Arducopter 2 aka Arducopter Mega

Ardupilot Mega board complete with Ardupilot IMU board (oilpan). I will use it with the recently released Arducopter 2 code.

Today I ordered a complete and already soldered Ardupilot Mega kit from uDrones. It consist’s of a Ardupilot Mega processor board soldered together with a Ardupilot Mega IMU board. The IMU board carries all the sensors like gyros, GPS and accelerometers. I also ordered a magnetometer which is a compass.

Arducopter

Arducopter is an open scource project with a community that is rapidly growing . There are many active developers and beta-testers working on the code so I would say it develops faster than Mikrokopter and other commercial platforms. Today they have about the same features, but in a near future I’m sure that the Arducopter will be far more advanced. I also like that the Arducopter platform uses regular RC electronics, like normal ESC.

Arducopter 2 aka Arducopter Mega

The main reason that I choosed the Arducopter platform is that the Arducopter 2 code aka Arducopter Mega was released as a public beta just the other day. It looks very stable and I have read all the project feeds and seen that the code is thoroughly tested.

Arducopter 2 for aerial photography

Arducopter 2 has many good features. I will use it mainly for aerial photography and video, so the most important features for me is:

• Stabilize mode. I guess it’s pretty self explaining why this is useful for aerial photography
• Position hold. Let’s me have the multicopter at a specific position. Great if you want to take panorama photos or just don’t want to worry about your multicopter while maneuvering your camera.
• Camera stabilization output. This features uses the board to stabilize a servo controlled camera mount.
• RTL – Return To Launch. The failsafe mode can be set to RTL. If eg the radio signal is lost the multicopter will return to where it started. This will hopefully minimize damage to your multicopter and your expensive aerial photography equipment. I will probably assign the RTL feature to one of the buttons on my radio transmitter, so if I panic or lose control, I will simply hit the RTL-button.

Xtream Bee Telemetry

At this point I didn’t know if i needed the Xtream Bee add-on for full telemetry. You could choose it when buying the board from uDrones. It is easy to plugin later if I feel that I need it. Right now I have the Fat shark system for live video downlink, and hopefully that will be enough for me the nearest future.