Comment by jacquesm
11 hours ago
I'm flying very experimental drones (~1 Kg only so not super heavy, but still, you don't want one to land on your head) in an urban environment so I really care a lot about keeping things safe and within my yard. This seems like it was the easiest way to get really hard safety guarantees. That thing is going nowhere further than the length of the tether. Building drones is fun, there is a ton to learn and the constraints are crazy enough that you have to be very creative.
If there is one resource I can point you to that may help to inspire you have a look at this:
Top engineering skills, very likable character and an amazing source of hard tech knowledge.
Thank you so much for sharing this excellent resource.
I'm watching this youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlD0C5CrWcA) and he apparently built this out to support his Master's research at the University of Maryland, where I went to school for undergrad.
The long arm of the DMV no-fly zone is no joke!
In one of his videos he claims he's 'not a software guy' and then proceeds to put together a piece of control software that is more flexible and far better laid out than whatever is out there in common usage.
He's right in many ways, unfortunately I really need all those other features as well, but I think there is something to be said for ripping the inner control loops (rate, level, stabilization) out of say Arducopter and replacing it with this stuff on a separate micro controller. It's much easier to divorce stability and primary flight characteristics from things like high level mission planning and such and it isn't rare at all for such things to get in each others way in the usual suspects (Betaflight, INAV, Arducopter and various derivatives of these three).