CP aerials and range as I would of expected it to be less!

Terry

[Mr.RC-Cam 123]

A nice directional aerial like a patch is quite good at reducing multipath anyway.

That is true. But a CP patch or other long range CP solution would be even better.

I would like to know more about CP aerials and range as I would of expected it to be less!

In a technical sense, range is the essentially the same as their linear polarized cousins. However, in practice the CP behavior can increase useable range because cross polarization and multipath issues are minimized. So less signal loss in the banked turns and those nuisance image blackouts are dramatically reduced.

[Kilrah 2]

My normal set up is 100mW which gives me a usable 2 miles with a 14dBi auto tracking patch, how dose that compare with yours?

I consider my 20mW setup to be good for 1km with a CL/SP pair (about 2dBi on each side), 1.2km if you can tolerate some snow and sometimes B/W, but as said no glitches or scary drops as those are mostly a thing of the past. My implementation of the 200mW module gets me great video at 1.6km, which was my limit at the time of testing (stock unoptimized FrSky 2.4GHz RC).

Here are a few accelerated videos, from the start point the first perpendicular road is at ~550m, the 2nd at 1km.

20mW + CP:

Edited December 16, 2012 by Kilrah

[Kilrah 2]

Apparently the forum doesn't like me posting 4 media links in a single post, so...

200mW + CP:

20mW with whips:

[Terry 5]

OK maybe I should give CP a go, I dont have a need for it as my video feed is almost drop free anyway but just maybe I dont know what Im missing!

The next question is what to use to replace my 14dBi patch? A helical is the first thing that comes to mind as it was my first successful home made aerial in the old days Patches are far neater but are there any CP patches on 5.8Ghz?

Here is a link to an old flight and you will see multipath is not a problem, the distance on the OSD is in Feet to make glide angles easy to work out

Terry

Edited December 17, 2012 by Terry