Utah Aerials

Quadcopter films actual location of "127 Hours" the Movie

2011-01-13T19:31:00.000-08:00

A few months ago we went to Canyonlands and Blue John Canyon to find the rock that Aron Ralston was trapped by for 127 hours. It was a great hike, and equipment worked well. Check out video below.

These quadcopters carried a GoPro HD and we shot at both 720p at 60 frames per second and 1080p at 30. We had very little room to work with, but thanks to Michael's mad piloting skills and our gyro-stabilized KK Multicopter brain on the quadcopter, no harm or accident happened to our little ship.

We've recently been happy to see quite a bit of interest in our aircraft. We have decided to start building these little guys for anybody wanting to try to do some crazy stuff. Next month we will have a new model that should change the way we film from the air. Please stay tuned, and email us if you have any requests for aerial video or aerial photography needs, or if you have great ideas of what we should film next. Thanks!

The MicroQuad Prototype

2011-01-06T21:07:00.000-08:00

As promised, we put together some video of our new MicroQuad prototype! This little guy is tough, not only can it payload our GoPro HD Hero or our Canon SD780, it can fly indoors and doesn't break when it crashes. It's designed to be quite safe as well; its blades don't cause damage to things (or people) that they come in contact with.

In the following video you'll see just what MicroQuad can survive. There was no damage whatsoever to it, the camera, our apartment, or us in any of these unplanned-landings.

Simple Point and Shoot Mount

2011-01-02T17:16:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody!

There are some very exciting things happening here at UtahAerials! Unfortunately, I've been so busy that I haven't posted anything for a little while. I just had a rather enjoyable time of flight testing a new camera mount for smaller point and shoot style cameras. It was pretty windy so they aren't all as level as I'd like them to be, but the remote camera control is working well, as is the tilt mechanism. Check it out! (The first few abstract art pieces are from an attempt to use this thing at night. I'll have to keep working on that one)

The Quadcopter Collection

2011-01-02T06:49:00.000-08:00

So.... I stayed up late tonight to finish this!!! This is the prototype for a tiny quad I am building. I tried a few things on this little guy that none of my other quads have, and so far things are looking good. It actually flies quite well, I've done several short flights here in my room just now. But now I should sleep. Good night friends.Update, this mini quadcopter can payload an HD Gopro Camera! The possibilities. I have included the photo of the Mama Papa and Baby Quad. Pictures and vid of baby carrying gopro to be ahdded to this post shortly.

Fire of Provo Tabernacle with RC Helicopter using Cannon T2i

2010-12-17T22:45:00.000-08:00

Here we are with Utah Aerials and PixAirPro filming the large fire at the Provo Tabernace.

Thanksgiving Turkey Pie Drop

2010-11-25T04:23:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody! We had a great response to our last video. Lots of you voted on what Mr. T should wear for Thanksgiving. Well, your prayers have been answered! By popular demand, here is a video of a giant, quadcopter, flying turkey cyborg that drops pies!

Some of you will notice that this is not, in fact, Mr. T, but is instead his evil associate, Professor X! This is the quadcopter that does most of our shooting. It's tough, flies well, and can take a whole lot of abuse. It's based on the KKMulticopter flight control board (just like Mr. T, it is also programmed with a Sparkfun Pocket AVR Programmer) this system has proven to be very reliable, though it does lack some of the more advanced features of our Arducopter and Mikrokopter based aircraft.

This is the turkey, just before we added some finishing details. It is constructed of four long sheets of poster-board for the cylinder, and smaller pieces for the head, wings, and tail with some small parts that are folded over for strength. The cylinder is lifted by straightened coat hangers that are zip-tied to the quadcopter's arms. There is also coat hanger around the inside of the cylinder and the tail (not visible here) to give them strength. Without it, the props suck them in! (Experience!) The entire setup is actually pretty balanced.

Here's Scott getting ready to hand launch. We've found this to be so easy that I don't usually include landing gear on these helicopters. Of course we're careful, but the quads are far safer than conventional single rotor helicopters.

I didn't get a good photo of the dropping mechanism, but it can be seen pretty clearly in the video. It's just a piece of bent-over aluminum with a hole drilled through. An old servo controls a pin that goes through that hole, when it's pulled out, the load drops.

It actually flew surprisingly well with the turkey suit on, the pie badly unbalanced it, however, making it pretty much impossible for me to drop the pie on Scott properly.

When it was all over, we released the turkey suit into the wild, where it lives peacefully.

Thanks for reading! If you liked the video, please share it! Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

Wardrobe Meltdown

2010-11-02T18:46:00.000-07:00

Thanks everyone for the amazing response to my video! Mr. T had a great Halloween, feasting on the broken dreams of terrorized children. He laughs when he thinks about all the chocolate they won't be enjoying. But he's unhappy about the resulting reduction in cavities.

Now he needs to decide what to wear for Thanksgiving! Should he be a flying turkey? That seems a little obvious, we're having a vote to see what you think.

Evil Remote Controlled Ghost

2010-10-31T01:35:00.000-07:00

Thanks for watching my little film! We had fun throwing it together!

As I started to get into multi-rotor aircraft, I came across the KKMulticopter platform as a good way to build inexpensive practice aircraft. As I looked at the design, I realized that it would be pretty easy to adapt it to a two-prop tilt-rotor design, but before I could begin coding the software for it, they released a firmware for just that! When I saw this video, I knew I was going to have to build one... and that I would use it for evil.

Before long, I had put together what we've come to call Mr. T.

Mr. T is a built on a very simple aluminum frame. There are two Turnigy motors driving counter rotating propellers, that are able to move forward and back under the control of some old servos. The motors are powered by a pair of Turnigy Plush 18amp speed controllers. The KKMulticontroller (I ordered the PCB from them, soldered on the components and programmed the microcontroller with a SparkFun USBtiny.) sits in the middle between the props, while the battery hangs below. It's important to balance the craft properly so it will fly straight (or straightish in this case.) That wire on the top is just to give the head its shape.

This is the KKMulticontroller, behind which sits a 6-channel Futaba reciever. You'll notice that the part of the frame that hangs down isn't centered below the controller, that's to offset the weight of the battery.

This is one of the motor-servo assemblies. That is a cabinet hinge with zip-ties through it to keep it from wobbling. The motor is bolted straight to it. The servo moves the hinge with some stiff wire, and there is a spring to keep it tight. This part could use a lot of improvement, but I wanted to keep it simple and quick.

This is Mr. T's costume. It's a bed sheet with the top sown over to make the head shape, holds for the motors, and shredding at the bottom, for ghostliness.

This is Mr. T flying around without his costume.

If you liked this, please pass it on. I look forward to your comments. Happy Halloween!!

New Camera Mount

2010-10-23T22:40:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I built a very successful prototype vibration isolating mount for the Quadcopters. Some parts of the helicopter need to be rigidly connected for stable, controllable flight (the motors, gyros, etc) but some parts don't (the camera, and the batteries, in particular). The idea here is to isolate the rigid parts from the rest and to get as much mass next to the camera as possible to increase its resistance to vibration. This should actually improve the responsiveness of the aircraft as well because it's able to make corrections to it's flight without pushing the battery and camera around at the same time.

The video is some shooting I've done over the last few days with the new mount.