RC India

I have recently recieved my Raspberry Pi.( a small computer which can be programmed)

I plan to make an UAV( just a trainer which does not use a remote control)

  I plan to run it on GPRS internet connection

The problem is that i cannot find any source of depron, or coroplast

Can i make it from thermocol sheet which we get in stationary shops?
 if yes, how to make the wing out of it without using hotwire cutter?

:help:  :help:

You might want to go through the videos is this build;

http://www.rcindia.org/electric-planes/sbach-342-50'-out-of-packing-thermocole-under-700-rs/

Ayub wonderfully uses a hacksaw blade for the coarse cuts and sandpaper to finish...I've tried 120 grit sandpaper on thermocole and the results are amazing. I doubt you will be able to use thermocole available in stationery shops, it will break away easily. You will need packaging thermocole which is higher density

Thanks... ;D
will use it...

Just while going down the road today, I notiiced something... There are a lot of advertiesments on electric poles and trees...all made u of coro...:D :P...... a free source  of coro there...then i will use a mixture of both coro and thermo...

A raspberry pi to control an uav? Details?? :D
A word of caution when using thermocole. Avoid the ones they sell at stationary shop, they are pretty useless. If you can, get high density thermocole from the art stores. They are great for making planes.

Didn't yet program the RPi but the idea is to just eliminate the tx /rx and use a gprs 2g internet connection on a trainer plane..which can be controlled from any other phone, tab, laptop or desktop

Got some coro but having a difficult time working with it...any suggestion?

You will find that it is very hard to do. And quite unreliable. But still if you can make it work, it would be quite cool ;D


Google spadtothebone. They have a lot of info on working with coroplast.

In which part do you find it Difficult to work with in Coro.

Cutting it and sticking it...

I think if I can atleast make the plane, i can take help of some experts for programming...

My idea is to make a blog on a  free web hosting website and post the command to it so that the plane can read it...I don't know wheter it would work effectively for an agile vehicle like a plane but...it must work....

I remeber that some time long ago, I read that website but forgot it... thanks for reminding...

Any hobby knife will do the trick.
Anabond sticks Coro well.
make sure it is dirt/grease free.
a 3mm coro is good, dont buy a 5mm one its way too heavy.

Don't use the raspberry Pi on its own. Get the ioio board along with it. Keep in mind that the Pi will have some latency in responding, so it is not suited for physical computing. You may look towards an Arduino + GSM combo for the control of the plane and a Pi to handle the navigation.

One thing to keep in mind while working with coro is that you MUST flash or sand the surface thoroughly before gluing.

Happy ganesh chaturthi to all... after a long time came back to my project... created  a part of the fuselage and reinforce it with some light sticks... one thing I am confused is that my fuse is flat and doesn't look even clase to an airplane.. I want it to be 3d ... what to do?

A few pictures...

Change the name of this thread

Pl hear what sanjayrai55 says.
Pl refer to recent discussion going on in this forum about whether we are flying model airplanes or UAVs.

I agree that "Drone" is a term that should be avoided, but why would one not call a model airplane, used for some other purpose, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle? Yes, I agree the media has given UAVs a bad name, but still if I use my aerial rig, be it a quad,plane or a blimp, for, say, collecting some weather data, then why should I call it by any other name? I am not defending those people who slap on parts together and call their contraption a drone, just to get publicity or marks, but we should atleast be able to call an UAV an UAV.

Sir,
This has been discussed.
All are UAVs, including HLGs.
We (at least some of us) are only suggesting please consider not calling our models UAVs as
perception of public/media/maybe Govt too is that UAVs are DRONES.
However, to each his own.
Request is to please protect hobby flying from potential restriction.
Remember there was a time we used to fly from Safdarjung.
And from Polo Ground with one VVIP. That is all long gone.
Used to fly from Parade Ground, Secunderabad early 90s. Presumably gone? One lady owner of a flying school may remember her days there with her brothers.

The tem UAV has a clear connotation in Defence and military terminology. It could draw the wrong kind of attention. As Iyer sir remarked, all RC aeromodels are by default UAVs; it is the perception of what a UAV is in the eyes of lawmakers and enforcers that could draw unwanted attention, from which we as a community would suffer and therefore should strive to disassociate with.

I thought it was so obvious to anyone in this forum.

I have never called anything I built/assembled an UAV.. I refer to them as "flying thingy", but for any formal application for any kind of sponsor/competition/academic paper, the word UAV is always more preferable to "flying thingy" or "model airplane". So people like me are caught between a rock and a hard place :P Maybe we should all get together and dream up some other name for the things we make which are not quite model airplanes but cannot be called "UAVs".

I apologize to the OP for hijacking his thread :P

UAV's in particular is a vehicle which can fly all by itself without human intervention.
this being said in our hobby RC flying its us who gives command, even though their is no pilot in d plane its us who is called pilot.

So we just cant call the rc plane as a UAV.

UAV is a plane which does things we ask it to do but flies by itself

correct me if I am wrong...

topalle
For making rc plane get 3mm not more than tat.
u can use cutters n hot glue or u can yous tapes...
I recently did a 1.5mtr glider with coro and it flies well...

regards
karthik

I am afraid you are wrong VTOLkarthik.

"An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), colloquially known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot on board. Its flight is controlled either autonomously by computers in the vehicle or under the remote control of a pilot on the ground or in another vehicle."

From wikipedia.

Ya ofcourse it is controlled by systems from the land but its flight stability and object detection are completely done by the on board controllers which is not handled by human.

drones is one more thing which is usually used for single purpose and its flight is controlled by controllers from the land...

Man... get your facts straight, then argue.

cool buddy... am trying to get it....cuz i had given seminar on these so i had done a lot of research on this...

tryin to justify wat i have got... nt arguing :D

chill man!

Whoa! A lot has happenned since I last updated the thread... I gess the name is giving the readers a whrong impression... the main idea is not a plane meant for destructive purposes but instead for constructive purposes... the reason its named a UAV is that it  IS unmanned... according to its name, all Rc planes can be caled UAVs... so, I wish to change the name of the thread to

Raspberry-Pi controlled coro trainer...

Hope it gives the right idea....
and nobody has actually responded to my query about the fuselage construction... please help


The query is how to make the fuselage 3d..(for those who have not seen the first page)

Yes Topalle, your thread was hijacked better than an Indian Airlines plane  ;D ;D

Actually your question on the fuse is not too clear  :headscratch: :headscratch:

What I mean to say is that my fuselage is made by joining two pieces of coro with tape as you can see in the picture.... it looks like a piece of plastic and not like a real plane... I want it to  a curved outer surface fpr aerodynamîcs and aeshetics

If you can live with a box shape then its quite easy ;D  Since this would be an experimental platform, I would strongly suggest you go for a plan build. Make something already tested. The spadet and debonair are both great platforms for their light(relatively) wing loading. You can get the plans from:

http://www.spadtothebone.net/freeplans.htm

click on "trainers" and then on the plane of your choice. Build instructions are also there. You just have to hunt around for them a bit. Best of luck!! And sorry for the hijack.

In fact, the popular avispad, of which there are many build threads here, is only a scaled down Spadet for Electric!

"AFMA" (Autonomous Flying Model Aircraft) zindabad.  "UAV" murdabad !

Case closed.   

"AFMA" (Autonomous Flying Model Aircraft) zindabad.  "UAV" murdabad !  :hatsoff:

AFMA for ever !!! :D  :D

Alright.. please rename the thread AFMA but stop arguing... I started this thread to serve as a build log as well as a thread to get answers for my queries.... I will post updates soon as I got two days holidays and I can work on my plane..

Guys... I have a question... I don't have a big enough piece of coroto make the whole wing with one piece... so, can I use multiple pieces to make the wing? Will it affect the stability or safety of the plane?

Also, I have made the wingspan a lot longer than the fuselage.. is this correct (its twice as long as the plane)

Topalle; you are really venturing into a very high specialised design and technology area. There are no easy answers to your question, and there are too many different parameters affecting, and anyone who tells you different is unqualified to do so.

Please do follow advice given by last rites and read carefully through spadtothebone.net, and spadworld.net  Check out the avispad build logs here. The way forward will show itself to you

Thanks... I have stopped my model and left it for later... I saw the avispad and now I want to build just that... but I don't have big pices of coro so can I use smaller ones and join them?

Fuse must be in a single piece. Same with wing halves. You can join 2 wing halves together

Thanks...

Try and get bigger coro sheets. Joining pieces will give you a lot of grief and extra weight.

Do they sell at stationery shops?

u can build d fuse with 3mm coro...
i have done a coro glider recently and it flies quite well...

Yes I am using 3mm coro but I am only able to get small sheets like A4 size... I want to know where to get larger sheets from....

Contact a sign board maker

The ones who make advertising hoardings etc. You can also buy vinyl sticker sheet from them for decoration

Completed the bottom part of the fuselage...here are a few pics .. and yes... the plane is made from signboarss only... only thing is that I didn't buy them... I just took them from the gates of my and my friend's houses...

the glossy thing in the pictures is tape and the lines are not joints but they are pen line used for marking...
P.S. this is built according to avispad plan.. with slight modification in the tail section

try to find som hardware store whr tey do the sheeting for sheds... tey will hav it... or ask the printer guys who do the printing of no parking sign boards....tey will get it to u

But why spend money when I am getting all of it for free... I will find some bigger sheets ... I will get them from retail stores who print their offers on them and hang them in their shops... they are 3mm or 4 mm I guess... I will not use it if its 4mm

Btw...total cost of my plane till now is rs ZERO...:D plus my effort and time... :D ..that sounds good...

Pls sugest a motor esc,lipo, prop combination... length of plane is 45 cms... wingspan 80 cm and zero dihedral. AUW must be around 1 kg.. weight of structure of plane is around 100 gma Right now...it will increase to around 200 grams oncluding the wings...please take note of my budjet...4k... no need of tx/rx setup...payload 100-150 gms( onboard computer and camera)

Your weight budget seems to be a bit off. I have used coro. It is not that light..

Just the fuse weighs 100 gms without decorations and landing gear... yes, my estimation might be wrong ...the weit of the body might be more than 200 gms

Got two bigger sheets of coro of size 12"x 18"... hope I can make two wing halves out of them

Topalle, I'm not an expert, but here is my two paisa:

1) First focus might be on getting the airframe airborne and controllable - aesthetics etc come at a pretty later stage; typically one will make and break a few models before "getting there" where the craft is more than just predictable. A box designed fuse is simplest to start with I believe.

2) The concept of controlling via raspi is great (and unique) but raspi has substantial lags in processing from GPIO (its not intended for realtime automation or control), and then there will be network lags over 2G. There will be some teething problems and some unexpected results but as long as you stick with the 22ms RC frame rate, and as long as you are not expecting your model to perform precise 3d maneuvers, all should be well; Your major time will be spent in deciding between various options and creating the required protocols etc (e.g. How would a packet received via GPRS be converted to a useable command, would you use a single PPM signal and use a johnson counter to demultiplex, or use 4 separate PWM GPIO lines on raspi to connect the servos; what would be the packet architecture, remember you're communicating over 2G so you want packet size to be super small, error detection and correction, what if one byte is corrupted or goes missing, GPRS connectivity is lost, how would things reset themselves etc, would you use buffering?). There will be more.

All the best. Rest assured there are a lot of people around who will be willing to help.

GS

PS: It is useful to get a bigger sheet of coro as you will be able to create large wings with lesser cuts. Being an AFMA I'm expecting you'd want the craft to fly slow to start with

Saw this thread fort he first time,

+ Anwar Bhai

Great Old Wine, New package seems great !!

Finished the fuse build and is in one piece...made from single sheet of coro.... tail and rudder attached...will post pics tomorrow...  weight of fuse is 130 grams till now... btw experimented with feviquick and works miraculously
The wings will be built on Sunday...

All the technical issues will be attended to after the plane is flyable but thanks for pointing out...

Here are the pictures of the completed(?)fuse..
Can anyone tell what to use for landing gear
( I have used wheels of toy cars but they are too low and the plane is touching the ground when kept on those landing gear

ok.hey just look at flutter wireless development board with a range of 1 km may be it might be use full

http://www.flutterwireless.com (http://www.flutterwireless.com)
 
thanks

Use bottle caps.

will it bear the load of an 800 gm plane landing?

It will depend on the bottle caps you are using and your building skill. I use two caps for each wheel. 4cm dia. Use cycle spokes nuts as the shaft bearing.

Thanks

Will rubber power be able to lift this plane off the ground given good enough wings providing good lift?

I really doubt that :P