Who cares about the Bears or Packers and who cares that Herman Cain is the hottest search today on Google Trends? (excuse the experimentation with keywords) Lets talk about UAV's (unmanned aerial vehicles) since I know everyone is more interested in this topic than what's on Google Trends anyway, or not.
I'm in the middle of a DIY UAV journey myself at the moment. I have everything I need, except the ability to fly a 4 channel RC airplane. :) I completely totaled one about 10 years ago. It ended up a pile of dust on the runway. So I took a step back and decided it would be better (and cheaper) to start out with a $30 Air Hogs Aero Ace from Walmart. Well the Aero Ace is really fun to fly and I would recommend one to anyone who sucks as bad as me at flying RC aircraft, but they are a little too easy to fly and I think that's left me with a false sense of accomplishment. I mean the thing only has two channels (one for speed and one for steering) and it's aggressively stable to the point of being uncrashable and even if you do manage to crash it (which I have), it's made from bullet proof (exaggeration) foam and is indestructible (unless you let a 3 year old get a hold of it and they rip it in half). With this in mind I purchased a USB controller (on ebay) to use with the free FMS flight simulator to get a better feel for what it's like to fly a faster 4 channel plane and get used to the whole flying toward oneself dilemma. I think I feel pretty comfortable with that now. My plane is all ready to go now and I even installed the
FMS copilot to make learning a little easier. Now I just have to make the leap and risk the possibility of totaling another plane.
The nice thing about it these days, is that RC airplanes have become incredibly cheap and the risk of totaling a plane isn't that big of a deal anymore. Foam planes don't break so easy and are easy to fix, not to mention a lot cheaper. And electric is just so much nicer than fuel with a lot less hassle. My point in writing this, is to share the information I have gained from searching for the absolute cheapest way to learn to fly RC airplanes while having an end goal of building your own UAV. Some people that wish to build a UAV may already know how to fly, so in their case, they might have an option of a cooler plane like the
SkyFun from hobbyking.com. The rest of us should probably stick with somewhat uncool yet still kinda cool trainer aircraft. Anything that flies is at least a little cool!
I went with the
Ardupilot UAV platform since it is the cheapest and simplest to use with lots of updates and support. There are many configurations to go with, but I'm just looking for the cheapest so I will only briefly address the upgrade possibilities. The sky is the limit here (pun intended). I went with the
Hawk Sky from nitroplanes.com, but I would probably go with the
Hobbyking Bixler now if I didn't already have the Hawk Sky. I think the Bixler is new out this summer, or at least new to the HobbyKing USA Warehouse.
Here's a comparison of all the EasyStar clones. The Hawk Sky comes with a useless radio system, whereas with the Bixler, you can get the ARF so you can select your own radio system and don't have to pay for useless gear. I replaced my Hawk Sky's Dynam 4 channel radio system with a
Fly-Sky 2.4G 6 channel system. I recommend the Fly-Sky over the
Hobby King version just because the Fly-Sky version comes with the USB cable whereas the Hobby King version from the USA Warehouse does not include the cable. For some reason Hobby King doesn't even sell the cable separately through the USA Warehouse.
To build your own UAV, here is the bare minimum you will need for a complete system.
- An RC aircraft completely ready to fly with a 6 channel radio. The Bixler will also require an ESC and a 3 cell Lipo battery.
- ArduPilot UAV Controller board with pinheaders and cables to connect everything together.
- GPS module. I choose the MediaTek from the diydrones store because it's so much cheaper than the others. It comes with a 5 cm cable which isn't very long so you may need to get a longer one which the diydrones store also carries.
- Flight Stabilization. There are a couple of options. Either the FMS Copilot or the ArduIMU. I went with the FMS Copilot because I found it on Ebay for $45 shipped and it's just a whole lot more straight forward and easy to use, especially as a trainer for a new pilot. If you have to pay regular price for the FMS Copilot (about $70 after shipping), then the ArduIMU might be worth paying a little extra for since it's a lot more powerful asset on a UAV. If you order it at the same time as the GPS, then shipping probably wouldn't be any more than you would already pay.
- FTDI cable for programming the ardupilot board and possibly the GPS module. You can get one from the diydrones store or Sparkfun.You might be able to get by with a cheap USB to TTL converter from Ebay for a few dollars, but I'm not sure since they generally don't have the CTS pin and I'm not sure if that's required. They do have an RTS pin though.
Here is the
Ardupilot online manual. It's not necessary, but a keychain camera from Ebay is a fun addition and they only cost around $7.
Here is a picture I found of a similar UAV setup with all the same elements as mine. It was found on
this site.This setup is just the bare minimum to get someone going. There are a few upgrades that this system can use. An ArduIMU would be good if you didn't start out with that or you could add a Z axis sensor with the FMS Copilot. The FMS Copilot sensors can also be directly connected to the Ardupilot board with the right firmware addition installed. Another possible upgrade would be the
ArduPilot Shield (or
this) which can measure airspeed. Beyond this, you would need the
Ardupilot Mega board to have enough input and output pins to do much else. When you're at that point it might be time to start thinking about that second UAV. :)
