Difference between revisions of "User:Rufus"

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Hi, I'm Chris Gough and I hail from from Canberra, Australia. Thank you for visiting my page here.
= Project notes: Raspberry Pi ground control station =


I'm a software developer by trade, but I work as a manager for the Australian Government (Dept. of Environment). Among other things, my interest in Paparazzi is as a nice technical challenge to keep me sane after reading/writing documents and going to meetings all day.
I want a cheap headless GCS that speaks to me (possibly via CB radio), keeps logs, and provides a convenient place for me to tinker with agents and such (development time) with a maximally simple setup at the field. I will probably want a build system (for reflashing firmware at the field) and integration with FPV video, but those jobs are for later.


I've not yet had any flights with paparazzi. I have acquired an EasyStar and had lots of practice - to the point where I can now launch/land reliably in adverse conditions, such as the tree-lined ridge across the road from my house. I also just finished assembling a "Boomerang 40" aileron trainer and converting it to electric power (~800W), and I intend to learn to fly that competently before using it (or something similar) as a UAV  platform after the EasyStar .
I started with a Raspberry pi (rpi) running debian squeeze, which is what I run on my field laptop, but that was a dead end. Ocaml on squeeze is 3.11.2 (with no backport available), and that version doesn't support ocamlopt on ARM architectures. So far I've learned that I should be on a wheeze-based distribution (ocaml > 3.11, supporting ocamlopt on ARM), and I probably want to utilise the hardware float so that means I'll move to raspbian next.


I have a TWOG from CheBuzz, a pair of 2.4 Mhz zigbee modems and some 36MHz radio gear. With the help of [http://www.mannberg.co.uk/paparazzi/?p=5 this page] I seem to have my modems to working :). I plan to do AUTO1 and AUTO2 flights with the EasyStar by the end of the month (September 2009) or early October.
http://www.raspbian.org/


Longer term (hopefully by the end of Summer), I'd like to build a UAV that routinely patrols/surveys a moderately large area (farm) taking geo-referenced digital photographs, and develop a ground-based post-processing facility to stitch/authorectify/etc them to maintain raster layers in a geodatabase... Machine learning is a bit of a hobby of mine, and I entertain the fantasy of eventually one day building an automated kangaroo/cow/plant detector.
My plan is to mudde through and get it working, then publish an install script that makes the install process repeatable. After that I might look into packaging, but I don't know much about that (yet).


I know a friendly farmer who will let me fly over their 300 Acre paddock, home to 90 cows (and probably as many kangaroos). I've started the process of learning what I have to do to make my surveys there safe and legal, and expect to have the necessary approvals in place by Christmas.
= About me =


But for now, my "UAV" is a rather odd looking small cardboard box with a USB socket, a (power) switch and some IR sensors on a coreflute stalk.
I'm an open source UAV enthusuiast from Canberra (Australia), with a penchant for paparazzi and the guy behind [http://aerofu.com aerofu.com].
 
[[image:aerofu_logo.png]]
 
* My name is Chris Gough, some people call me Rufus (for reasons I don't fully understand).
* the best way to reach me is christopher (dot) d (dot) gough (at) gmail.com. But don't call me Christopher, only my mum does that (and then only when I'm in trouble) so it's creepy/weired. Call me Chris.
* my skype identity is christopher.d.gough, but it's not a good way to reach me.
* On GitHub I'm monkeypants, on eBay I'm monkeypants007.
* my phone number is (+61) 418441605 (a mobile).
 
I'm NOT this guy:
 
* http://www.sott.net/articles/show/205982-Meet-Lt-Col-Chris-Gough-Killing-by-Drone-and-Proud-of-It
 
I mostly fly fixed-wing planes and am slowly moving to STM32, but mostly still LPC.

Latest revision as of 17:43, 1 November 2012

Project notes: Raspberry Pi ground control station

I want a cheap headless GCS that speaks to me (possibly via CB radio), keeps logs, and provides a convenient place for me to tinker with agents and such (development time) with a maximally simple setup at the field. I will probably want a build system (for reflashing firmware at the field) and integration with FPV video, but those jobs are for later.

I started with a Raspberry pi (rpi) running debian squeeze, which is what I run on my field laptop, but that was a dead end. Ocaml on squeeze is 3.11.2 (with no backport available), and that version doesn't support ocamlopt on ARM architectures. So far I've learned that I should be on a wheeze-based distribution (ocaml > 3.11, supporting ocamlopt on ARM), and I probably want to utilise the hardware float so that means I'll move to raspbian next.

http://www.raspbian.org/

My plan is to mudde through and get it working, then publish an install script that makes the install process repeatable. After that I might look into packaging, but I don't know much about that (yet).

About me

I'm an open source UAV enthusuiast from Canberra (Australia), with a penchant for paparazzi and the guy behind aerofu.com.

Aerofu logo.png

  • My name is Chris Gough, some people call me Rufus (for reasons I don't fully understand).
  • the best way to reach me is christopher (dot) d (dot) gough (at) gmail.com. But don't call me Christopher, only my mum does that (and then only when I'm in trouble) so it's creepy/weired. Call me Chris.
  • my skype identity is christopher.d.gough, but it's not a good way to reach me.
  • On GitHub I'm monkeypants, on eBay I'm monkeypants007.
  • my phone number is (+61) 418441605 (a mobile).

I'm NOT this guy:

I mostly fly fixed-wing planes and am slowly moving to STM32, but mostly still LPC.