09:04 - Matt, Tridge and SkyViper
Matt is very excited to be able to talk about this!
Tridge has been working on the dark-side of Copter for a ew months with SkyRocket
Peter, Paul , Leonard and a few others involved
Cool little drone
Lightweight
Affordable
GPS-capable
140g
Video
https://youtu.be/T_ccNYEeviE
Runs ArduCopter close to 3.5
Some extra patches not upstream yet
Brushed motors
Smt32f427
Same as Cube
Board by Philip
Little video board running FreeRTOS
Web server allows upload firmware/download logs
MGA assist data is awesome!
Transmitter firmware
Dsm2
AP_Radio
Implementation of DSM2 within ArduPilot
Used to just be over a UART
This is over SPI
Need a team vote for bringing stuff into ArduPilot
Normal ESCs?
Technically possible
Was a dual-path process for board
Philipâs board works
Connections for external receiversâŚ
LIDAR and optical flow pads are on the base boardâŚ.
Some (lots) of soldering required
Plug not populated
No FRAM
https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/tree/master/libraries/AP_FlashStorage
Compile-time option for this ATM
Should be run-time⌠difficult to set that up
Cost reduction!
$4 in huge volume
Which is extremely expensive!
Chews 2 sectors of flash
Could use smaller sectors
Would have to go at start of the flash (16k blocks at startâŚ)
Stm32 is odd with block sizes on flash
Log-based storage system
âFile systemâ (singular)
Memory-backed
Automatic temperature calibration on board
Invensense 20789 accel/gyro/baro support
Should be a great developer copter
Incredibly resilient
Tridge has yet to break a single prop
See boomerang-mode video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8xTlBnlu9E
https://youtu.be/YujYnQHEqQw
On shelves soon
Look for the white frame!
http://sky-viper.com/product?productid=V2450GPS-sd
Auto-calibration stuff
Single-press accel
Point-north mag cal
Looking at alt-hold takeoff and calibrating mag in-flight
Needed to make factory process fast
100,000 units takes time to process
802.11 telem
Full mavlink udp
Port 14550
HOWTO videos coming from tridge
https://youtu.be/VIf9eEwTKkk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch4o8Rt5pB0&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/user/AndrewTridgell
Put on table and it does calibrations
Per-motor compass calibration
ArduPilot SkyRocket Team want to make this a great dev platform
Could make for a good STEM platform for the schools
Flies better without prop guards
11m flight time
1S batteries only!
1200mAh
Should be an InterDrone
ArduPilot logo is prominent on the packaging!
Battery-less GPS data
Under 10s to get lock
Downloaded MGA is awesome
M8 vs M8N
Only a tiny patch to report number of sats data supplied for
Approximate position + time
Need to get generally get more messages back from GPS
Intnl?
Yes!
Most dev was done by tridge sshâing into drone from Canberra
Soldering is much better in LA
No onboard stabilisation for video
Works well FPV style
Many PRs to come for code back into master
Baro temperature compensation not in master yet
If vehicle is disarmed and still it calibrates baro for temperature
09:40am - Randy and Copter
SafeRTL testing on SkyViper seems like a good idea
3.5.2 came out yesterday
Minor fixes on top of 3.5.1
Extra i2c bus for the intel aero rtf
Gps glitching warning + prearm check
Landing gear improvements
Messed up build server a little bit
Being looked at by FF and Peter
Support forums seem to be pretty clean for 3.5
Optical flow not-powered-by-usb seems to be an issue
Timing issue?
Compass_type_mask for 3.5.3
Gps glitch put you into althold mode?
Maybe for 3.5.3
Will be parameterised
Only for manual modes
Would have a mode-switching beep
Notification across telem link
ppoirier: For any automatic mode change, the buzzer should emit a constant beep-beep-beep
New loiter coming!
Being held up by one issue - wanders on gps glitch
Pilot controls accelerations
Much weaker position control
âOne step aboveâ
Could turn off position control and velocity control
Kinda ALTHOLD in loiter modeâŚ
09:51am - Randy and Rover
Pierre, Randy and Peter
Did a motors library
Did a control-modes-are-objects refactoring
Now replacing steering and throttle controller
AR_AttitudeControl
Acceleration control
Slows down before waypoints
WP_OVERSHOOT limits overshoot
Not used by navigation control when after waypoint
Tank-track steering improvements
PR will be pulled in in next few days
Then another beta
Soon (next few weeks)
More parameters to move into motors library
Throttle
Fence
proximity
09:55am - tridge and serial
Small PR to allow you to use serial5 as another UART
Maybe a slight change to reduce crap going out to port
Have to choose your protocol carefully
Do not want to confuse your device
Needs testing on various devices
Works fine on storm32
10:00am - Randy and Odom
EKF3-only SLAM
10:01am - FF and Flow enable
Parameter seems to be being reset
https://github.com/ArduPilot/ardupilot/blob/master/libraries/AP_OpticalFlow/OpticalFlow.cpp#L108
We shouldnât really be resetting the variable
Use a flag to indicate initialised
Flow sensor is actually failing to initialise
Need to fix this for 3.5.3
10:04am - JeffW and FAA rules
Research
FAA working groups
New regs before end of summer
Into rule making process
Tracking and identification of unmanned aircraft in the airspace
Some technical definitions
Not supposed to be a catchall e.g. the SkyViper
âIdentifyâ ability to identify UAS and owner/remote pilot
âTrackingâ ability to track vehicle in real time
âAuthenticateâ
A unique identifier for the UAS
Either of these make it covered:
Range 400ft + remotely viewable camera
More than one waypoint
Was a weight limit
They removed it
1960 report on 50% fatality
250g limit vs 2.2kg
âAssure A4â pdf looks at safe weight classes
Kinda useless
âMore study neededââŚ
Also nonsense paper from the UK
They are debating these topics this week
Commentary
ID Based on X.509
https-like
Transports of tracking data
Proposals from
Airmap
Uavionix
LTE seems to be popular
Qualcomm is involvedâŚ.
Relay through GCS is permissible
Transponder on vehicle
No implementation details
Other places are doing the same sort of thing
China
Europe
Working group 3
How the backend will work
Flight planning as well
Closed door process!
Not publishing documents
Jani: real time drone cloud where officials can later down your drone if they think that itâs in illegal area
[10:12 AM] (Channel) MdB: So tired of freaking proposals that need mobile connectivity. I keep operating in areas that 100% has 0 coverageâŚ
Australians should all fill in the CASA survey!
https://consultation.casa.gov.au/regulatory-program/dp1708os
We should lead the world here!
Jeff is agitating to get AP involved
Given weâre in the top three
Next topic is important for this
More marketing/awareness => more access for this stuff
10:19am - Marketing and Olivier
Meeting identifies some ideas to improve outreach and marketing in general
Small group created
Working on subprojects/ideas
Merchandise acquisition plan
ArduPilot branded merchandise
InterDrone made this a priority
improve/redesign website
Marketing plan
Including fonts
Taglines
Looks
Branding
Make things easy for new users
Public Relations
Issues
Should the marketing plans be made public?
Open to dev-team, obviously
Time
Manufacturing lead times
Needed something that can be quickly approved
Split-proposal
$4,000
First-half quick-approval
Funding committee was positive on it
Members would like to know theyâll be reimbursed
Olivier will put a proposal together
to accept the team
To accept the budget proposal
Might need a process to set the team members instead of accepting the current volunteer team
Some concern things werenât done ârightâ
Randy is fine with the budget
Randy is good with the marketing team concept in the same way we have a funding committee
Randy isnât keen on the webshop concept
product doesnât shift
Giving away works, âthough
Ardupilot.org might have more drawing power
Could just be a distraction
Jani is willing to do the web-shop / schwag
Manufacturing in Thailand or China
Already has history with logistics of this sort of thing
Jani is thinking of capitalising the web/shop/marketing operations
No huge quantities of stock
Tennis-player wrist swipes
Embroid-as-you-go
10-at-a-time
Not looking at hardware
Randy still doesnât like the webshop concept
Complexity
Leave it to the partners
Jdrones
Hex
Philip: should we have a policy on the ArduPilot branding?
People would like to raise funds for us but donât know if they can use our branding
One for the marketing team!
Lots of support for this
MdB: $4,000 seems a bit high for InterDrone
Jani:we need to see concrete proposals
Including reach etc etc
Olivier agrees
Discuss proposal is vague on purpose
A more precise proposal with details should be kept secret
Shouldnât need to justify every $5 expenditure
Should we do a proposal / vote on thing?
Accountability
Tridge: 501c says all costs have to be justified
Must benefit our goals
Itemise out costs
Or SPI wonât approve
Have a separate organisation for marketing?!
Which donates at end of month back to AP
Tax implications?!
Legal?!
Generally a rather unpopular concept
secrecy/openness
Tend toward openness
Donât need to go into excruciating detail for every decision
Before taking big actions
Check with dev team
E.g. âany guns on this t-shirt?â
Olivier will be putting a proposal together
Measurements are important
JP: Bags given away?
Brand awareness
PB: we should measure this brand awareness?
Surveys?
Olivier and tridge are happy with the way things are feeling
Tridge nominates Alex for dev-team
Olivier supports
Need a web-ads budget
Marketing team hasnât looked at this yet
Or SEO
JM: should interdrone stuff be split from other issues to help it move through?
@MdB: should we not do handouts at InterDrone? Spend on web ads instead
Fan-out at interdrone
Targetted
Brand awareness ol Solo is estimated to be high by Philip
70% know ArduPilot is inside (esimate)
MdB: I think there is some over estimation of interdrone returns 
(lots of people who walked in last year cause it was in vegas), the other manufacturers I know of who had boths there didnât get more then 1 sale or lost money on attending. Now Iâve only talked to 3 people exhibiting there but thats the impression I walked away with
SkyViper release was awesome from a marketing perspective
MM: We are planning on doing videos on getting into the low-level stuff!
RM: weâll link from the wiki pages
MM: letâs work together to make sure weâre not repeating stuff
11:03am - Misc
Randy will be putting together a how-the-team-works document
Voting
How to put a vote together
http://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/how-the-team-works-voting.html
Funding committee
11:10am - EOM