[Hackupy-discuss] Aerial camera platform

[sam reese]

Just keeping everyone posted as to what's going on, because it's been
a while since I've hit this list with self promotion!

We did a bench test of frame and motors wednesday evening, and the
motors spun up, were controllable in a moderately-expected manner by
both RC and the stabilization system. Woohoo! Our frame is about 4
hours of milling away from completion, the battery cradel/power
distribution system has not really begun! I got a source on
semi-permanent loan on a lipo battery charger!

All in all, I think we're a solid day or two solid evenings away from
having a flying (soon to be crashing), drone, which is hugely
exciting!

If you'd like some pics, https://twitter.com/#!/occucopter/media/grid
I just got my ustream thing working, so next time I'm at the shop and
working on this (tonight? Tomorrow?), I'll get some videos of the
frame assembled and spin-testing all motors together.

Things that are not going so hot:
 - Video: I've been putting this one off because a few people say they
might swoop in and solve this for us. It's moot until first we are
flying and secondly, we are reliably flying the thing... but it'd be
cool to have some positive motion on that front. Worst comes to worse,
I truly hate my current phone (sidekick 4g), and wouldnt mind
strapping it to the belly, though it is unbelieveably heavy and
unreliable and slow and terrible in every way.
 - spares: All the motors, ESCs, and batteries are HobbyKing parts,
and due to hollidays (ie: brokeness), I bought the minimum I needed,
meaning that when something burns out, we're grounded for 2+ weeks
waiting for the slow boat from singapore. (Really, in this day and
age, it takes that long!?!)
 - flight experience: We've got none. Other than Parrot ARs, I don't
think I know anyone who's flown a quad copter. I've got 4 spare props,
(as those break on crashing the beast), but we'll soon learn, I guess.