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Saturday 25 January 2014

Attack of the Drones

My first attempts at shooting videos from a GoPro camera mounted on a quadcopter drone

Equipment list:


  • Walkera QR X350 quadcopter UAV ("drone") with GPS and compass
  • GoPro Hero 2
See pictures below.

Location: 

Laxey football pitch, Laxey, Isle of Man, British Isles

Conditions: 

Gusty

Videos:


Comments:


Profile for both flights: (1) manual take-off (via RC transmitter); (2) switch to autopilot stabilised mode after a few seconds airborne; (3) fly around a bit with guided steering inputs (via RC transmitter), whilst remaining in autopilot stabilised mode; (4) switch to auto-land mode whereby autopilot takes full control and lands the drone at point of take-off (GPS-driven).
   
The gusty conditions meant that the drone's autopilot was making frequent attitude and positional corrections, so the videos are not ultra smooth. That said. even without an anti-vibration camera mount, the quality is pretty good.

The auto-land feature was enabled. Even so, the landings were quite heavy: but perfectly survivable by both the drone and the GoPro.


Pictures







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