Tri rotor Monocopter Photos Videos Source code News Harass

6/10/10: New source code update with bug fixes. Tri rotor has proven the most useful platform.

6/30/09: Now flying tri rotors, sonar position sensing, 3DOF IMU's, pressure sensors, C language scripting & a ground station instrument panel. You can now build a complete indoor autopilot for under $100, including the positioning system. Tri rotors have been the most successful platform.

12/29/08: The autopilot has been moved to quad rotors. Everything is done by VicaCopter. Just get 4 motors, 4 ESC's, 4 propellers, & fly. A UAV programming language has replaced the table of waypoints. Automated takeoffs & landings, curved paths, turning towards a point are supported.

10/30/08: The autopilot has been moved from an embedded Gumstix to a ground based laptop. Ground based autopilot had a lot of advantages over the embedded version, mainly more clockcycles & less damage. This is the last single rotor version. Future versions will be quad rotors.

7/3/08: Upgraded to a 4Hz uBlox 5 for GPS. The result is much more stable in the wind. Neural networks aren't required for navigation anymore. New source code has all the 1Hz GPS parts disabled but they can be resurrected with enough .

4/30/08: We have declared the current tarball version 1.0. The next steps would be $600 for carrier phase GPS, a gas airframe, $80 for 900Mhz video. The economic wall for the next step has become impassable, but it won't be someday.

3/24/08: VicaCopter has become quite capable since last month. Operator directed movement, waypoint following, & Google Earth output have appeared.

2/21/08: The autonomous, flybarless T-Rex 450 lives. Software now supports all rate damping, collective & CCPM. Vibration without the flybar is reduced.

11/12/07: The source code which can hover the HD camera has been released. It has smarter A/D conversions to reduce gyro drift and 3 more ground station channels for camera, autopilot control.

11/05/07: The source code which has been doing autonomous hover for the last month has been released.

4/11/07: The Vicacopter world headquarters went live today.

(C) 2012 Flat broke, unemployed programmers