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You're reading from  Designing Purpose-Built Drones for Ardupilot Pixhawk 2.1

Product typeBook
Published inDec 2017
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781786469168
Edition1st Edition
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Author (1)
Ty Audronis
Ty Audronis
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Ty Audronis

Ty Audronis has been called a "technology-age renaissance man." Hes a professional drone pilot, post-production specialist in the entertainment and media industries, a highly experienced interactive game developer, and an accomplished digital artist. Hes worked for companies ranging from frog Design to California Academy of Sciences in roles where hes worn many hats. Tys been programming software and games since 1981 (when he was 8 years old) professionally. He majored in Computer Generated Animation and Visual Effects in college (where he won Best Animation for the entire CSU system a Rosebud Award). His music and sound design have been the soundtrack on several major productions; he has also served as a visual effects supervisor on feature films and was the supervising editor and animator for award-winning science visualizations. He has been building drones since the days when sensors and components had to be torn out of cell phones and game controllers. Ty is also a mentor, having taught many interns his skills, and speaks regularly at venues including Interdrone. He also serves on the advisory board for the Society of Aerial Cinematographers and for Genarts (now Boris) Sapphire.
Read more about Ty Audronis

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Spec-ing out the parts


We know we want something stable that can fly for decent periods of time. So it should be easy, right? Wrong. We can't just buy a Phantom and stick a 360 camera on it. The footage will be unstable. So we'll need something that has (what's known as) a gimbal on it. A camera gimbal (usually) uses brushless motors to counteract the tilt of a multirotor vehicle. Multirotors (as we said before) tilt to travel in different directions. We don't want our camera tilting along with it. Otherwise, every course correction will send viewers tilting and twitching in all sorts of ways. We want very smooth footage. You can see what a camera gimbal looks like in the following image:

Of course, our proof of concept gimbal won't be anything near this elaborate but the principle of their operation is the same. We need something to dampen vibration, and counter the constant tilting and rolling of a multicopter.

But we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves. What's a nice, inexpensive camera...

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Designing Purpose-Built Drones for Ardupilot Pixhawk 2.1
Published in: Dec 2017Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781786469168

Author (1)

author image
Ty Audronis

Ty Audronis has been called a "technology-age renaissance man." Hes a professional drone pilot, post-production specialist in the entertainment and media industries, a highly experienced interactive game developer, and an accomplished digital artist. Hes worked for companies ranging from frog Design to California Academy of Sciences in roles where hes worn many hats. Tys been programming software and games since 1981 (when he was 8 years old) professionally. He majored in Computer Generated Animation and Visual Effects in college (where he won Best Animation for the entire CSU system a Rosebud Award). His music and sound design have been the soundtrack on several major productions; he has also served as a visual effects supervisor on feature films and was the supervising editor and animator for award-winning science visualizations. He has been building drones since the days when sensors and components had to be torn out of cell phones and game controllers. Ty is also a mentor, having taught many interns his skills, and speaks regularly at venues including Interdrone. He also serves on the advisory board for the Society of Aerial Cinematographers and for Genarts (now Boris) Sapphire.
Read more about Ty Audronis