New simple small electric UAV for ag photography

[icebear]

I will do some crop surveillance at work this season so I decided to put together a simple UAV airframe that can handle a variety of cameras and camcorders.

After some searching for airframes I stumbled on a second-hand original Scorpio SuperMiss and decided to go for another one since I know how to quicly get it setup and tuned. Not very exciting, I know, but I've always liked to have a back-up to my other SuperMiss (if I ditch it in the ocean on the next lighthouse mission)!

Most of the crop surveillance will be done with the camera mounted facing down but I decided to open up a big hole in the side to allow my bigger Lumix LX-3 to become airborne.

The trimming was really simple and The Picopilot was set to approx 50% gain on NAV/ALT units and the results were so good that I will only do some minor trimming to the ALT unit and just leave everything else as it is.

Now I am just awaiting the crops to start growing so I have an excuse to leave the office for some aerials of the fields... :D

/Björn

[patrickegan]

Thanks for posting the data. I had pushed for 600' AGL (183 meters) for AG work as 400' in my estimation is just too low.

[small_rcer]

Icebear's project is a typical and possibly classic use for amateur, Model Based, UAV practical work. Take an aerial survey of an area, likely many times, during the year, over the same route for monitoring. All within general line of site. Practical, Low cost, and productive.

Wether for crops, livestock, or environmental hazard monitoring, or new subdivisions, this is what we need sensible rules for. The 400 foot limit is probably too low, but I know that with prudence, (and sometimes lack of it) many people are flying higher and safely to do a chosen task.

Many of us see UAV as an extension or new aspect of our model flying. We may not compete in speed or aerobatic competitions, but we do take on exciting, technical challenges, to reach our own goals.

Icebear, keep us up to date as the season passes. The sequences of photos that you take will be interesting to see as the crops develop over the year. I trust that you will then be able to correlate such things as colour, and density, with crop yields, fertilizer usage, pests, and profits of a given field or crop.

This use of UAV on a private hobby basis is what we need regulators to recognize as a useful and safe part of society. It is definitely NOT a threat to peace, order, and good government.

Jim H

[patrickegan]

I tried in vain to make all of the aforementioned arguments, they fell on deaf ears. :( You would have thought the vendors would have been supportive of getting some "data", but no way. They don't even have a data set. It was one of the things I was tasked with, but couldn't support it all. AUVSI has decided they are going to write one up, better late than never :(

[icebear]

Thanks for your comments Patrick & Jim!

I did a first quick test flight with camera facing down the other day and here are a few lessons learned;

- Camera mount working well producing OK pics with motor running even at 7 PM - BUT better mid-day of course (CropCam use the same camera as I do - Pentax Optio S5i)

- Patrick was quite right that 400 feet is too low for this kind of aerial mapping - I will go for 200 meters next time, at least with 0,5 pics/s and 35 mm lens...
Maybe with a faster cam and 28 mm lens 400 ft would be OK

- NAV and ALT is working great even in 25 kph winds (15 mph) - see GE track

- I also learned the hard way that cam facing down and landing in dusty field is not great - it took 5 minutes with the vaccum cleaner to get the lens to retract - phew!

- Tried photo stitching quickly in AutoStitch (see below) - anyone have ideas on a better software?

More later...!

Cheers,

Icebear

[ios]

Nice work Icebear :)

I think autostitch is trying to create a panarama around an axis, try changing the Blending Method in the options. You want to create a flat panarama. You may also think about importing the images into Google Earth.

[icebear]

Thanks ios!

You are of course right - I'll try that!

/Bjorn

[ios]

I've also used autostitch and its a really good program. I've attached a couple of pictures I took while I was on holiday - these pictures are made up of over 100 individual photos each!

I would really love to see more of your results as the season progresses. Will you be providing your photos to the local farmers to look at?

[NorthwestWolf]

AUVSI has decided they are going to write one up, better late than never :(

Does AUVSI really have any reason to care about small scale operators or sUAS startups not intended for the defense market?

[patrickegan]

I would say no beyond grooming talent for the Diamond/Platinum members. Start ups and small operators that do the trade show are really only showing their wares to the bigger companies who have the connections to exploit those ideas.

My goal is not to bash, some folks in the AUVSI care…

[NorthwestWolf]

I would say no beyond grooming talent for the Diamond/Platinum members. Start ups and small operators that do the trade show are really only showing their wares to the bigger companies who have the connections to exploit those ideas.

My goal is not to bash, some folks in the AUVSI care…

That's about what I figured, but I thought I'd ask as you've had much more exposure to the organization than I have.

I understand that you're not here to bash AUVSI, and I surely wasn't prompting you to do so. Doing so might compromise the work you've done so far.

Thanks for the response. I wouldn't have faulted you hesitating to state your opinion of AUVSI in a public forum.

[icebear]

Today the weather co-operated and with almost summer temperatures (70F) we tested a 10 km route of 16 WP's over one of the fields at my work site.

After Patrick's advice and initial tests the altitude was increased to 270 meters (300 m ASL) and the resulting track and pictures are shown below.

In short the mission was a success - over 200 pics taken and the route seems to have covered the whole field thanks to the altitude. A few examples shown here.

Now it is "just" a matter of doing some good stitching...

/Bjorn

[Gary Mortimer]

I think cropcam operates at 2100' Bjorn.

[icebear]

Given they use the same cam I'd say about 1000' is much better for resolution not talking about being able to spot the plane... :o!

[Gary Mortimer]

Yeah, they will need less images then for the stitch of course.

[Tom Harper]

Congratulations - very efficiently done!

Tom

[webfoot175]

I will do some crop surveillance at work this season so I decided to put together a simple UAV airframe that can handle a variety of cameras and camcorders. The trimming was really simple and The Picopilot was set to approx 50% gain on NAV/ALT units and the results were so good that I will only do some minor trimming to the ALT unit and just leave everything else as it is.


/Björn

Bjorn, I'm flying a HobbyLobby Hawk with a PICOPILOT-NA. I've made about 10 flights so far and I've been impressed by the performance. I noticed in your post some nice track plots. Can you tell me how you made them ?

[icebear]

Thanks Tom!

Webfoot - I am using an I-Blue 747 GPS datalogger - about 2 oz extarnal GPS with its own battery. You just download the flight data via the USB port after flight and get an Excel file with the data which can either be exported directly to Google Earth as a KML file (which is done in the example shown) or used in Excel to analyse the data.

Nice to hear about the Hawk - I've been looking at it - how did you set it up? NAV on both ailerons/rudder?

/Björn

[webfoot175]

Thanks Tom!

Webfoot - I am using an I-Blue 747 GPS datalogger - about 2 oz extarnal GPS with its own battery. You just download the flight data via the USB port after flight and get an Excel file with the data which can either be exported directly to Google Earth as a KML file (which is done in the example shown) or used in Excel to analyse the data.

Nice to hear about the Hawk - I've been looking at it - how did you set it up? NAV on both ailerons/rudder?

/Björn

Thanks, I might try one of those data loggers.
I've got my picopilot connected to the aileron and rudder servos with a Y connector. That's the way Mark recommended and it works just fine. I set the NAV gain to mid-range.

[GeeW]

Bjorn
Refering back to dirt thrown up on landing going into important little places in the camera....I have had good success using Multiplex Gemini spats (made from elapor)fitted to the wheels of my recently departed AP model which reduces thrown up debris considerably. I am sure you could fabricate something from 6mm depron which would do the same?

Regards

Gordon