Hi,
I am Mo from Bluebird Mountain. We are a small startup based in Hamburg, Germany. Currently we are building a personal avalanche safety drone. “Avalanche safety drone?” I hear you ask. Well, the below video sums it up pretty well.
Alright, so that’s what we are doing. But since I’m sure you are wondering, let me fill you in on some of the details, what is going on under the hood.
For our PowderBee prototype we are using Ardupilot (of course) on a Pixracer, in combination with an onboard companion computer (RasPi Zero currently). The software is all open source and available in my github repo. https://github.com/moobsen
To locate a buried person, we are relying on an active beacon, a so called avalanche beacon (“LVS” or “Lawinenverschüttetensuchgerät” in German. Yeah, I know, the language can be crazy ) If you are into skiing or snowboarding, you might be familiar with these devices. These devices work, but are not trivial to operate. And in case of an avalanche, a human error can result in death. That’s why we are building the drone.
We have build a custom antenna system, which can receive the avalanche beacon’s signal. It works, but it is not perfect just yet. In fact, if you are into electronics and drone, and based in Hamburg… we should talk. We are currently looking for someone on a co-founder basis, to take over the electronics department.
In any case I want to thank everyone active here for the great work. Without Ardupilot it would be way harder, if not impossible, to build such a drone.
Cheers,
Mo